Churches Embracing Social Media

a77_church1For most people the idea of “church” is walking into a sunlight, stain-glass cathedrial with a reverent hush and organ music. The idea of the sanctuary being full of laptops, iPhones and blackberries is almost a perpostorious one. But not for Leonard Sweet, a man whose life mission is to bridge the gap between academics and pop culture, who embraces technology and new media. Sweet is the author of such books as The Gospel According to Starbucks and he understands that churches need to communicate in the language of their audience. That’s why when you walk into Leonard’s church and hear him speak you’ll see three screens at the front

Why three screens? One’s for the actual Biblical text he’s speaking on, one’s for a video DJ who searches through Google to find images of what Leonard is speaking about and the third is for the Twitter stream about the message.

Yes, there’s a Twitter stream.

Not that embracing social media has always worked out wonderfuly for churches. Last April Trinity Church in Manhatten decided to Twitter about their Good Friday service. While they gained thousands of followers some of the responses for their Twitters were “Darkness and earthquake,” and “Crucify him!” Ah Social Media. Imagine if Trinity Church had created a YouTube video.

As exciting as it is that churches are embracing and using social media, they need to think about their social media campagin much in the same way businesses do. Where is your audience at, who do you want to reach and how can you effectively find those people? For some churches Twitter might be a good start, other churches may want to steer clear and try Facebook or Myspace instead. Also, because of the higher ethical standards most churches have there will need to be policies to govern who uses the official social media channels and what should be said. The potential for offending existing members of the church is huge. Also, if there’s some sort of community experience (Facebook page, forums, etc) the church will need to have some sort of moderating system in place in case of personal information getting put out. Churches must also be cautious of posting pictures (Flick’r, TwitPic, etc) of children without the consent of their parents.

I’m hoping that more churches see the potential for marketing and stay connected with their members over social media networks and can use the tools at hand wisely. If you’ll excuse me though, I have to go now, my pastor is Twittering something.

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This post was written by admin

July 6, 2009 | Filed Under social media

1 Comment 

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One Response to “Churches Embracing Social Media”

  1. Melodee Joy Smith on July 6th, 2009 10:21 am

    How true! In childcare and development classes you are taught that people learn better when using their senses. So twittering in church service will use more of your 5 senses and bring a better understanding to the sermon. Great idea!
    The more images that you have during the worship service the better the service. Sign me up!!

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