I am actively involved at my church in Austin, Texas, First Evangelical Free Church. There is always something happening around our church and it’s sometimes tough to keep up with all the events.
While I wouldn’t say that my church is a leader in using social media and hasn’t fully jumped onto the bandwagon (no Twitter account, yet…), they are slowly integrating different aspects of social media into their ministry.
One thing I’ve recognized about my church is that they don’t just do something because everyone else is doing it. They wait until they see how a tool can be used and make sure they have someone in charge of it before integrating it.
Here are six areas that my church is using the Web and social media to reach out and keep members involved and thought they would be good starting points for your church as well, if you’re not already using them.
- Website- We have a pretty useful website loaded with features that make it easy for me to find what I’m looking for. We have a calendar which lists all church events. I particularly like our online registration system which makes it easy to register and pay for events at home, if I’ve forgotten my checkbook on Sunday morning.
- Picasa- An online photo gallery where we upload church event photos. A Flickr account would achieve the same thing. It’s nice to go online and browse through photos from an event I was at or that I missed. Not to sound conceited, but it makes me feel more connected when I see my face in the photos on our website.
- Facebook- Our young adult ministry (Impact Austin) has a very active Facebook fan page that they use for announcements, change of schedule, and a place to go if you don’t know what to do. There are also picture and videos from events as well as a place to share ideas. I would suggest every church have a page like this for their church. If you’re not sure where to start with this, the faithHighway team has experts that can help you get started.
- E-Invites- So, you’re church is large and you’re not sure how many people to expect for that Christmas party…rather than sending out paper invitations that cost $0.44 cents for postage, try using on online invitation system. My church uses www.evite.com for every event…retreats, Christmas parties, chili cookoffs, social events…it’s great and allows people to respond quickly and see who else is coming that they might know. It also allows you to send a message to all invitees incase there’s a change in time or the event is canceled. Give it a try…I love it.
- Google Groups – My church recently launched a Google Group announcement list to send out information on a daily/weekly basis to all group members. It works much like a Facebook Group, but maybe a little less overwhelming than Facebook is. The group member can decide how many times a day or week they want to receive announcement. For me, I chose to receive announcement once a week in one email- to keep my inbox clutter free. It’s also a great way to generate conversation by allowing people to post their replies to the announcement.
- Sermons online- on the homepage of our main church website, the latest sermon is made available in video format. So, if a member is out sick or missed a service, the sermon is easily accessible. Or perhaps, if you’re like me and sometimes zone out while the pastor is talking, and missed one of his points, you can go online and listen to the message again. If you haven’t considered putting your sermons online, you might want to think about it.
As always, if you have questions regarding your website, social media or putting your sermons online…the team at faithHighway is always ready to help.
Photo by Clagnut
November 17th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Great post, Laura. It's nice to see other churches reaching out to the community in other means than the norm. Our church has a lot of the same aspects, but also made sure there was a strategy to it all, as well. So, instead of just creating a twitter account and expecting people to flock to it, we have somebody manning it on a regular basis to build the relationships. We do this with all of our social media accounts.
So I guess the only add to your post is make sure not only does your church have the social media tools, but are using them to build community, and not just for "publicity."
November 17th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Michael- Thanks for the input. I would strongly agree that having a strategy is extremely important..otherwise it just becomes another thing we do to complicate our already busy schedules. Plus, if your church members are going to be involved in online relationships, they want to feel like it's a 2-way relationship…so I like that you have someone manning your Twitter account on a regular basis.
November 17th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Excellent post. I would like to address #6; Sermon videos are great, but I push my clients to at least start with audio. It is much less resource intensive, the cost of the equipment, the time to edit, convert, upload, stream/download. More importantly, audio is a more universal format. People can listen while commuting or otherwise have running the the background where video tends to require more of our attention and thus gets relegated to evenings and weekends. Anyway, I'm glad you're involved online, it sounds like you've got a great thing going.
November 17th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Hans- Great addition… Audio is much more universal and if it's available to download on an MP3 player, it makes it much more transportable for members to listen to. So, I would agree that if a church doesn't already have a video team available…don't stress it…just use the means that are already available and go from there.