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Social Media and the Church

The “Not So New” Horizontal Church

Many church leaders are bemoaning that Church isn’t what it used to be. Bishop Claire Burkat wrote to her rank and file lately warning that the road ahead is uncharted and there is no blueprint for moving foreward. The old ways just aren’t working.

Perhaps it is only an illusion that they ever did!

Welcome to the “horizontal” Church.

Church can learn from what’s happening in the rest of the world. Business leaders, too, are noticing that the old ways of doing business are ineffective, inefficient and unprofitable. There is a TV show that brings this “epiphany” to us every Sunday evening — Undercover Boss.

In the old business world, upper management controlled all things. An employee’s future relied on his/her ability to control people, material, budgets, customers. The power in the business world has shifted to the consumer. Smart business people are meeting the challenge by restructuring their businesses to be less vertical (hierarchical) and more horizontal. Create a good product, serve your customers well, and your business will grow by word of mouth or by keystrokes on the internet or cellphone.

The Church lives in the same world. It has relied on hierarchical control for a very long time and so change may come a bit harder and a tad slower, but things are changing. Hierarchies are crumbling under the weight of their own weaknesses. Rank and file spiritual church members are resisting the support of vertical management and for good reason. It’s expensive, unproductive and crippling. Offerings, we can conclude, are better spent on direct service than on supporting hierarchy.

And so, the Church today is mirroring society. The Church is becoming more horizontal. We still have a good “product” and the laborers in the vineyard are committed. The Church will survive by spreading person to person (2×2!).

This is where Bishop Burkat is wrong! There is a blueprint! It’s called The Bible.

photo credit: michaelrighi via photopin cc

 

07 Feb 2012

Sharing the Gospel in Social Media

One reason many churches shirk away from using the power of social media is an old-fashioned sense of ownership. Their slant on the Gospel becomes a bit proprietary. We carefully hold our cards close to our vests, waiting for the right moment to play.

We forget that the Gospel is for everyone. We start to think about how telling the Gospel benefits us.

Ministry plans sometimes try to fill niches not addressed by other congregations. This can be very altruistic and good. But sometimes it is more like carving out territory, hoping to attract Christians our way to help our parish statistics.

That thinking will not work in the social media age. Sharing the Gospel has never been more possible and churches must adapt our thinking to a world of new possibilities.

Sharing is a good thing. Social Media thrives on it. It is becoming the accepted way of doing things. The internet thrives on linking to other sites.

So stop playing your ministry cards close to your vest. Tilt your hand so everyone can see your cards. Take a look at your neighbors’ hands and TELL IT!

Use your web site or blog to link to other ministries and good works in your neighborhood. It’s OK. Really! You may drive traffic away from your site for a moment, but your site traffic will soon benefit. People will remember that you helped them find that support group or social service agency. Your neighboring church will remember that you promoted their Cantata. They, in turn, might support your spaghetti dinner! You will be demonstrating that you care about your neighbors. That’s a good thing!

The message for today: Look for good things in your neighborhood to write about and link to.

photo credit: oknovokght via photopin cc

05 Feb 2012

Adding the Power of Visuals to Your Blog or Web Site

We live in a visual world. Social Media advocates can take that for granted. They are pleased to get a few hundred thoughtful words together to publish a few times a week. Add a picture? That will take too much time!

A search for "mustard seed" in photopin.com helped find this photo. At the end of the post look for the photo credit, cut and pasted into the html. It took less than two minutes to find the photo and add it to this post.

Fortunately for us, there are media elves who specialize in analyzing our work. Elves like pictures and videos. When they start counting on their little green fingers they report that blogs using images and videos chalk up higher statistics. More people read them. Search engines find them more easily. Listen to the elves!

There are many inexpensive sources of art. istock images can cost as little as $2. But here is a source that is mostly free. All you have to do is add a credit for the image at the end of your post. You don’t even have to type. Just copy and paste the code.

www.photopin.com

Their catalog is vast. The trick for church bloggers is to come up with the right words to find a suitable image. You may have to play around a bit.

For example, a search for “The Good Shepherd” brought up a few religious images but a lot of images that were nowhere near topic. They may have been images of people with the name “Good” or “Shepherd.”

Better results came with different search words. “Stained glass windows” worked well.

Search engines can also help you. Use Google, Yahoo, etc. and click on the IMAGE tab. You’ll have to look at each image that comes up for copyright. It’s a good idea to always credit the source.

You can scan your own images or use your cell phone creatively for images. Objects around the house can add interest. In one of our earlier posts, we used an image of grapes to go with a phrase we had used in the post “sour grapes.” We bought that image from istock for a couple of bucks but we could have taken a cell phone photo of images of grapes from our own refrigerator.

Captions are not always necessary but they do give search engines one more thing to find. If the visual connection to your post is not obvious, write a caption.

Start to think visually. It will help prepare you for the next step . . . video.

photo credit: moominmolly via photopin cc

27 Jan 2012

Looking for the Ideal Christian

In the secular world, businesses have a little trick they rarely discuss except among like-minded professionals.

 

They create “personas” — model customers. They spend good time and money doing this. They comb through stock art to find an image that looks like the person they want to serve or supply with a product. They may choose two or three ideal customers. The images are given names and a back story. They mount them on foam core and display them in the corporate lobby or board room. They start to talk about “Dakota,” “Trevor” and “Roy” as if they are waiting for them in the next room. They write their blogs and advertising copy with them in mind. Their product development revolves around these imaginary people.

 

Someone presents a new idea. The corporation asks, “What do Dakota, Trevor and Roy think?”

 

Can this help the church? Wouldn’t it table the Great Commission — to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to everyone? Wouldn’t it turn the Church into an exclusive organization?

 

The fact is congregations subconsciously create personas. “We want families. They’ll help our church grow.” Will they?

 

To some degree, the congregational persona is as close as the mirror. Churches want more people who are like them.

 

2×2 recommends the use of personas as a worthwhile congregational exercise. But they are not a magic bullet. The Church is not a business. We do not want members just to support our bottom line, do we?

 

If our personas are only the people we hope to attract, they can blind us to unseen potential—the wonderful serendipity of mission!

 

If Redeemer, the sponsor of 2×2, had created a persona for our ideal new member in the mid-90s, we might have followed the same thinking. We might have looked for young professionals for their skills and energy. We might have looked for more established, middle-aged professionals for their ability to contribute. We might have looked for the recently retired for their volunteer hours. In our mind’s eye, we would have seen people who look like us — Americans of European descent, already familiar with our denomination.

 

The discussion would have become all about who can help us — not about whom we can help.

 

God had other plans. The people who came to Redeemer and began to make our church grow were immigrants from East Africa — Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Botswana and others. They were looking to create new lives in a new land — finishing school, starting families and purchasing homes. They were looking for a church to be part of their lives. Some were Lutheran. Others were not.

 

Congregations are not the only people to fall into the “persona” trap. Denominations have their own ideas of what an ideal congregation is. Our denomination was not able to accept Redeemer in our 21st century persona. They had a mental image of our congregation as a throwback to the 1940s. The persona prejudice was impossible to shake. For all its talk about being inclusive and multicultural, church leaders remains unprepared to serve a congregation that does not meet their preconceptions. Pity.

 

The idea of personas are a good exercise to aid congregations in discussion as they plan ministry. But here is the kicker. The personas we craft should represent the people who actually exist and who need to feel God’s love.

 

If the concept of “persona” has any value to church it should be for finding people we can serve, without calculating their value to us.

Can you serve children after school? Can you help single parents? Can you care for the neighborhood’s elderly? Can you support military families? Is there a cause that needs someone to take a stand? Keep true community needs in mind as you plan your ministry and write your blogs.

 

Forget the nonsense. Practice the Great Commission with blinders on. God might have exciting things in store for you.

22 Jan 2012

Comments in Social Media vs Contact Information

2×2 is an experimental site in a fairly new medium, so we are learning along with everyone else. A recent real life lesson is teaching us the difference between “comments” as a way to interact vs actually posting contact information.

2×2 was launched in February of 2011. It is built on a blogging platform, so comments have always been possible. We had not included obvious phone numbers or emails. We thought the comment mechanism was the way interested people would reach us.

Our overall goal is to create helpful dialog on issues which affect small church ministry but are not often discussed. How that happens is up to our readers! While we have always invited comments, “getting comments” has never been a goal as it is among many bloggers.

We have followed analytics on our site since about June and we knew that we were getting many international “hits.” We had no way to measure whether or not they were quality hits or accidental surfing hits.

About a week ago, a reader wrote to us via a comment asking for contact information. We immediately responded by posting a contact name and number in the sidebar. We have been in regular communication since. We have begun to hear from others as well — not on the site — but via email and telephone.

Our emails are proving that we do, indeed, have a national and international following that is beginning to put us in direct contact with ministries we would have never known about years ago.

This morning we had a detailed email from a ministry in Pakistan, thanking us for our web site. The pastor sent us links to their ministry site and asked for our prayers.

Was it coincidence that a 2×2/Redeemer member suggested last week that the 2×2 web site begin to include a prayer list? Probably not.

2×2 is a place for sharing about ministry and we will always be glad to feature ministry news that will benefit the labors of other small Christian communities. We will consider linking to any ministry that sends us information to verify their ministry efforts.

And, of course, we will add your ministry to our soon to be published prayer list.

Lesson to be learned: Comments are nice, but communication is better!

19 Jan 2012

Bloggers Block Checklist

There is tremendous potential and power behind church blogging, but a blog is a hungry beast and feeding it can be a challenge. We periodically publish idea-starters.

Here is a checklist to help you with bloggers block. Remember to first look at every idea from the standpoint of readers and that includes your community who do not attend your church.

1. Scripture

Scripture readings in most mainline churches have a form called the Common Lectionary. You can look them up in advance, ponder the meaning and relate it to a topic of interest to your community or congregation. Our Social Media Editorial Calendar includes Sunday readings — but there are weekly readings as well and alternate readings for special days. (If your church is named after a saint — there’s something to write about).

2. Church Year

Church life rotates unendingly around the key events in the life of Christ — Advent to Christ the King, followed by a long summer and fall of Pentecost, post-Pentecost or Ordinary Time, depending on your tradition. Whatever it is called, it is a period not directly related to any of the festivals associated with the life of Christ and is often viewed as a period to explore Christ’s teachings. So explore them!

Look ahead at the Church Year and relate seasonal topics to community and congregational life.

3. Community Events

Is your community involved in an election with significant issues? You can address these topics without becoming partisan. Examine the effects of issues and point out facts. Example: How will a tax hike impact the poor? How will failure to provide new revenue hurt the poor? Regardless of outcome of an election, how will the Church respond? How has your church responded?

Is your community working together on a common problem? Tell how your congregation is part of the solution.

Is there an event coming up — not sponsored by your congregation — that your church intends to support? Write about why you care.

Yes, you can write about your church events as well! Just remember that you want to grow readership beyond your immediate community.

4.  Community Calendars

Back to school, community celebrations (Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, popular festivals) are all things churches can and should talk about. Make sure your church weighs in on Easter and Christmas! Mention school activities. Are your youth involved in the high school play or do they play on the football team? Interview them on a video.

5. Church Life

What has happened in your church that might interest the community? Was there a great “takeaway” from a sermon that might make a two-minute video? Was there a fund-raiser to report? Tell how the effort benefits the community.

6. Ideas

Blogs are great places to explore ideas. The more viewpoints the better. Keep your ear to the ground for topics that might be interesting to others. What was discussed at the last coffee fellowship? What did you overhear in the diner? Allow for different viewpoints.

7. Action

Last, talk about the actions your church community takes in regards to all topics.

10 Jan 2012

How Do You Measure “Church” in A Digital Age?

The things we measure are not always the things that count.

Churches have vital statistics. Most people in the pew pay little attention to them. Pastors often pay little attention, too. Denominations have a hard time collecting parish data and sometimes they make up their own statistics.

Maybe it’s too depressing. Maybe we measure the wrong things.

Typical parish statistics include:

  • Worship attendance
  • Number of baptized/confirmed members
  • Percentage of members attending worship
  • Number of members involved in Sunday Schools and VBS programs
  • Regular giving by members
  • Endowments and property assets
  • Operating expenses and debt
  • Contributions to benevolence (what the local parish sends to the denomination)
  • Contributions to mission
  • Ethnic and racial makeup of a congregation
Little of this says anything about what a congregation does or is capable of doing in the modern world!

In most congregations, at least in the ELCA, most traditional statistics are dropping dramatically.

Some of these statistics are rather old fashioned.

Once upon a time, a parish had to give money to centralized authority to be dispersed for mission. Today, congregations can and do choose mission efforts in the community and bypass their denominations, which skews that statistic.

Operating expenses assume a pastor’s salary and property as foundational expenses. Neither may be necessary anymore.

There are many other things in a congregation that can be measured (but aren’t) and there are even more things that are difficult to measure.

If we start looking at other sources of data, our view of parish ministry might change.

Internet ministries are very measurable and can be very helpful in directing church ministry. Very few congregations bother or work only half-heartedly in a self-focused way.

2×2 concentrates on internet outreach — and we’ve only begun!

Here are some statistics on our first 10 months of internet ministry.

2×2 published its first post in February 2011. We had practically no traffic for six months. In mid-summer, we began publishing daily and the site has grown since. There was a slight dip at Christmas time but we have already recorded our most traffic ever only four days into 2012, so we expect the statistics to continue to grow — as long as we continue to work at it.

We have recorded 2100 site visits. For the last two months, 2×2 has consistently registered 100-150 views each week. We have about 70 subscribers/followers who receive our posts by email and so are not counted in site visits data. Our average daily on site readership is about 25. So it is fair to say that 2×2 has 100 daily readers.

2×2 has been visited by someone in all but three states with regular viewership in several states. We have viewers around the world with regular readership in several European countries, Canada and Australia.

We can follow our reader’s interests and provide content accordingly. 2×2 readers are most interested in Social Media and the Church and Children’s Sermons. Our articles on Multicultural Ministry were republished by a reader in Texas. The Editorial Calendar we created to correspond to the Lectionary has been downloaded dozens of times.

2×2 has a presence beyond its online ministry that is more difficult to measure (like most ministries), but in 2×2’s case, it is made all the more difficult to measure because the members of 2×2, who are also members of Redeemer, East Falls, have been excommunicated from the ELCA — without discussion or congregational vote — with the denomination claiming our property and financial assets against their own denominational rules.

Imagine what might have been accomplished if our abilities had been measured!

The church needs to take a fresh look at how they measure ministry.

04 Jan 2012

One Important Question for Church Bloggers to Remember

We live in a world of big box stores that are as likely to have security guards standing at the door as “welcomers.” But it wasn’t so very long ago that the typical shopping experience was much more personal.

You would walk through a shop door and a clerk behind a counter or perhaps stocking shelves would look up and say, “Good morning. How can I help you today?”

This is a great question. It is different than a shorter “Can I help you?” or a brusk “What do you want?” which both sound a bit like your visit is an interruption.

The phrasing is actually important. “How can I help you today?” defines the role of the shopworker and lays the foundation of the transaction that is about to follow. The shopworker is the servant. The shop visitor is there to be served. Furthermore, it prompts the customer to define his or her expectations and opens the door to new possibilities.

There is also an immediacy to the question. “How can I help you today?” implies the desire to drop everything and care for the customer’s needs at the moment. The shopworker is reminded of his mission every time he or she asks the question.

How does this relate to blogging? There is no customer standing in front of you.

Blogging is hard work. It can be solitary work when you are trying to find a topic of interest. It is extremely common for bloggers to burn out after a few months. You will face dry spells. You will struggle at times to find direction. But it helps to remember that when your fingers hit the keyboard, you are initiating a transaction with your readers.

Remembering to ask this question will help. Write it on an index card. Tape it to the side of your computer screen. “How can I help you today?”

An image of your audience may begin to form in your mind. You may start to imagine them at work in their lives.

Soon other questions will follow: What information are they looking for? What questions do they have that I am qualified to address? How can I make their day better or their work easier? Do they know God? How can I help them know Jesus?

Come to think — this is a pretty good question for all Christians to ask themselves as they gulp down their morning coffee.

08 Dec 2011

How to Choose A Community Manager for Your Congregation

Community Manager? What’s that?

Community Managers coordinate the various Social Media used by your church, whether it be the blog, Facebook, Twitter or the web site. It’s a new job description even within the corporate world. Churches using the internet will need to address this new societal role as well. Within a decade, this may be one of the standard church positions along with pastor, sexton, music director, organist, or youth leader.

Social Media is a powerful ministry tool which must be managed to be effective. It is not enough to simply advertise that you are on the web or have a Facebook page. These are tools that must be used in real time!

Our Ambassadors have explored the Facebook presence of a number of churches we visited. Most have very little interaction on their Facebook pages. We were surprised to see that one of the smallest churches had a much higher “edge rank” than larger churches. It was not surprising to us that this church had impressed us with their connectedness to their neighborhood even before we saw their internet stats.

In contrast, a denominational internet presence can reveal very little interaction with readers — typically a few posts in the months after the site was announced and not much but announcements from the denomination since.

We are all learning to use this new tool.

As you develop your internet usage, think about the day when you might need someone to coordinate  things. Social Media must be managed. It is a role which is important enough to fund and can promise a measurable return on investment (to borrow a business term).

  • A Community Manager must be a social person. Look for a person who would be interacting with members and visitors even without the internet.
  • A Community Manager must have good communication skills. He or she will be writing a lot and the ability to express your church values clearly and accurately is paramount.
  • A Community Manager must be nice. People won’t interact with an authoritarian, judgmental, didactic or sarcastic moderator. The church forum is not a place to show cleverness but concern.
  • A Community Manager must care and be prepared to act on their concern. If people pose a problem to your church on its internet forums, they are looking for more than offers of prayer. A Community Manager must be prepared to channel important inquiries to appropriate leaders for action. Some action must be taken or your internet presence will become dormant.
  • A Community Manager must be able to work with many people. The information gleaned from the internet must be channeled to others.
  • A Community Manager must be flexible. This is territory where the best planning can go out the window at any time. Planning is important, but the ability to respond to the realities of the present is also vital.
  • A Community Manager must like technology. They don’t have to come into the role as an expert on all the resources and techniques available (no one in this field knows it all!), but they must embrace learning, be willing to become engaged with online experts and communities and adapt as things change…and that is often! They must be willing to try ideas an honestly measure their effect. They cannot be tied to one medium. Facebook might work best with one community. Twitter might be more effective in another. Blogging might work with all.
  • A Community Manager must reflect the values of your church.  He or she may be the first person outsiders come to know. Of course, every member is a face of the church, but the Community Manager will be in the spotlight.
07 Dec 2011

6 Reasons for Pastors and Congregations to Blog


Our Ambassadors study web sites as we prepare for visits. A few have snappy web sites or adequate, static sites. Some have barely functioning web sites. A surprising number have no internet presence whatsoever.

Now and then we come across a web site that features a Pastor’s Blog. This raises our interest. Blogging is a passion of 2×2’s. We have come to expect disappointment. The blogs are often no more than a few posts, months apart, and the most recent post is often years old. The blog posts tend to be personal musings aimed at the congregation’s existing community. No wonder they ran out of steam!

Ministry opportunity is being lost! Pastors should blog. Congregations should blog. Here’s why:

  1. Blogging is team work. Maintaining and growing a blog is work that should be shared. Working together on developing a good congregational blog will help your members and leaders bond, build community, and find ministry and mission opportunities.
  2. Blogging provides direction. Blogging is a tool to help your congregation stay connected with the people you serve. Posting content several times a week is good lubrication to keep your ministry from getting rusty. You will be looking constantly for issues to address. You will meet new people and organizations. Who knows how this could impact your ministry?
  3. Blogging builds trust. Bloggers wear their hearts on their sleeves. Publishing daily in a forum where your thinking can be challenged as easily as applauded keeps your thinking grounded. Readers will notice, respect and trust that you have others’ interests at heart.
  4. Blogging helps you reach out. Blogs help seekers find you. This won’t happen with four posts a year though! You need to treat your blog with the same importance you treat the preparation of a sermon or worship service. It is likely that it will be read by many times the number of people who attend worship! (2×2 started our blog nine months ago. We now have 100-150 new readers every week!)
  5. Blogging expands your point of view. Blogs allow for interaction. Your readers can comment on the ideas you present. Commenters influence the dialogue. They may applaud your efforts; they may point you in a different direction. Good bloggers listen and respond to all legitimate comments whether they agree or not.
  6. Blogging returns us to Christ’s approach to outreach. Congregations often exist with a fairly narrow focus on the world, fashioning ministries around tradition and doctrine. Outreach efforts often focus on trying to find people who fit into the community culture as it already exists, with thinking that mirrors their own. In contrast, Christ’s approach was to build upon encounters with the least likely prospects. With disciples grumbling in the background, Christ approached lepers, the possessed, children, women, criminals, rulers, church authorities and outcasts.

There is power and momentum in blogging. It takes work, but it is work that can  bear fruit and multiply.

04 Dec 2011