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Social Media and the Church

Building Your Relationship with Your Regional Body

We’ve spent some time discussing the politics of church relations and how they related to a congregation’s branding or sense of mission.

In the business world branding and advertising go hand in hand. What can the church learn from this?

Advertising is getting the word out. Evangelism is getting the Word out.

Congregations must learn to tell their story.

We have identified that the audience is not just the current members and the unchurched in your community. A primary audience for a congregation’s branding effort is its regional body, including the regional office, its officials and governing councils and every other congregation in your denominational territory.

Why is this important? Each congregation is vying for the same professional resources. Remember a primary task of your regional body is to fit clergy pegs into congregational holes. Making your ministry known to your regional body is an investment in making sure the peg that is placed in your congregation will move you forward.

Fact: a small church’s ability to serve—or even exist—depends on its relationship with its denomination. This runs counter to how congregations think. Church members will strategize for hours, weeks and years about how to reach and serve their communities. The regional body is out of sight and mind.

Here is a rarely discussed reality. All pastors are not created equal. Your regional body must find places for poor pastors along with the great. They will place poor pastors in the churches that are of the least perceived value to the regional body. You want them to know why your ministry, however small, matters.

Small churches must take extraordinary steps to attract the talent needed to serve members and fashion a ministry that will sustain a presence in the community. (That means meet the budget.)

This is great failing of the hierarchical church. Most communication between a congregation and the regional body is among clergy. It is usually prompted by sudden need or conflict.

Regional offices notice the big things. They will notice:

  • If your church burns down.
  • If the treasurer embezzled a few thousand.
  • If the congregation receives a major bequest.
  • If the pastor is unhappy or in trouble.
  • If a congregation stops sending benevolence (They won’t ask why! They will assume you are in dire straits! You must tell them!).

Regional bodies won’t take special note:

  • When your congregation rallies to help a family with a seriously ill child.
  • When your congregation supports a local charity fundraiser.
  • Votes to supplement a staff salary package during a trying time.
  • Teaches art and music to neighborhood children in an after-school program.
  • Does any number of small initiatives to improve the faith lives of their members and reach out to the community.

Ironic! These actions are the heart and soul of ministry.

Congregations must regularly communicate these things no matter how mundane or obvious they seem. An added challenge—so much of a congregation’s work must be done anonymously. All the more reason to be intentional about what you can share—and it’s all part of branding.

A Few Action Steps

Make sure your regional leaders and any staff assigned to your region are on your newsletter mailing list. Send it in a large envelope with a cover letter pointing to your most outstanding news. Even if you’ve gone internet with your parish communications, print a few and mail them to your regional office. Don’t rely on them looking up your newsletter or website!

Send invitations to events to church leaders and the pastors and church councils of neighboring congregations. Even if they don’t come, they will be impressed. They might start talking about you in a positive way! (It’s called buzz marketing).

Schedule events worthy of attention beyond your membership. In the past, hierarchies initiated events worthy of broad interest. That doesn’t exclude congregations from taking the lead. Consider a topic. Choose a format: guest speaker, workshop, panel discussion or webinars. Such initiatives will brand your church as thought leaders regardless of size. Does this seem impossible for your small family church? Think about a presentation on the value of the family church!

Use your website to address issues that concern your congregation and others. This is another common shortcoming of congregations. Their web sites are little more than online brochures. Think beyond your property line! You will be building your image as a mission-minded congregation.

Use photos. When you hold a successful events, follow up with a card with a photo to every participant and your regional office. Personal greeting cards are great communication tools that are underused.

Insist that lay leaders be included in dialog with the regional office. It is absolutely critical that regional leaders come to know lay leaders. This will take some doing. Regional offices like to expedite all meetings. They will attempt to deal with the leaders that make their goals easy to achieve. Make sure your pastor understands that you expect your elected lay leaders to be included in the dialog.

Encountering Resistance

You may encounter resistance among your professional leadership, but it should be easy to point out that such efforts boost their image with the regional office along with the congregation’s.

The biggest obstacle is that the time and energy spent on this activity are not part of the usual pastoral routine.

But then, the “usual” doesn’t seem to be working very well these days!

08 Oct 2012

A Challenge for Church Transformers

A Challenge for Church TransformationIn the last two posts we talked about how regional bodies categorize churches and provide pastoral leadership for congregations according to their size.

Here is a resulting problem.

Regional bodies demand that congregations transform at the same time they are evaluating them by their past—sometimes ancient past. They want congregations to move from being a family church to a pastoral church, from a pastoral church to a program church and so on.

Growing to the next bigger size is a symbol of mission success and financial success, a feather in the hierarchical cap!

Most congregations are what they are. If they transform to the next level they will lose their identity and possibly their strongest lay talent. (Think about it. If growth were the measure of success, those corporate congregations would be pressured to serve 10,000 members not 2000. The pressure to “transform” is only on smaller congregations.)

Most pastors are what they are as well. Some like serving family churches. Some, by nature of their personalities, must serve corporate churches.

Regional bodies tend to place pastors where they are comfortable serving. They then expect them to lead the congregation to become something neither the pastor nor the congregation recognizes.

If regional leaders are serious about congregations transforming, they must provide leadership that can function for the time being at the current level while they bring the congregation to a new level of ministry. This flexibility is rarely seen.

The transformation process lays a foundation for discontent and/or conflict that is helpful to no one.

Often, the change needed to achieve transformation is a change in pastoral leadership. The current pastor may not have the skills, time or resources to lead a congregation in a new direction.

Changing a pastor, at least in the Lutheran Church is cumbersome. It requires two thirds of the voting body to be unhappy. It helps if the pastor is unhappy, too. This is not a formula for success. But it is the system. And all this discontent, however merited, will go in that congregation’s file to be pulled out by a new regional leader a decade from now! (Read our parable—Undercover Bishop).

Perhaps we should applaud our congregations for being very good at the type of church they already are. When people feel good about themselves they are more likely to grow.

Take away the aura of criticism and Church might once again be a place lay people choose to spend Sunday morning. If they feel good about spending Sunday morning in church, they are more likely to invite others.

What does this have to do with branding?

There may be things congregations can do to ease this friction. Regular attention to mission and branding their mission may help a congregation attract the leadership needed to change. It may also help the congregation see themselves as part of a bigger picture — a mission!

This ball is on their side of the court, but often they don’t play it.

More to come!

07 Oct 2012

A Provacative Link That Should Interest Evangelists

Here is a link from Coca Cola’s marketing team. They are telling us exactly how they intend to double their business by 2020. That’s a lot of sugar water!

The techniques and strategies should interest every serious evangelist. Coca Cola has a story to tell and doesn’t mind telling us exactly how they plan to do it. Their marketing people are well paid and experienced story-tellers. Let’s invest our dimes wisely and listen in for free!

We have a story to tell, too!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LerdMmWjU_E?rel=0]
21 Sep 2012

Mission Churches with No Web Site!!!

God is doing something new and the church is Out to Lunch. We are tempted to say Gone Fishing, but that might have theological implications that do not apply.

Redeemer Ambassadors always turn to the internet to plan our visits. We check service times, read newsletters and find out as much as we can before we visit.

We follow the process any newcomer to a neighborhood in 2012 would take when searching for a church home. They would Google their neighborhood and the word “church” to see what comes up.

Our search process reveals that neighborhood church seekers will have problems finding Lutheran churches.

Since we are looking for Lutheran churches, we start with the ELCA Trend Reports web site and use their Church Finder. We plug in 15, 20 or 25 miles for the radius and press the LOCATE button. Up comes a list. Then we click the link provided to each congregation’s web site.

We are now preparing for our 50th visit. We’d like to visit a nearby church tomorrow morning. Some of our ambassadors have afternoon plans. There are several possibilities. We’ll look for a church with an early service.

THIRTY of them have NO WEB SITE!

Several of those with no web site are mission churches under the direction of synodically appointed leaders. Note: These are just the churches in a 15-mile radius of East Falls.

A MISSION CHURCH with NO WEB SITE!

We Google the name of one nearby congregation. Maybe they have a web site that isn’t listed in the national database. Great! They have a Facebook page. We check it. It has NO information beyond the church’s address.

Really, SEPA churches, what are you thinking? Are you serious about outreach? Are you part of your communities? Do you open your doors on Sunday morning and expect the neighborhood to flock there by magic?

A church can have a nice looking web site for an annual investment of $25 and no more than an hour’s set-up time. Facebook is FREE, for St. Pete’s sake! 13-year-olds know how to use it.

If you don’t have a web site, you are not serious about serving your community.

Most of these congregation’s have pastors who could set up a basic site and at least have a community presence.

Even Redeemer, the church that doesn’t exist according to SEPA and the ELCA, has a web site.

In the world of the ELCA, these churches, that are not serious about ministry, feel they have the right to take votes about the ministries of other congregations and gain from their actions. (They don’t have this right under governing laws, but that hasn’t stopped the churches and clergy of SEPA!)

God is doing something new in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod and many churches are not equipped to perceive it—much less take advantage of it!

We’d like to think they have Gone Fishing for Men, but the evidence is they are Out to Lunch.

photo credit: bobfranklin via photo pin cc
08 Sep 2012

Why Don’t More Churches Blog? Answer 2!


Here’s another answer to the question “Why don’t churches blog?”

Church leaders don’t understand the reach and impact of the internet or the new definition of community.

Congregations, by tradition, are geographically bound. For several decades, congregations which had support from people who lived some distance from the church building were criticized. Membership was considered “scattered.” The regional or centralized church didn’t care about this as long as offerings were flowing, but if there were any signs of fiscal trouble, a “scattered” congregation was in trouble with its judicatory.

Geography is no longer as important as it once was. There are definite benefits to physical community, but it is not the sole criterion.

Community is a group of people with common interests. People, today, are discovering people with common interests all over the world. Just because this was not possible from 35 A.D. to 1985 A.D. doesn’t mean it has no value in 2012 A.D.

Recognizing that the Church and its sense of community has changed WILL redefine Church and its structure of support and service.

2×2 is on the frontline exploring this new definition of Church. We are learning every day. Our effort, barely 18 months old, has taken our ministry to places we never imagined.

Our regional office considers us “scattered and diminished” and worthless.

Scattered? Not when they made this claim, but today, maybe. But now it doesn’t matter!

Diminished, not at all. 2×2 (Redeemer) is reaching more people every week than it ever reached on a weekly basis at any time in its history. We can prove it!

Some contacts are fickle accidents. Others are developing into true friendships. That’s really not so different than the neighborhood church that reaches many visitors with only a small percentage actually joining.

We made all of these connections by blogging daily on diverse subjects, analyzing the wealth of online data, and producing content that answered the needs revealed in search engine data.

We did it on a shoestring budget — less than $100 per year. We followed our own members’ interests and talents.

We’ve only just begun. We’re here to help and serve.

Contact us if you need help developing an online ministry.

05 Sep 2012

How Many People Heard Your Sermon This Morning?

In dozens of churches near Philadelphia and hundreds or even thousands of churches across the country, hard-working pastors stood before their congregations this morning and delivered sermons to fewer than 50 people.

A conscientious pastor probably worked for days on that sermon. He or she probably spent the same amount of time on his or her sermon as far fewer pastors who delivered sermons to larger congregations.

Preaching is a major investment for every congregation whether they have 50 members or 1000 members—probably half the annual church budget.

Yet churches resist using the tools the modern era provides to preach the gospel to every corner of the world.

2×2, the web site that grew from Redeemer Lutheran Church’s exclusion from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, began with little experience with the internet. We had only a static web site which we rarely updated — just like the vast majority of churches who are concentrating on paying a pastor.

2x2virtualchurch.com became our new site.

2×2 studied the medium and followed recommended practices. We had no money to invest in outside help, so we learned how to do this ourselves.

Perhaps we were the perfect candidates for this evangelism frontier. We discovered that a small church can swim with the big fish!

Here is a mid-year report from the congregation SEPA Synod claims doesn’t exist (because they say so).

  • Every DAY 106 followers read our messages with our posts delivered to their email addresses. Huge potential for growth here!
  • Every WEEK an additional 250 or more come to our web site for information.
  • Every MONTH more than 1000 new readers find our site.
  • We’ve had 7000 visits this YEAR (in addition to our daily readers) and are on track to double that by the end of the year.

(Editorial update-Jan 16, 2013): All of these numbers have doubled since this was published five months ago!)

2×2 started strong in the Middle Atlantic states and California. In recent months our readership in Southern states is spiking. We’ve had readers in every state and regular readers in a dozen countries. Six congregations write to us weekly and share their ministry challenges and successes.

Topics which draw readers to 2×2 are (in order of popularity)

  • Object Lessons for Adults
  • Social Media
  • Small Congregation Ministry
  • Broader Church Issues
  • Vacation Bible School

We’ve learned that it is impossible to predict the popularity of a post. We had a Whoville theme party last January and the post about that still attracts search engine traffic several times each week. A post about a visit to a small church in a Philadelphia suburb and its pastor’s “brown bag” sermons for adults began attracting new readers daily, which led us to develop object lesson sermons.

Several seminaries have sent students to 2×2 for discussion topics.

2×2 has established both a mission voice and reach that rivals or surpasses mid-sized churches. We’ve done it on a shoestring budget. Another year to 18 months will no doubt add to our reach.

We will continue our experiment in modern evangelism.

How many people heard the sermon your church paid for this morning?

photo credit: Photomatt28 via photo pin cc
05 Aug 2012

Tackling Obstacles to Social Media: Part 4 of 4

Overcoming Lack of Leadership

The fourth, final, and greatest obstacle for congregations and the Church in implementing Social Media into ministry is Lack of Leadership.

This may sound odd, but true leadership in the Church is a rare commodity. Church structure is self-perpetuating. There are varying systems for identifying leaders, but generally leaders are chosen by the status quo for the purpose of maintaining the status quo.

The Church is stuck in a feudal model of leadership that has long-outlived its purpose.

A reading of Scripture reveals that God, quite regularly, challenged status quo leadership. God chose game-changing leaders from the most unlikely places.

  • Noah, the nut who built the ark.
  • Joseph, the boy sold into slavery by his jealous brothers.
  • David, the shepherd boy.

The list of leaders who defied hierarchical succession is quite long. But such challenges are rare today.

Church leaders, whether at the national, regional or congregational level, like to feel that leadership is their domain. Lay leaders are validated by them. And while their stated goals may be to build God’s kingdom, the focus is on making sure the system continues to support life as they know and enjoy it.

Social Media turns this thinking upside down.

Leadership in Social Media is going to come from lower rungs in the hierarchical ladder. Those perched near the top will not buy in until they see a benefit. They won’t see a benefit until it somehow makes their lives easier or more secure.

It is still worth doing.

Expect skirmishes with the hierarchy. The pope recently chided American nuns for not towing the line. It backfired. The nun’s responses were quick, well-reasoned, public, unapologetic and revealed that the Church does not understand today’s world.

In the corporate world success is measured with bottom line results. Their epiphany took only a few years before virtually all of corporate America cut back traditional marketing in favor of Social Media.

The corporate Church is going to be a tougher nut to crack. Failure is tolerated much longer in the Church.

Leadership in Social Media in the Church is going to come from the lay sector.

Lay people will bring their knowledge from the corporate and social worlds that are part of their experience.

We wish we could give you step by step advice, but 2×2 has been working at this for almost two years, reporting our results regularly. Our regional body dismisses our web site as existing to solicit money. There are no solicitations for money on 2×2, nor is there a mechanism for collecting money. We very recently joined a couple of affiliate marketing programs for the experience, so we could advise more than profit. Full disclosure. We have made $50.

Here is our sad but heartfelt advice for overcoming the lack of leadership.

  • Don’t go into Social Media expecting help from Church Leaders.
  • Tap your lay leadership. Support them.
  • Make your Social Media work a team effort, inviting clergy to participate.
  • Use the statistics to guide you and build support among your people.

Eventually, professional leaders will take notice and you will have done a great service. Be prepared. If you are successful, clergy will line up to take credit.

photo credit: dirk huijssoon via photo pin cc
17 Jul 2012

Tackling Obstacles to Social Media: Part 3

Overcoming the Absence of A Model to Follow

The Church often has a hard time looking outside its monastic walls for advice. In this case it may be necessary. There are models to follow; they may not be created by Church organizations.

A wonderful thing about Social Media is that it forces you to work a plan. We have published a basic plan to follow in crafting a Social Media Strategy. We adapted it from information shared in forums held for corporations. If you don’t want to work a plan, you can keep holding monthly meetings— trying one disconnected and ineffective idea after another. This can certainly keep you busy!

Here are a few models worth reviewing. There is something to be learned from each. Churches can mix and match to suit their demographic and particular needs. Most of these are examples of blogs, which is where we think congregations should start their Social Media exploration.

Pastoral Leadership in Blogging

Expect resistance until the power of the blog is understood. Pastors will be tempted to republish their Sunday sermon—which no one is likely to read. Pastors should consider a new art form in preaching—short, concise thoughts with an appealing twist that readers will come to anticipate. Aim for 200 words. The model to study: Marketing Guru Seth Godin. His daily blog offers an insight on many topics. Every so often he points readers to a longer document or even a book. He looks at things people in his field see every day and instead of just reporting them, he analyzes them, making his readers question the accepted.

Did we say this was new? It is actually a big part of the New Testament! We call them parables.

Community Building in Blogging

Jason Stambaugh of heartyourchurch.com teaches how to use Facebook to create community in the church. He uses examples from his own Facebook work in his small Maryland community church.

Teaching Through Blogging

Here is untapped potential for leadership training in the church. The model to follow is Michael Stelzner’s socialmediaexaminer.com. In just a couple of years, Mike built a business around teaching social media and is respected worldwide. His model taps into internet scalability. You can join his clubs and get advice from thousands of people.

Thought Leadership Through Blogging

2×2 attempts to engage readers in analyzing the mission of the Church to find ways to serve that complement traditional church ways but not to the exclusion of innovation. There are enough people who do little but complain that things are failing in the Church. We try to find the reasons why things are going wrong. This is hard for the Church, since tradition is important and leaders rarely like to be seen as mavericks. Questions are not likely to be raised by church-sponsored employees or media. We try to do the job they can’t—or won’t.

Inspiration Through Blogging

One of 2×2’s member churches publishes a Bible verse daily. Nothing more. Just a Bible verse in their followers inbox each day. Seems so simple. It is often very comforting to start the day with a Bible quote. These can be scheduled to go out automatically, so it isn’t as hard as it might sound. Just pick out a month’s worth of favorite quotes and schedule them using a service such as HootSuite. You can always add an insight or prayer as in devotional books.

Networking Through Blogging

Blogging excels at building networks. If you start a blogging ministry, you are likely to be surprised by the people who find you and follow you. It takes a some time but soon your congregation will have friends all over the world. 2×2 is a model for this, too.

Church Ministry Help Through Blogging

Pastors can turn to workingpreacher.org, published by Luther Seminary, to kickstart their thinking of the weekly scriptures. There is no reason why this concept can’t work for congregations and lay people too. Pastors can turn to sermons4kids for ideas for children’s sermons. Both lay and professional church workers can be part of a community serving children’s ministry. We didn’t set out to make this our specialty, but we noticed in our statistics that the number one search term which brings people to our site is “object lessons for adults.” We have responded by posting an object lesson once every week or two.

Be A Pioneer

Create your own model and share it. That’s the power of the internet!

photo credit: Mike_tn via photo pin cc
17 Jul 2012

Tackling the Obstacles to Social Media: Part 2

Every year more people learn to swim.Overcoming Fear

You’ve heard the stories of the worst in Social Media.

  • Teenage girls lured by older men.
  • Bank accounts raided.
  • Private moments broadcast to the world by someone with a grudge.

The potential for greatness outranks the use by the criminal element.

  • Personal stories of inspiration abound.
  • Information is available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
  • Dictatorships have toppled.
  • Long-lost friends and family members have been reunited.
  • The gap between classes is blurred.

Most of what is wrong with the internet was happening before there was the internet. Meanwhile the potential and effect of good has grown beyond the exponential.

Social Media is a tool. It is can be used for good. It can be used for evil. One thing is certain. It is going to be used. Better to be in the game than watching from the sidelines.

What do people in the Church fear?

  • We fear that someone will criticize us.
    What else is new!?
  • We may fear that we may not meet expectations or do something wrong. Everyone makes mistakes. The online community is actually pretty good about tolerating typos and grammatical errors. We learn very quickly how easy it is to hit the send button by accident. The online community tends to be gracious about correcting one another, too. So, if a mistake is made, you can take it back.
  • The Church may fear that our weaknesses will be exposed. This may very well happen, but there is a good side to this. We can address concerns early and directly. This has improved the business environment. Corporate leaders know they no longer operate behind closed doors. If it has been good for corporate America, it will likely be good for the corporate Church, as well.
  • We may fear the exposure of our most personal concerns. This is something the world is coming to grips with. Any notion of privacy in the world is pretty well shot. Worrying about this is yearning for the past. Better to learn to be prepared to react to criticism. (This will be a new skill for many church leaders.)
  • We may fear not being able to predict the outcome. Well, we can predict the outcome of most of our usual evangelical efforts — and it is pretty dismal! Serendipity is a delightful part of the internet. Where’s the old pioneer spirit?!

Using Social Media is like learning to swim. You have to get wet. You have to lean forward and let yourself fall to take your first dive. You have to swallow a little bit of water. You’ll splash some of the people around you and get splashed by others, but if our hearts are in the right place, we’ll all be good-natured about helping one another keep our heads above water. Don’t be afraid to be part of the wonderful digital world God has blessed us with in the 21st century. You’ll have plenty of company!

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17 Jul 2012

4 Obstacles to Using Social Media

Social Media: the New HorizonA recent study of social media reveals that there are four main barriers to the implementation of Social Media in organizations.

They are:

  • Lack of knowledge and understanding
  • Fear
  • Absence of a model to follow
  • Unprepared leadership

The Church as an organization should study these barriers if we are to overcome them.

Each fear can be overcome. We will address each fear broadly now and later in more depth.

Lack of knowledge and understanding

The Church is no different that any other organized entity. We are facing a new world with enormous potential. We are all novices at how this new media works and we are uncertain as to how it will affect us and our mission. Scary!

Fear

There is always the fear of abuse. This is nothing new. Religion has had abusers in the past and the Church has moved forward regardless. Social Media may actually overcome some of this. It is entirely open platform. Participants lay their hearts on the line and others — anyone — can respond.

The biggest fear is not about abuse but in facing the changes that are necessary to implement Social Media. Are we prepared for the changes that are likely to happen? How do we proceed?

Absence of a model to follow

There are models to follow, but they are not necessarily in the religious realm. Until the Church adopts Social Media as a viable tool, it must follow the models of the secular world. (We might learn something in the process.) There is no way around the fact: someone has to create the first model.

Leadership

Church leaders are busy being church leaders the way they were trained to be church leaders—anywhere from one to sixty years ago. This new tool is outside the experience and comfort level of many.

The Church must recognize that leadership in Social Media may come from the bottom up. Lay people are likely to have mastered these skills while clergy were studying Greek! Both are valuable! It doesn’t do much good to understand the Gospel and then ignore the tools that will help you share your understanding.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photo pin cc

15 Jul 2012