Social media for the church

I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving in Louisville, at an annual conference that the denomination holds for all presbytery and synod moderators. Most moderators attended, so there was an opportunity to meet others and share something about our various circumstances. We also had an opportunity to visit and tour the denomination's headquarters and meet some of the staff, which I had not previously had a chance to do.

The primary theme of the conference was the impact of technology and social networking sites on the church. This is something about which I knew little and, frankly, in which I had little interest. I don't really feel the need to follow someone's Twitter tweets in order to learn what he or she had for breakfast or what the commute to work was like. I also doubt that I will ever develop a Facebook page (indeed, I've discovered that somebody else with my name already has one). I was probably born an old fogy; I disliked rock music in the 50s, when I was a teenager and it was new, and that dislike has never changed. My wife is often amazed at the popular singers from our youth of whom I've never heard (on the other hand, I'm often surprised at the folk/protest singers from the 60s of whom she hasn't heard). I write with a fountain pen and at times use a Beta VCR and a Dual turntable. In Polonius' phrasing, I'm much more likely to be the last to lay the old aside than to be the first by whom the new is tried.

What I learned from the conference is that I can't let my personal preferences (or, if you prefer, backwardness) keep me from recognizing the role that Twitter, Facebook, and the other popular social networking sites (and the equally popular Blackberries, smartphones, and similar technology) play for many people today, especially those in their 20s and 30s. These are the ways that they communicate, and the church has to find a way to participate in that communication. Bruce Reyes-Chow, the General Assembly moderator who planned this conference (he wasn't able to attend because of a death in his family) is the pastor of a church in San Francisco that uses many of these techniques and, partly as a result, draws heavily from people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Its website is well worth studying for examples that our churches might follow:

http://www.missionbaycc.org/

One thing that I also discovered in a Google search is that there are many positive reviews of the church on the San Francisco edition of Yelp.com (a site of which I had never heard). Those reviews apparently led some people to the church.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/mission-bay-community-church-san-francisco

When I looked at the Yelp.com Portland site I found very few reviews of any church and none of a Presbyterian church, although the site lists most or all of the Presbyterian churches in the Portland area. Churches with reviews come at the head of the list of churches. Are we missing out on something here?

The conference described many uses of social networking; the following are just a few. Youth pastors can follow their teens' Twitter feeds, both learning what the teens are thinking and, at times, recognizing needs for pastoral help long before they would otherwise learn of them. Parishioners can tweet comments on a sermon that then appear on a screen next to the pastor, in a way an updated version of the traditional African-American vocal congregational response; among other things, this gives the pastor a chance to respond immediately to how the congregation is receiving the sermon. A Facebook page can be a way to send e-mails to all those who follow it. A church or pastor who follows on-line conversations in the community can find ways to hook into those conversations and present Christian thinking about the subject under discussion. That seems particularly useful in our heavily secular area, where Christian (or any religious) thinking doesn't come automatically to many people. A church can post its activities on Facebook or YouTube, where others may find them (of course, being careful to protect privacy, especially of children).

For a church to use these resources would require careful strategic thinking and a willingness to get involved in things that for many of us may seem strange or even unsettling. However, revitalizing our churches is likely to require them to be willing to look for the strange and unsettling; the familiar and comfortable ways aren't doing the job. I hope that at least some will look into these social media further. I conclude with two of Bruce Reyes-Chow's discussions of social media and the church and a site that provides suggested guidelines for using them.

http://www.reyes-chow.com/2009/08/church-social-media.html

http://www.reyes-chow.com/2009/03/top-10-ways-technology-can-kill-the-church.html

http://churchcrunch.com/12-tips-for-developing-a-social-networking-policy-and-usage-guidelines-for-your-church/