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social media ministry

June 30: Social Media Day—July 1: Social Media Sunday?

Do We Need Social Media Sunday?

Three years ago, the Social Media company, Mashable, created Social Media Day. In 514 cities, Social Media enthusiasts will gather (many in a bar) to put a real live face and warm handshake to the entities that drive the keyboards and hide behind little square avatars. It will happen again tomorrow, June 30.

Perhaps we will someday declare a Social Media Sunday, a time when Social Media Ministries physically welcome the people whose lives they touch from a distance.

It raises an interesting concept? What kind of program would a church’s SM Sunday promote?

There would be a temptation to do things the way the Church always does things.

They would hold a big worship service centered around a few people doing a few things in the chancel while everyone else sits or stands (as able) on demand. They would ask the strangers to break into ancient song at appropriate times, prompted by an overpowering organ. They would focus the newbie’s attention on the scriptures as interpreted by one person for fifteen, twenty, or thirty restless minutes. They would require that they shake everyone’s hand without really knowing a thing in the world about the hand they are shaking. They would bless them as they turn to walk out the door to be greeted warmly (perhaps) by a caring pastor and one or two others before returning to total anonymity.

That’s how a church service might seem to the uninitiated. Churches all over the country do this every Sunday, many with feeble results.

(And people say Social Media doesn’t create true community!)

How would you plan a Social Media Sunday?

29 Jun 2012

Short Posts or Long Posts — Which Are Better?

How do you write for today’s audiences?

Common answer: In short posts of 200-500 words.

Better answer: It depends.

Who is your audience? Are your readers busy people scanning a dozen blogs like yours every morning in hopes of finding one useful piece of information? Are your readers people searching for information that is not easy to find?

One exasperated institutional Church blogger threw her hands in the air. She was following the common advice and looking for guest bloggers among clergy. “It’s impossible to get preachers to limit themselves to 500 words,” she concluded as she waded through the lengthy submissions.

Getting people who tote Bibles to limit their message to shorter thoughts is a new discipline—and there is value in it.

But wait! Who made this rule? The fact is there is no rule. Some of the most popular bloggers take a thousand words to introduce their topic.

Most blog posts that are bookmarked are probably those that truly define an issue.

More people may be attracted to shorter posts, but serious readers (the kind you hope will consider you an authority) are looking for truly helpful information. They don’t want to be spoon-fed answers to their questions in five posts spread across two weeks.

The wonderful thing about blogging is that creative people are no longer bound by the costs of paper and production. [Tweet this!]

You can write the article you want to write without leaving room for advertising space within a newsletter’s budgeted pages.

So what happens? We finally have the freedom to do what we want, and the sages come in with new “rules.”

Phooey!

Write with your audience in mind. If your audience is diverse, mix it up. A short post here; a long post there.

Guard against falling in love with your own words, but otherwise, type away.

Final answer: If you have something to share, by all means—share it!

photo credit: philipp daun via photo pin cc
23 Jun 2012

Social Media and the Social Graces

The goal of Social Media is to engage others in a topic of mutual interest.

Social media is just beginning to be explored by churches. Judging from 2×2’s analytics, there is great interest. Much of it may come from lurkers just starting to remove their socks so they can dip their big toe in the water. We recommend diving in!

There is great potential for the church in the use of social media, but it requires engagement. Engagement requires time. More important, engagement requires sincerity and the careful exercise of the social graces.

Think of Facebook dialog as if you were at a party. How far would your conversation go if all you did was acknowledge someone else’s comment? If there is to be a flicker of life at this digital party, you must foster dialog. When you acknowledge a comment, leave the door open a crack to let your virtual guests come in — if and when they feel comfortable.

Here are some simple social graces to use in engaging with your readers.

  • Respond with a question.
    Glad you enjoyed our review of “We Have a Pope.” How did you like the ending?
  • Answer a question.
    Good question! Thanks for asking! Here’s our answer: . . . .
  • Add some additional information to the comment, even if it means sending them to another site. This is expected on the web and can be helpful to you, too.
    Glad you enjoyed our post on children’s sermons. You might also enjoy this web site (add link).
  • Make an invitation. 
    If you are interested in movies, you might like to attend our movie night next Friday. We’re showing….
  • Acknowledge a commenter’s expertise.
    Thanks for pointing out our mistake in today’s post. We corrected it right away. Overall, did you like what we are trying to say? Please, if you disagree, let us know!
  • Invite participation.
    Thanks for your comment. You seem to know what you are talking about. Would you like to contribute a post to our site? Our readers would love to hear your point of view!
  • Ask for links.
    Thanks for telling us about that youth project. Do you have a link we can share with our readers? 

One caution: readers expect the owner of a Facebook page to be a real, live person. If they share serious concerns, you must be prepared to have the most qualified person in the church respond with true empathy and unselfish advice.

Your guests may choose to remain anonymous, but there should be real names attached to the responses from your congregation. Truth and transparency are vital.

Engaging in social media is work, but it is the easiest way for the church to reach the most people. It is well worth the effort.

If you don’t invest the appropriate time and resources and have an open attitude, your Facebook presence will be as effective as the generic caveat on every church bulletin board. “All welcome.”

21 Jun 2012

Blogging for Your Church This Summer

Many churches run on fumes all summer. Pity! Summer is the time of year that people tend to make big changes in their lives. They wait for summer to move and change jobs. They may begin their search for a new church home, right when many churches are all but closed, except for Sunday worship.

Consider this when planning summer ministry. There is a lot to think about. The church web site or blog is a good place to prepare for summer ministry.

Review your site and make sure that any summer events or services that might attract visitors are well-publicized and that the events are truly welcoming to new people. Explain the events on your web site as if the reader knows nothing about your church. If you are doing a good job with your web site or blog, many readers will be learning about your church for the first time.

From Advent in late November and December, to Easter in March or April, followed by the Ascension and Pentecost, all church activities revolve around events in the life of Christ. This is followed by the long church season of ordinary time or in many traditions the season of or after Pentecost. This is the longest season of the liturgical year (June through most of November) or about half the calendar year.

The lectionary typically explores the everyday ministry of Jesus during this time. It is an opportunity for your congregation to be creative.

As you blog this summer, begin with the church lectionary for ideas. Try to tie them into ministry. For example, if the gospel is about healing miracles, explore your congregation’s or denomination’s ministry to those dealing with illness.

Summer is often a time when the favorite hymns are sung. Explore the hymns of Pentecost. Look up the history of a hymn and share it. Run a poll on favorite hymns.

Look at the congregation’s calendar. Will you have a Vacation Bible School? Publicize it. Read the curriculum and share ideas from it. (Give proper credit!) You may not be able to get older children or adults involved during your VBS, but many VBS curriculums publish material for older kids and adults. Get a copy and write posts on the topics presented. Make sure every parent gets the link, so they can learn along with their children.

Scan the church calendar for picnics, service projects and church camp events. Publicize them beforehand. Follow up with photos and testimonials from participants.

In late summer, start to write about back-to-school events. Let people know that activities will soon resume. Work at attracting support for them.

Plan a Rally Day and start to publicize it.

Make sure that any reader who happens across your summer web site is introduced to your church at its most vibrant.

11 Jun 2012

Qualitative Church Statistics vs Quantitative Church Statistics

2×2 has discussed this issue before, but yesterday we heard a social media expert say the same things we were saying from a marketing perspective.

Brian Solis, a leading market analyst, uses the terms qualitative measurement as compared to quantitative measurements.

He discussed how the quantitative statistics of the past mean less in the world that is evolving.

How many members you have on your congregational roster means little compared to the engagement you can measure among both members and nonmembers. There are new possibilities for building relationships with the community that do not fit the old church model. The borders of your community are expanding. (2×2 is just a little church, but we get ministry questions from all over the world.)

This will affect church institutions as well. Supporting Lutheran Social Ministry agencies was a popular option for churches in decades past. Often a representative would attend a service to give a Temple Talk and report on their agency’s good work. Today many churches get involved in local humanitarian efforts through their associations in the community and work. They hear their frequent messages outside of church, are attracted to their causes, and sense they can help. The church’s social agencies (which do a great job!) will get short shrift —unless they too learn to engage with the community in new ways. Secular Social Service agencies are very good at this and will get church members’ attention.

Engagement is a new emphasis. It’s always been important to ministry. Before the advent of Social Media there was no way to measure it. You never know how many people read your fliers and newspaper ads. You can only guess how many people might have listened to your radio spot. Pastors had no idea if their sermons had any lasting effect whatsoever. We shaped our ministries on tradition and guesswork.

Engagement can now be measured. You know how many people visit your web site. You know what topics led them to you. You know which pages they visit and how long they spend on each page. You can engage your visitors with comments, polls and forms long before you meet them.

In some ways it is good that the Church tends to lag behind. We can be beneficiaries of other people’s trailblazing.

But the Church cannot afford to lag too far behind. All churches compete against an overwhelming amount of secular competition.

When our Ambassadors plan a visit, we visit a congregation’s web site first. You can bet that other potential visitors are doing the same thing. We are surprised at how many churches still have NO web site. Many who have web sites have not updated them in years. We clicked on a link for “latest newsletter” and read news from 2009. Even the best SEPA congregational web site we visited was just beginning to get on board with its web potential. They were paying a firm to curate secular feature-type news, a good thing, but still missing the interactive potential of Social Media.

We can’t say it too often or too loud. All congregations must get involved in Social Media if they are to be taken seriously in coming years.

A good denominational goal would be to help every congregation get started and learn to keep up with this vital but fast-changing communication/evangelism medium. You will have to hold a lot of hands in this venture, but it is necessary and worth it. This is concrete help that congregations need and denominations are best positioned to supply.

2×2 can help!

photo credit: slightly everything via photo pin cc
09 May 2012

Getting Over the Fear of Facebook

If you want to drive the message of the Church, hop in. But you won't be the only car on the road.

Facebook remains an enigma to the Church.

The few churches using it seem to use it as nothing but a digital bulletin board.

There is power in Facebook. The power is twofold.

  1. Facebook can build relationships.
  2. Facebook has reach.

Building Relationships with Facebook

Jason Stambaugh of heartyourchurch.com talks about Facebook as the Weekday Bridge of the Church. It can be used to foster relationships that happen Monday through Saturday. Face-to-face encounters are invaluable, he recognizes. But the little midweek interchanges help to build the connections that make face-to-face interactions more possible, more frequent, and foster more tightly knit community.

The discussion will not be led or moderated as is the custom in the world of religion. That may be why the Church doesn’t understand it. There’s nothing stopping anyone from adding their two cents.

Part of the hesitance of the church to embrace Facebook is fear of losing control.

The fact is the Church lost control of its message a long time ago.

Yesterday, you could control your message with cumbersome qualifying hoops and censorship. Hard habits to break.

Today, the only way to control the message is to be part of the dialogue.

If you want to drive, hop in. But you won’t be the only car on the road!

The Incredible Reach of Facebook

Looking at rough and round numbers, the average Facebook user has nearly 200 friends (a number which continues to grow). Allowing for overlap, each of those friends adds another 100 or so to the network. So if your congregation has 50 people using Facebook during the week, your community has the potential to reach 10,000 people at the first tier of the network and 1,000,000 at the second tier of the network.

  • What is your Sunday attendance?
  • What is the circulation or readership of your parish newsletter?
  • What’s the circulation of your denominational magazine (which probably reaches only those already involved in Church)?

Just do the math and stop spinning your wheels.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photo pin cc

25 Apr 2012

Telling Your Church’s Story — the Real Story

During a recent panel discussion, a reporter explained the process of ferreting out the news. She described the many story pitches that come to her every week from enthusiastic, community-minded groups that are doing “worthy” things — but not “newsworthy” things.

Your walk for charity is not “news.” Lots of people are doing this — every weekend.

She went on to say that when an interested party calls, she begins to engage the caller in conversation about the upcoming event. The caller, with great passion begins to talk about the people, and suddenly, the reporter senses there is something newsworthy in telling the story about the people involved — not the event itself.

Church communicators can learn from this. Our story is often best told through our people. When we tell our church story we should focus on our people and their faith stories. If church makes a difference in their lives, it may make a difference in someone else’s life. You don’t have to use names (although it’s nice when you can). Tell the story of your people on their faith journey and you will be teaching the Gospel.

Facebook is a good place to tell the people side of your story.

One Maryland church applauded a 12-year-old member who made and served the congregation lunch after church one Sunday. It’s Facebook page encourages the readers to press the “Like” button on the story to show the young man how much his work is appreciated. (It’s in the scroll bar on the left of the linked page.) Just that one short note on their web page tells any reader that their church values and encourages the contributions of their young people. It is likely to be far more effective than any newsletter or bulletin kudo.

You can use the same technique in focusing on your members’ faith stories.

Tell your story . . and make it personal!

“I love to tell the story, for those who know it best,
seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.”

23 Apr 2012

What SEPA Synod Can Learn from Redeemer

Today, SEPA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Communications Director Bob Fisher sent a plea to SEPA congregations for interaction on a web site the synod created for congregations to share ministry ideas. The site was launched in November and had an initial outpouring of about 100 submissions. Then it fizzled. Involvment on the web site has been flat ever since.

There is little reason to post a time deadline on a web site like this. But Fisher’s request for submissions asks for responses by April 26 — one week before Synod Assembly. You want good statistics for Synod Assembly!

Meanwhile, during the same period, 2x2virtualchurch.com, sponsored by the SEPA-excommunicated members of Redeemer, has grown to more than 200 visits per week, with more than 80 followers and 30 new visitors daily. We’ve pioneered social media in church work and have been gaining respect around the world for our work — interdenominationally and among churches of every size. Look at  2×2’s statistics for roughly the same period (screen shot taken in midday/midweek for last bar):

The concept of SEPA’s web site is flawed. No one needs to submit ideas for review and verification by a central office any longer. There is nothing stopping any church from posting their successes and ideas on their own website. Synod should be encouraging community between congregations without a middle man. Don’t worry . . there’s plenty of work for communications middle managers.

This site is not likely to create dialog. It is rigid in a medium that operates best with freedom. It allows three categories of questions. It limits responses to 50 words. (Most of the questions had close to 50 words.) The message conveyed to a visitor to this site is that their ideas will be monitored, judged and verified — controlled. This thinking is foreign to internet users who are accustomed to the free flow of ideas on Facebook, Twitter and blogging platforms—all of which are community-building platforms.

Why invest time posting to a site that might reject you?

There are other ways to achieve sharing. Start developing content that is helpful to congregations so there is a reason to come to the site in the first place. Begin linking and commenting and taking part in the dialog. Recognize that there are no boundaries to good ideas. Why limit the submission of ideas to just 160 congregations when there is a world of mission out there? It’s the social media way. And it works.

Redeemer would submit its ministry ideas to www.godisdoingsomethingnew.com, but we doubt our ministry would be recognized. It hasn’t been for a long time!

No problem. We post our ideas daily on 2×2. Welcome!

(2×2 be glad to help any church get started in social media. Just contact us! We can have a web site up and running for you in a week, train members to use it and even help you develop content.)

19 Apr 2012

Facebook Changes the Rules in Two Days

For churches using Facebook:

As of April 1, all Facebook users will have to conform to new Facebook guidelines.

The biggest change is that the Timeline feature will be incorporated across the board. You must create a banner. Facebook calls it a cover photo. You have two days to do it!

So go into Photoshop or your imaging program and create a file 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.

Add the name of your church at least and think about what else you can do with the banner.

Facebook has new rules about this.

The biggest “don’t” for churches is DON’T include any contact information on the banner. NO website address. NO Address. NO Phone.

Also: You cannot use a Call to Action. That means you cannot say “Visit us,” “Come to” or “Give to.” You can say “We welcome you.”

Just give basic facts: The Who, What, When and Where and Why. Telling How might be considered a Call to Action.

You can include:

  • Mission Statement
  • Service Times
  • Programs or Events
  • Event Times and Places
  • Pastor Names

Your site can be taken down if you do not comply.

Here is the banner we created. Note: We put the programs we emphasize on our site and used the basic words and imagery of our web site. It won’t be hard for anyone to find us in  a search engine. And we are doing this without breaking the Facebook rules.

There are more changes afoot. We’ll cover them later! Get to work on your timeline cover photo!

29 Mar 2012

The Role of Facebook in Christian Community

We have not advocated that churches, as a body, rely on Facebook. Our main reasons are the intimate nature of Facebook and the need to monitor it, both of which we think present challenges for churches and are best managed individual to individual — not institution on behalf of an individual.

But the fact is, most of your church members are probably on Facebook. We can advise and encourage individuals to use Facebook in a loving way — which will strengthen Christian community on or off the Social Media grid.

HeartYourChurch web blogger, Jason Stambaugh, shared his experience on Facebook when he recently reported the death of his mother. We extend our sympathy to Jason and his family and thank him for sharing with us and so many other “strangers.”

Jason’s blog post is an intimate account of his feelings on “pressing the button” to share his personal tragedy. It is worth a read.

He ends his post with four suggestions on the use of Facebook when sharing personal news.

(1) Like the post and leave a comment. By liking and commenting, you are helping to circle that person and their family with love.

(2) Share the post or link with your own personal message. I shared a link containing information about my Mother’s viewing and funeral. A handful of people reshared that link with a personal message about my Mom. Not only did I appreciate that they were helping me spread the word, I really enjoyed seeing what they had to say.

(3) Send the person a message. With so many likes and comments flowing in, it was hard to keep track of what everyone was saying. About a dozen or so people sent me Facebook messages that I received directly, like an email. They were easier to read and keep track of. If you have something you’d really like to share with the bereaved, send them a message.

(4) Do something.  Follow up your like, comment or message with an action. Whether it’s attending the viewing or funeral, sending a card or making a casserole, it will mean a lot to the person and/or family. The follow-up action makes your words “mean” something.

The last point is the most important. Facebook in the Church cannot replace the loving touch, the soft shoulder, the warm embrace, a hand held in prayer or the sympathetic tear. It sounds so old-fashioned, but we must remember to send a card, flowers, or deliver a hot-dish to the family—and attend the funeral.

Share this with your Facebook-loving congregants.

photo credit: John-Morgan via photopin cc
28 Mar 2012