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Church Growth

Multicultural Ministry Requires Congregational Confidence

Congregations are not wrong to approach a multicultural outreach program with hesitance. It is honest and human. Humans make good Christians!

Multicultural Ministry means things will change. Change opens the doors to the unknown and that can be unsettling.

Any new ministry initiative must start with the people you have. If they feel loved and respected, they will be equipped to welcome and serve new people. If they feel criticized and worthless, they will become resentful and protective. Your congregation will not have an atmosphere that invites anyone — much less those of other cultures.

Begin your Multicultural Ministry by affirming your congregation. Make sure they are confident and have self-esteem. The one thing every member wants to know (without asking) is that they will still fit in when their congregation begins to change. They want to know that in building a ministry around new people they are not valued less. We all want to be loved for who we are — not what someone else thinks we should be. A confident congregation — no matter how small — can grow.

Approach change as additive. You are adding new people, new music, new traditions. You are not replacing or criticizing the people who have worked and sacrificed for your congregation for decades. Your members should not have to change the things that are very special to them. They can sing the same hymns, have similar observances. New hymns and customs should be added to the old. Visitors don’t expect a church to drop everything and do things their way. They will notice that your congregation respects your elders and traditions. In fact, most foreign cultures respect this more than we do!

Take it easy. This is probably the most difficult concept for leadership to grasp. Leadership tends to be eager for quick transformation. Leaders have incentive to look for success in statistics. They have at stake their professional career image and desire for personal achievement. Congregations, on the other hand, have their entire social order at stake. They have their history, their family relationships and friendships, their way of life/culture and traditions. This must not be run over roughshod. It will destroy Christian community. Measurable successes will be fleeting.

Don’t put a timetable on change. Your congregation will know when to mothball old customs. It doesn’t have to be forced.

Celebrate your people. Members need to know that they are “chosen” for this ministry because they are a good community with ministry skills. Stress the qualities that make your congregation welcoming to other cultures. Build on them.

  • Are your people naturally welcoming? Let them know that this skill is now more important than ever.
  • Have your people travelled? Are they knowledgeable about some other culture? Give them a leadership role. Have them talk about their experiences in other countries.
  • Does your church have families that can mentor new families? Multicultural Ministry may mean that you will be inviting immigrant families or families new to your neighborhood. Prepare your families to show them the ropes. Let them know this is valuable service to their church. Train them. Help them find ways to connect with newcomers.
  • Holidays can be a particular challenge to immigrants. Try explaining Halloween to someone who has never experienced it! Yet children will be expected to take part in Halloween fun at school. Your church families can advise parents, answer questions, or even help them put a costume together. Similarly Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are ingrained in our society. They can be puzzling to newcomers.
  • Are there people with special skills in your congregation that could be helpful to newcomers? Members with experience in real estate, banking, business and legal issues could be helpful in reaching out to people looking for housing, financing, jobs and citizenship. Their special skills can play a big role in Multicultural Outreach.
  • Do you have members who can help teach English?

When your current members know that they are important to your congregation’s new ministry, change becomes exciting. The threat is gone.

In later posts, we’ll give you real examples of how some of these points played out in our multicultural ministry.

03 Nov 2011

Budgeting for Social Media Ministry

Social Media Ministry can be run on a shoestring, but if you want to develop your ministry faster you may want to allow some money to give you some options. Here are some costs you can anticipate.

  • Hosting and registration of a domain name (web address): $25
    This is the only cost on this list that is absolutely necessary.
  • Purchase of a theme: $50 (Themes are templates designed to look good, add functionality and make blogging easy and accessible to anyone. There are many FREE themes available.)
  • Purchase of a digital camera: $100
  • Purchase of a video camera: $250
  • An allowance for occasional guest bloggers: $50 per post ($100 per month ought to be enough). If you build good relationships, many will offer to contribute freely. Barter! It works! Be sure to give proper credit and a link.
  • You might want to allow $500-1000 per year for some design and programming expertise. A designer could make sure you have an attractive header and give you some guidance on the use of colors and fonts. A programmer can help you over some of the interactivity hurdles as you get more sophisticated with your Social Media Outreach.
  • It is helpful to allow a small budget for the purchase of stock photography which is proven to increase readership. Istock.com is a good source and very inexpensive. You buy bundles of points which cost about $1.50 per point. Many photos (the size you need for the web) cost just one point. $20 per month is ample. (You can take your own photos!)

Adding all of these items together, a starting annual budget of $3000 is more than adequate. You can get started for much less!

2×2 started this site in February 2011 for $25. We’ve purchased about $10 worth of stock photography. We purchased two guidebooks for about $25 each. We use cameras our members already own. That is our total investment so far — eight months later.

Training

You can pay for training and how-to books, but there is abundant help available for free on the web. This is a reliable avenue. Information can become outdated faster than books can be published.

There is some comfort in having a book nearby. Teach Yourself Visually WordPress gave us a jumpstart. It’s step-by-step illustrated approach is very helpful. WordPress for Dummies is the other book we have on hand. We found an ancient guide to html that is useful, but lately we’ve just googled what we want to know and found answers easily. Cut and paste the code and eliminate typos!

Don’t let this talk about code scare you. Most code is built into the blogging platform and you won’t need to know any code. There are times when it is helpful, but it is not necessary.

Online webinars are very helpful. We’ve referred you to socialmediaexaminer.com and hubspot.com before. They are great places to start learning Social Media. Both provide much information for free. SocialMediaExaminer runs quarterly webinar series which cost between $200-$400. Hours of trainings are available for a full calendar year. An online community grows around these trainings which is very helpful. Hubspot sells analytical software but makes TONS of information available for free. Visit their site and look for ebooks and recorded webinars. Both sites will point you to other good resources as well. They practice what they preach and are models for what you will be trying to do with your web site!

Hiring a Social Media Manager

As your Social Media Ministry takes off, you may want to hire a Social Media Manager, but don’t worry about that to start. A manager would help maintain the editorial calendar, see that blog posts were written and coordinated with Facebook and Twitter, analyze your Social Media’s performance, and (with your committee) strategize to maximize your site’s success. This is a strength of Social Media Ministry. You can measure results, and what you can measure, you can improve.

A Social Media Ministry Manager is foreign to most church budgets, but the addition of these skills to your leadership team could mean as much to a congregation’s ministry as an organist, choir director, youth minister or other church professional. Aim for it! (But don’t wait until you can afford it to get started!) This is a topic which deserves its own post. Watch for it!

Using Analytics

Another potential budget consideration is to subscribe to a metrics program, which will give you real time reports on the effectiveness of your site. (It is interesting that people in this field talk about web sites leading to conversion. While they mean purchases of services/products, churches have used this language for decades.)

Using the internet makes it possible to analyze the effectiveness of your ministry and lead you toward measurable ministry solutions. No more sitting around at committee meetings and guessing what might work. You’ll have answers.

2×2 is looking into this now! We’ll share our experience in later posts.

31 Oct 2011

Getting Pastors Onboard with Social Media Ministry

Social Media is new — only a few years old from the start and even fewer in universal popularity. Many pastors and professional leadership were not trained in using social media. They probably never gave it a thought when they answered their “call.”

Therefore, congregations may run into resistance when talking with their pastors about developing Social Media Ministry.

Professional leaders should be excited!
• Social Media gives the church tools to reach many more people.
• The people churches want to reach are using social media.
• Social media is a change agent — just look at what is happening across Northern Africa!

While many in the church agree that the church must change, often they are slow to accept the tools which will create change. It seems the Church longs for change as long as everyone (including leaders) can continue doing things the same way! Social Media is a tool for changing ministry. Use it!

Here’s a great video overview from PBS’s Religion and Ethics program.

This video begins with a mega-church approach. It may intimidate you to see the opening scenes of a church with a control room and banks of computers. But watch to the end. It ends with the Social Media Ministry of an order of nuns in the Boston area, who have made it a mission to answer spirital questions online. They have more than 16,000 “Likes” on their Facebook page. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can do Social Media Ministry.

If your congregation has a pastor that is savvy to social media, great! If not, encourage your leadership to explore the possibilities. Remember, it’s new to everyone!

Here’s the choice for pastors of small congregations:
Continue to preach on Sunday to the same few people and an occasional visitor or go into all the world (without leaving the church office!)

Using Social Media will require some shifting of mental gears. Social Media is most effective with short thoughts (as opposed to skillfully crafted long sermons). Think of the power of parables which were sometimes only a couple of sentences.

Social Media requires frequent interaction, not just once a week. Your leaders will have to restructure their work habits to make room for new work. They will not be alone. People throughout the business/nonprofit world are restructuring the way they work to include Social Media. The church will have to follow suit. Many executives are starting and ending their day with 20-30 minutes of participation in Social Media — and finding it to be time well spent! “I don’t have time,” is not an acceptable excuse.

Social Media invites dialog. It will take a while to develop online dialog, but pastors must be prepared to field questions and engage in online discussion. What a great opportunity!

Social Media requires commitment. Online questions/comments must be answered within 24-48 hours. Longer than that and you have turned a seeker away. All comments deserve a response.

Start with blogging. Facebook and Twitter are often the first things that come to mind when people think of Social Media. They have their place but they are not good places to start if you are encouraging reluctant pastors to get their feet wet. Blogging is more sophisticated — closer to what pastors are trained to do. Professional leaders can maintain their voice better on a blog than in the short and fleeting interactions of other tools.

Share statistics. Start your church blog without your pastor as contributor if necessary. It’s too important to wait. You are not likely to change minds while doing nothing. As your audience grows, share the statistics with your pastor. If you start to get 50-75 new hits a week (as our church experienced after four months with no pastoral involvement), your leadership may begin to see the potential.

Be specific in you initial expectations. If your pastor does not want to contribute regularly, ask for help with specific topics your committee may have identified.

27 Oct 2011

Finding Content for a Church Blog

What topics should a church blog address? This seems like a tough question. It’s hard enough gathering information for the monthly newsletter! But there is a difference. Blogs engage. Blogs have no space restrictions. Blogs allow for last minute changes! The communication potential is endless. Once you get started you’ll be excited to find ideas cascading.

Remember your audience. Your audience is your community. Blogging is outreach ministry. 

You can start with the issues on the minds of the people you know best — your members, but quickly expand your circles. What would interest the families of children in your day school or any of the groups that might use your building (scouts, community groups, AA, etc.)?

Understanding that content should be for and about the people you hope to reach — not about your congregation — is a challenge to new church bloggers. (Failure to understand audience also limits content ideas.)  

Brainstorm for topics. Not all topics have to be profoundly religious but many can be. You’ll get the knack of finding the religious angle to the stories you publish. Try to identify 30 topics at every meeting. (That’s about two months worth of posts). If you have monthly meetings, you’ll overlap, but that gives your committee a chance to review and rethink. We’ll talk about how to schedule posts later.

Here’s a list of possible topics that focus on parents’ issues without forsaking Christian mission–

• Preparing your child for the first day of school
• Teaching young children to pray
• The top ten Old Testament Bible stories every child should know
• The top ten New Testament Bible stories every child should know
• Teaching your children about God’s world (link to local nature reserve or garden)
• When your child asks about Santa Claus
• What Easter eggs and butterflies teach us about God
• Four Bible verses young children can remember.

Here’s a similar list of topics aimed at community or civic groups.

• 6 ways communities of faith benefit the community.
• 5 problems facing our community that need everyone’s help.
• Ten ways faith communities can work with the business community.
• Pitching in to make our town’s fall festival great.
• Why our congregation supports the local blood drive.
• Post a poll: What is the most important problem facing our community? (list possibilities)
• Analyze the poll results.

“How To” articles are also popular and can be addressed from a religious point of view:

• How to prepare your child to deal with bullies
• How to recognize the signs of drug addiction
• How to keep Christ in Christmas
• Teaching your child to deal with peer pressure
• How to deal with a difficult boss

Review popular magazines. They are experts at finding ideas. Look at the topics they address and adapt them to your congregation’s point of view. You’ll notice that they cover seasonal/holiday topics, news, events, common problems, popular issues such as the environment or economy or crime. When your committee meets, brainstorm these ideas and ask each other “How do we see these issues from a Christian point of view?” You will soon have many ideas.

When you’ve created a following, which may take a few months or even a year, start adding content that is more specific to your congregation. If your pastor is on board with the project ask for two contributions each week — a SHORT follow-up from Sunday’s sermon and a teaser for next week’s sermon. Publish one on Monday and the other on Thursday. Of course, you’ll welcome more posts!

Resist the temptation to reprint sermons as blog posts. You want short posts that focus on others. Think of people who haven’t been to church in quite a while. Are they more likely to read a five-page sermon or a 200-word thought? Tailor the message to the audience. (Sermons can be published but should not be blog posts.)

Your professional leadership can also give your committee the confidence to address the topics your committee identifies. They can help you shape the short articles and help your congregation create a voice. They can help create content without having the sole burden.

Establish some themes and rotate them. They might include: Social Ministry issues, Children’s Ministry, Youth Ministry, Women’s/Men’s Groups, etc., Grief, Parenting. Ask others in the congregation to contribute — youth, teachers, business people. Get everyone involved!

Find information for your post. Once you’ve identified a topic, where do you find information? The easiest way is to ‘”google” the topic. You can adapt articles you find online. Many online writers allow you to link to their posts or use their material with proper credit. (Links fuel the internet; you are expected to link to one another.) You can also interview someone in your congregation or community. When you ask others to contribute, remember to tell them you are looking for short posts, not novels!

Make assignments. Don’t end your committee meeting without knowing who will be doing what. Don’t saddle one person with all the work! Who will create the next dozen posts? Who will review? Who will post?

The discipline of blogging will encourage your congregation to think about ministry in more cooperative ways. The circle of people interested in your ministry will grow as they see that you are interested in them!

26 Oct 2011

Churches! Ready, Set, Dive into Social Media

Part 5: Social Media MinistryWhere do you start?

In previous posts we’ve advised every congregation to start a Social Media Ministry committee. So what’s next? In the next series of posts, we’ll explore the very first steps to getting started.

The world of social media is changing very quickly. This can be intimidating. We recommend that your committee members become familiar with a couple of web sites that will give you tons of ideas, help, and most of all encouragement.

2×2 will provide helpful tips periodically so don’t overlook us! Meanwhile, here are two expert sources that have demonstrated integrity and reliability.

socialmediaexaminer.com
This web site reaches out of your computer screen and leads you by the hand. It provides a steady stream of information and directs you to sites and experts that are tested and reliable. Your committee members can subscribe to the daily e-newsletter for FREE. In addition, the SocialMediaExaminer offers regular month-long webinars on various topics that are worth the price of admission. (No travel — all web-based.) These are held roughly quarterly and characteristically consist of 17 sixty-minute webinars and tons of additional archived resources. The cost varies — about $300 for first-time early registration and less as you become an alum. Each series of webinars has a community forum which remains active long after the webinars end, so you have a place to ask questions and find help.

hubspot.com
Hubspot sells analytical software and hosting. They are dedicated to helping organizations grow through their web presence in ways they can measure. While using their software would be helpful to any church’s evangelism goals, it is pricy (but worth it) to get started. While you consider this value, you can subscribe to their site and immerse yourself in their tons and tons of great content about how to use social media — all of which is FREE.

There is an overflowing fountain of resources available on the web. We recommend these two to start. Both websites link generously to other experts in the social media field. They will help you search for what will work for you.

Our next post will be about blogging.

22 Oct 2011

Budget Time! Does Your Church Have Money for Ministry?

Churches need to rethink how they fund their ministries.It is unfortunate that church budgets are often prepared at the busiest time of the church year — Advent and Christmas — in preparation for congregational meetings in the early part of the following year.

Often they look at the current year’s spending and tweak the numbers here and there and wrap it up into a package for the congregation’s approval.

That’s why we are putting in a word now for congregations to think about budgeting for MINISTRY. That’s different than budgeting for a MINISTER. The minister and your lay leaders need money to do the work. Failure to provide money for ministry leaves your church leadership with three common conditions:

  1. Reliance on the paid pastor for all leadership, creating whatever ministry is within his/her interests and skill set.
  2. Constantly soliciting volunteers and trying to grow your church with whatever skills you can muster (which are ever-changing and likely becoming more difficult to find).
  3. Existing in the status quo, enjoying the talents that your current team has for as long as they can provide them. (Then what?)

The failure of church budgets to provide money for ministry is probably the foundation of a lot of church conflict!

This common budgeting scenario has many churches hog-tied. Whenever a ministry opportunity arises that requires funding of even a small amount of money or requires skills the congregation cannot find within its membership, church leaders shake their heads and say, “It’s not in the budget. Maybe next year.” or “We don’t have the people.” But next year the same thing happens and they still don’t have the people.

Consequently, congregations are forced to say “no” to the very activities which would would help them grow and fulfill their mission.

In a fast-changing world it is impossible to forecast every need and opportunity.

Congregations must look beyond satisfying their minister’s compensation package and the hungry demands of brick and mortar if they are going to have the flexibility and skills to provide ministry.

Churches should create a Ministry Fund that gets regular care and feeding. This Fund should be available to fund unexpected opportunities for mission. A good goal to be achieved over time would be to have an equal amount of money for ministry as you have for a minister. Start where you are and find a way to get there! If you are successful in reaching that goal, resist the temptation to use the money to hire a second minister. A church needs working capital and many skills. Hiring one person will use your resources and limit your ministry to his or her skills. You want as many hands working at ministry as possible!

Perhaps the congregation can start such a fund with seed money and then fund it with a percentage of offerings. Create guidelines for requests and use. By all means, work within the governing rules of your congregation, but find a way to fund the work of the church.

Knowing there are resources to work with could energize your ministry! When someone in the congregation learns of a promising program, training session, or ministry opportunity, your leaders can nod their heads and say “We can help.”

21 Oct 2011

How to Create A Social Media Committee for Evangelism in a New World

Going into all the world to preach the gospel has never been easier.In a previous post, we recommended renaming your Evangelism Committee the Social Media Committee. Evangelism today must embrace social media. Changing the name will
• remind you to use social media,
• attract the interest of young people whose lives revolve around social media, and
• communicate to your neighborhood that you are serious about your message.

1. Explore Social Media

The most up-to-date information is online. There are many books but they get outdated quickly. Many good websites provide FREE training (socialmediaexaminer.com, hubspot.com, are rich sources of information and training, much of it FREE). If you want to do your own search, start by looking in the search engines for articles on “Content Marketing” or “Inbound Marketing.” (Don’t be put off by the terms. Marketing is the secular term for Evangelism!)

2. Review your church membership and look for people with the following skills:

• passion to spread the Gospel
• good communicator
• is a social person (very important)
• uses social media (this may mean recruiting youth that you might otherwise overlook)
• basic computer skills
• has some experience with Facebook or web design
• likes to write
• can use a digital camera or video camera

Do not try to find all these skills in one person. Social Media Ministry needs the skills of several people. This is simply a guideline. You do not have to have all of these skills represented on your committee to get started.

3. If you have difficulty finding the skills and interests within your congregation, look outside.

This media is too important to ministry to resist with “but we don’t have the people.” Find the people. Try for volunteers first but if that proves difficult, create a budget and pay for some expertise to get started. This can be a short-term commitment.

Follow or join online communities. You will find lots of help online for free. You will be surprised at how many people are eager to help. This may seem daunting at first, but you will learn to trust the online community to help. (Leave questions here in our comment boxes, we’ll be glad to post them and help you find answers to your questions!)

As you search for committee members, tell people: Our congregation is starting a social media ministry, and we are looking for someone to set up a blog and create a Facebook community. As you engage in conversation let them know you will be using a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Start talking about your plans in the community. Talk to the parents of kids in your day school, if you have one. Talk to the Scouts or other groups that may use your building. Put a small ad in the local paper or a sign on the grocery store bulletin board. If you think it will help, offer to pay someone short-term to train your committee or get you started with a blog. That’s the biggest hurdle — getting started.

Don’t overlook youth. This is a medium young people thoroughly understand, and is it a way they can contribute to their church. A young person might be willing to undertake this as a confirmation project or even a Senior Project in his or her school.

If your pastor understands social media, great! If not, find a way to get clergy on board. Pastors should jump at the chance to reach a greater audience than those who attend church. If they need training, help them find it. Again, there is ample training available on line for free. At the very least, encourage them to be enthusiastic supporters.

Churches say they are looking for change. Social Media is a change agent.

4. Your first meeting.

This is all the farther we are going to go in this post, but we thought you’d need to know what to talk about at your first meeting. A good social media plan begins with a blog. At your first meeting, talk about setting up a blog and brainstorm for ideas for content to put on the blog. Once you have a plan, it will be easy to assign tasks to committee members. We’ll cover this on our next post.

19 Oct 2011

Social Media Can Help Your Church Make a Good First Impression

Part 3: Social Media MinistryToday, when someone visits your church, it is likely they have already formed their first impression of your congregation from their online search. Congregations need to put their best foot forward on their web sites.

Here’s a list of questions to consider:
(This list was derived from our visits to 32 churches in the last 14 months.)

  • Is service information easy to find?
    It should be boldly displayed on the home page.
  • Is the service time correct?
    Ten percent of the churches we visited had wrong times listed on their web sites.
  • Is parking available in a lot or on the street? What buses or trains are nearby?
    Some congregations we visited had information printed in their church bulletin that parking was available at neighboring businesses. Too late!
  • Is the entrance they are to use obvious?
    We had trouble figuring which door to use on occasion.
  • Is the phone number you want people to call prominently displayed?
    Adding office hours and the name of the person likely to answer is also helpful. It puts a face on your community. For example: For more information about our services, call Lois at the church (555) 321-5432, weekdays between or 9 am and 1 pm. Our answering machine provides basic information 24/7.
  • Can web viewers ask questions online (email or Facebook) and be assured of an answer within 24 hours? People expect this these days!
  • Is there a warm welcome from church leaders (clergy and lay) with photos and a little background?
    Visitors will recognize leaders when they visit and have some information to ease conversation. You might even give visitors a prompt such as “When you visit, ask for Gus or Mary. They’ll be glad to give you a tour.”
  • Is there a date for the last update of the site?
    Many sites we visited had not been updated in years, even listing pastors who had left long before. Timely updates reveal that your church is on their toes.
  • Is new information prominent with older information archived?
    Old information is fun and can show your congregation’s personality, but the first images and information should be about the immediate future or very recent past.
  • Is there time for fellowship before church or after church?
    If visitors want to mix and meet your members they need to know if they should arrive early or plan to stay later. Invite them to fellowship. At several of the churches we visited, the congregation disappeared quickly after worship to a side room or basement area for fellowship without announcing fellowship or inviting visitors.
  • How long is your service expected to be?
    We encountered several services that were two or three hours long. Visitors need to know if a service is expected to be more than an hour long.
  • Is your service contemporary, liturgical, multicultural, or multilingual?
  • Are there helpful details about your next service?
    Will communion be offered? Is it a special Sunday? Will there be a blessing of pets or a baptism/confirmation? One church we visited was having a special meeting to call a pastor. Our visit seemed intrusive and we left.
  • Is child care available?
    Not everyone is comfortable leaving a child in a nursery with people they don’t know. Will their children be welcome in worship?
  • Will there be a children’s sermon?
    Families may like to know.
  • Engage your potential visitors from the start.
    Give a teaser. Ask a question that will be answered in the sermon!
18 Oct 2011

9 Reasons Every Church Should Have a Social Media Committee

Part 1: Social Media MinistryMost churches have a set of standing committees which look something like this: Worship, Property, Social Ministry, Finance, Education, Stewardship and Evangelism.

In today’s church environment the Evangelism Committee can play a huge role in shaping the future of any congregation. Once the realm of church newsletters, the modern Evangelism Committee must embrace Social Media. The potential is too enormous to be overlooked — so great that it should be the hub of any congregational plan for growth.

First, consider changing the name of the committee to Social Media Committee.

Have you noticed that the word "evangelist" had been adopted by the business community?

There is nothing wrong with the word “evangelism,” but calling it a Social Media Committee will force you to see “evangelism” in a new light.

Social Media used correctly and DAILY is powerful. Look at it this way: A small congregation could go on reaching the same 25-75 people week after week, or it could start to reach thousands with the same message on the internet.

Here is a short list of how a Social Media Committee can spur your congregation’s ministry.

1. Using Social Media will give your congregation visibility, especially if you look beyond your own circle of activity and begin to interact with other neighborhood groups.

2. Using Social Media will give people a way to interact and share. The internet crosses religious and denominational lines. Invite people to share. Soon you’ll be engaging people who would never walk through your door on Sunday morning.

3. Social Media is cost-effective. The traditional costs of printing and mailing can be nearly eliminated. The costs of Social Media are more time intensive. Content must be created and your various social media accounts must be monitored, but this is work that can be shared.

4. Using Social Media will force your congregation to stop relying on programs that require people to come to you. It’s called OUTREACH.

5. Social Media will grow your network of people with skills and talents. You will discover influential people and you may be able to enlist them in projects. Ask a local authority to comment on an important issues that your church should address (bullying, crime, child care issues, etc.). Invite guest pastors to contribute.

6. Social Media will open eyes! Change (which most congregations admit they need) will be within reach. You will have a new arsenal of tools.

7. Social Media will open hearts as you expand your congregation’s reach in the world. If you engage in online communities on topics of interest to people in your congregation, you may be astounded to find help in places you never dreamed. Your congregation might learn about a situation your people could address and form networks far beyond what was once possible.

8. Social Media will force your congregation to work as a team. One person cannot do the job alone. Every other committee will have a message they need to share. A social media committee will have to work with all other committees to develop a strategy for each of them.

9. Social Media provides measurable results which can help you shape ministry. Increasingly sophisticated metrics (many of them free) can tell you who is reading your blog or web site, how they came to your site, what pages they look at,  and how long they spend. If you offer something of value (community calendar, devotional booklet, etc.) you can collect information and expand your audience. You can tweak what is not working. What you can measure you can improve.

There is a lot to learn, but it is not difficult to get started and you can grow at a pace that is comfortable. Here is a guide to help you get started. 2×2 will start a Social Media Page to provide more help for congregations who want to harness this powerful EVANGELISM tool.

13 Oct 2011