We doubt that either the Pope or President Obama are pulling out their smartphones and drafting every tweet. But it is smart of them to use their available resources to harness the power of the Twitter platform.
TechCrunch reported that “it makes sense that some of the people with the most serious of occupations are finally starting to come around to the value of the platform.”
2×2’s Twitter Experiment
2×2 is running an experiment using Twitter. We began in December. We have learned that we barely have our feet wet in its potential and we are still learning how to use it within the church. We will continue our experiment indefinitely, so that we can advise other congregations.
Our end of December observations:
Using Twitter is a mental discipline more than anything else. We must always be thinking of short and meaningful ways to connect. There is a reward and focus in doing so.
It takes a while to develop a following. Just how long? Too soon to say. We have 17 followers on two Twitter accounts after our first month.
We don’t know if there is a correlation, but our web site traffic doubled in the first half of December, slowed over the holidays, but shows signs that the holiday dip was temporary.
Twitter is fun. There is value to being part of both sides of the Twitter conversation.
Twitter is a great way to grow insight and understanding as we meet thought leaders with interesting viewpoints. While we currently have 17 followers, we have found 40 or more people on Twitter who regularly add to our knowledge and interests—and make daily blogging a lot easier. We believe this feature of Twitter is the answer to a major challenge for churches who want to use social media.
It’s a new year. 2013. No better time to refresh our thinking for Redeemer’s ground-breaking ministry in social media evangelism, otherwise known as 2x2virtualchurch.com.
Redeemer, East Falls, Philadelphia, began its social media ministry in February of 2011, reaching 1,994 people its first year—most of this number during the last two months of the year. We projected that we would reach 12,000 in 2012. We have reached more than 13,000. With steady growth in the last six months, we project that we will reach 20,000 in 2013.
Between 50 and 100 people visit 2×2 each day. 300-600 each week. Redeemer (which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America no longer recognizes as existing at all) reaches more people than most of its congregations.
Resolutions for Our Social Media Ministry
Here are some things we resolve as we approach a new mission year.
We resolve to honor the Gospel imperatives to reach the world with a message of love.
We resolve to be mindful of the needs of others as we create content for small congregations.
We resolve to respond to every comment posted on our site.
We resolve to think beyond our membership to provide helpful resources for seekers.
We resolve to energize the laity and provide a voice for the lay point of view.
We resolve to strengthen the mission bonds that were planted during the last year in Pakistan, Kenya and Sweden.
We resolve to keep minds open to new mission ideas and opportunities.
We resolve to add video and podcast content to our editorial mix.
We resolve to assist other congregations in entering the rich but unknown territory of social media.
We resolve to not desert East Falls and stand idly as the assets and resources contributed by Redeemer members and friends for mission purposes are seized to pay the operating expenses of a Synod that failed to serve us.
We resolve to explore making 2x2virtualchurch.com a ministry that can support the work of Redeemer, East Falls, should the Lutherans of the Southeastern Pennsylvanian Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ever stir its collective conscience to revisit its horrific behavior in this neighborhood.
We resolve to help find active ministry solutions for small congregations and put an end to SEPA’s selfish “stand and watch while they fail” policies.
We resolve to be ready for a day of reconciliation with a ministry plan that is ready to resume speed.
Redeemer has never stopped following its mission.
Redeemer is not closed.
We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.
It’s all about innovation. It’s all about transforming. It’s all about reaching people.
Examine the Church’s actions:
It’s all about keeping a tight rein on the way things have been for years and years.
The Church is sluggish in adopting the evangelism tools of our era. Its failure in this regard lies in its need to control. It enjoys hierarchy. They’ve worked hard at it for so long! Therefore, people will take part in dialogue upon invitation and with appropriate monitoring only.
It’s a risk for the people in the Church to insist upon a voice. Those that make it to the Regional and National Assemblies are pretty well vetted by tradition.
The pope tweets. It’s a newsworthy event.
The pope does not follow. Now, if he did, that would be news!
The few churches adopting social media tend to be independent “non-denominational” churches. Is it a surprise that independent non-denominational churches reach young people while the mainline church has dismal statistics with the under-50 population.
Mainline churches start Facebook pages, but don’t really use them. Pastors start blogging and quit after six posts. They use LinkedIn but keep their profiles private. They don’t really want to connect. They want people to come to them. Sunday morning works . . . or call the office for an appointment.
In order to grow, the Church has to let go.
Twitter has great potential for connecting. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming—although it can become an interesting place to spend some time! The connections possible in a few months of working in this medium could be AMAZING.
The results are predictable only in that they will change the Church’s outlook. They would start to connect with the people they dream of reaching.
As you become accustomed to using Twitter, you will want to connect with your following in other ways.
This is where having a blog comes in. It is a place to assemble your Twitter congregation. On your blog you can elaborate on your Twitter message. Your Twitter efforts should interest people in knowing more. Send them to your blog.
Blogs are not difficult to set up, but they do require some discipline to maintain. Many churches build their web sites on blogging platforms but they do not use the features that make blogs so powerful — the ability to attract followers and interact with them.
We’ve written a lot about blogging on this web site. Type “blog” within the site search box on the right to find articles. Or go to the Social Media Category.
For now, here are some tips to refresh about blogging.
Write about things of interest to others beyond your immediate congregation. If you write about things in your community, you will attract community attention. If you write about yourself, you will interest only a few of your members. You will get discouraged and quit because you will conclude early on that it is a waste of time.
Give your efforts a year before measuring worth. It takes six months to start getting traffic and and meaningful growth takes more than a year. Can you think of a better way to attract 1000 followers in a year’s time?
Aim for 200 to 500 words.
Use images. They attract attention and are an additional way to communicate. Images are available online. They are often free with a link required. We uses photopin.com.
Again, we’ve written many posts on this topic. Dig around.
In our Twitter experiment I started researching the power of the #-tag.
The # is a way of finding people who share your interests — long-term interests or passing fancies.
I started by plugging #church into the search box at the top of the twitter page.
Tons of tweets followed, a few of them of interest.
Here is a link to one of them. It addresses church polity and how church polity can go against church law depending on the faddish thinking of church leaders or members at the time.
It is precisely the same problem Redeemer faces with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA). Church polity can go against its own written laws and the courts will not uphold church law. In our case, they won’t even hear the case.
The lesson to be learned is that church members must be vigilant about enforcing their own laws or it will take years and unmeasurable embarrassment to correct mistakes of wayward leadership.
I wouldn’t have found this interesting vignette without Twitter.
Use the #-tag to find topics of interest to you and follow the voices which are most interesting to you.
That’s today’s Twitter assignment! I’ll add the #-tag to a few more topics and see what surfaces.
How do you present yourself, your church, on Twitter?
The best advice is to be yourself. But individuals tweet, not organizations. How does your congregation represent itself as a community?
When you sign up for Twitter, you will be asked to upload an Avatar — a photo or image that represents you. Avatars are more important in Twitter than anywhere. They help you scan the long list of tweets you will receive to help you sort out the ones that most interest you.
Experts advise us to use a photo of a person. People relate to people not logos, they tell us.
Churches include many people and focusing on one is a recipe for cult-building.
The most likely candidate for a one-person Twitter persona is a pastor. There are plusses and minuses to this.
The plusses
The pastor knows the congregation’s mission.
We assume he or she is working all week on profound interpretations of scripture that will make good tweets.
You can use a photo of the pastor as an Avatar.
We assume he or she knows the community and can relate church life to what is happening community-wide.
We assume a similar knowledge of individual church members, so messages that resonate with members should be easy.
The minuses
Pastors are often resistant to social media and would need to be brought “on board.” This could stall your entry into social media for years.
Pastors are leaders but they are not the church. You must make sure that a tweeting pastor is doing so on behalf of the congregation and not building a personal “tribe.”
Pastors come and go. If people follow your congregation’s Twitter presence centered on a pastor, you will lose followers and have to start over when that pastor moves on, which statistically is something like every three to seven years.
Analysis of social media efforts when focused on the efforts of one person, could be devisive and spill into other aspects of a congregation’s relationship with a pastor.
We are all new at this so we are looking for solutions along with everyone else. Perhaps two Twitter entities are needed. The pastor can have one which can follow him or her wherever they plan to go. Equal attention should be given to the Twitter voice of the people.
Talk it out in your congregation. Perhaps you can have a team of tweeters, voicing for the congregation. A worship voice once a day. A social ministry voice. An education voice. A fellowship voice. And a pastor’s evangelical voice. Maybe there is a way to indicate via your Avatar that your Twitter account is a team effort. A tight team photo?
This is one of many things to think through. It is worth the effort. Please, let us know how you solve this problem.
We tweeted a link to this compelling advice from one of social media’s leading voices.
Since we are just starting with Twitter and have a small following, we are providing a link on this post. His arguments are on target. Church leaders need only substitute the ecclesiastic equivalent to the business world to understand the analogy. His advice applies to any church serious about mission.
Here’s the link. Please, TWEET it as part of our experiment.
2×2 records banner statistics as 2012 draws to a close
2×2 will soon enter its third year of online ministry. Very few churches are experimenting with content evangelism. This is new territory.
We have been forced into online ministry by the confiscation of our property and the abandonment of traditional leadership. Online numbers are the only thing we can measure. We don’t have property or a pastor to pay. We have few expenses outside of unending law suits.
This was an interesting week statistically. For the last five weeks or so we’ve been inching up to 400 readers per week. We got as high as 397 without breaking 400. We fluctuated a bit, week by week, with our monthly totals steadily climbing for the last six months. Our daily readership also climbed steadily during the latter part of 2012.
This week we broke the 400 mark—and the 500 mark—and the 600 mark. 604 readers visited 2×2 last week.
Keep in mind that Redeemer’s ability to fulfill its mission was the lame excuse offered to justify the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s self-serving land grab. SEPA paraded false statistics before a Synod Assembly that was duped into taking foolish actions. Redeemer was allowed no say at the time (under questionable constitutionality)—by design.
Now we have independent statistics to prove our viability.
And a little church shall lead the way
2×2 is the focus of Redeemer’s mission. We pay daily attention to our blog’s statistics so we can do a better job. It’s not just a numbers game. We are forming real relationships with our readers all over the world. We are sharing freely what we are learning.
We look beyond the numbers to determine what the numbers represent. Online ministry is very measurable.
This week, an Ambassadors post early in the week attracted unusual attention, mostly on Monday but a little on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon, that interest had died. We expected the numbers to plummet to 20, 30 or 40 visits per day. They didn’t. By the end of the week, all the traffic was from the usual sources (people searching for ministry ideas), only at two or three times the previous week’s numbers.
Redeemer continues its dedication. We have numbers to back up our claims. Along with the statistics is evidence of Redeemer’s growing reach. We have readers all over the world. We may even lay claim to being one of the largest Lutheran churches within SEPA’s geographical area. But we are not limited by geography!
Imagine a different scenario than the one fostered by SEPA leadership
Imagine what we could be doing
if we had a place to meet for worship.
if we had a facility to hold workshops on the things we are learning.
if the pastor who had given us a five-year commitment hadn’t been chased off.
if our property were serving the community and earning income to satisfy existing debt and support even more outreach.
if we were free to monetize our site without interference.
if our members were not burdened or intimidated by lawsuits.
if we had a pastor to work with us and care about us.
And there’s the rub! It’s in that last bulleted item. The lay people of Redeemer now have more experience at this type of ministry than almost all ELCA pastors.
And so we are condemned and excluded. Not because we lack “missional” focus but because professional leaders, steeped in 19th and 20th century ministry models, don’t know how to work with us.
Who knows how long SEPA will keep Redemer’s doors locked until they feel they can totally control a ministry they never understood?
They have looked the other way as Grace, Roxborough, failed and their building and parsonage were sold to benefit SEPA. They allowed Epiphany, Upper Roxborough, to break its covenant with Redeemer and vote to close—assets going to SEPA. Only landlocked Bethany remains to serve several Philadelphia neighborhoods—East Falls, Wissahickon, Roxborough, and Manayunk.
A resurgence of ministry there without new focus is unlikely, but SEPA would rather watch traditional ministries struggle with an arrogant “we told you so” hanging in the air than help them to experiment beyond the experience of available leadership.
SEPA congregations and clergy look on with approval, touting the wisdom of its leaders, and protecting their own endangered territories.
Meanwhile, little, unrecognized Redeemer just keeps growing. Without property, without money, without professional leaders, Redeemer grows!
God is doing something new in East Falls.
When will SEPA and the ELCA perceive it?
Screen shot of Redeemer’s statistics toward the end of the December 2, 2012. We actually closed the day with 604 site visits — two more visited before the Cinderella hour.
Google Twitter. The Twitter site will come up first in Google results and you will see the sub-option SIGN UP. Click on that and follow the instructions.
You will need to supply your name and an email address. You can use your current email or open a free account dedicated to Twitter — it’s up to you. We did not have a dedicated 2×2 email address before. We opened a free G-mail account with Google.
You will have some options in creating a profile. Twitter will guide you through the start-up steps. Don’t be alarmed that you are asked to choose some people or organizations to follow right from the start. Twitter will present lists of celebrities who might appeal to your interests. You may have no interest in any of them. (We followed Lady Gaga, Steve Carrell and National Geographic. How’s that for eclectic!)
All of this is just to get you going. Twitter is all about following and being followed and they are trying to teach you good Twitter habits from the start. You can unfollow (stop following) any person or organization at any time. Stick with the ones that are fun. Click “unfollow” if they annoy you (there will be some that bombard you with self-promotion). By taking note of what annoys us, we will be able to figure out how we want to be perceived on Twitter.
We met our daily goal. We posted a blog about tweeting. We retweeted something we liked. We posted our Riddle Tweet and followed up with the answer an hour later (following the professional advice to not tweet more than once in an hour). In addition, we tweeted our worship plans for tomorrow.
Spent about a half hour writing today’s blog post and less than 10 minutes on Twitter.
Our post picked up one “Like” so far. (Thanks, Christian).
2×2 started with no followers yesterday. We have four followers today.
If you want to follow our month-long Twitter experiment, join Twitter and follow us at:
Join Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she visits small churches "under cover" to learn what people would never share if they knew they were talking to their bishop.
Undercover Bishop will always be available in PDF form on 2x2virtualchurch.com for FREE.
Print or Kindle copies are available on Amazon.com.
For bulk copies, please contact 2x2: creation@dca.net.
MISSION INSPIRATION OFFER
A visual and biblical guide to help congregations define their missions.
Contact Info
You can reach
Judy Gotwald,
the moderator of 2x2,
at
creation@dca.net
or 215 605 8774
Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
2×2 is running an experiment using Twitter. We began in December. We have learned that we barely have our feet wet in its potential and we are still learning how to use it within the church. We will continue our experiment indefinitely, so that we can advise other congregations.
