A couple times this week I’ve seen people asking about the church and social media. David Tonen shared a video on social media and Chris Meirose pointed out the average age of the user bases of some of the more prominent sites.
I’ve been working in the new media space for a few years now. For the last two, new media consulting has been my full time occupation. Unfortunately, from what I see, churches can be slower to embrace social media than business.
About Relationships
I don’t get that. Social media is about relationships. And relationships are what the church is about. Or at least that’s what the church is supposed to be about.
Just like business, church can miss the mark when we talk about how we can “use” social media. That’s like asking how we can “use” the local Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce to benefit our organization.
We might instead think of how we can engage social media or join and contribute to social media communities.
Of course that means we have to look outward to how we can benefit other people rather than looking at social media as nothing more than tools that can benefit us.
After all, social media is first and foremost social. It’s about people and relationships. Social media is not about technology and tools.
What Are Your Thoughts?
Since that’s the case, why do you think the church often lags behind business when it comes to social media engagement?
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Chris, good post and question. Probably because in general “the church” lags behind business in almost everything. Unfortunately, many churches are more about tradition than people, and many senior pastors are older and don’t get social media.
But the good thing is there are a lot of innovative churches that are using social media to engage people in the church, help people engage with each other, and help people engage with others outside the church.
Paul, I agree that there are many individual churches that are engaging social media in creative and effective ways. The irony is that they tend to be larger churches and smaller churches with smaller budgets can see far bigger things proportionally happen with all the free social media opportunities out there.
Agreed. Beyond the fact that churches often “don’t get” technology and lag behind, the benefit of social media is indeed of particular value to smaller churches because of the low cost of implementation. However, the issue for the small church is that they don’t have the budget to have a full time staff manage their communication so they have to rely on volunteers to do it for them. Most often the volunteers are not trained or experienced enough to implement and manage this ever-changing world of social media and technology.
I was just on a three-person committee that created a site for our church and got it rolled out at last. It is a 100% improvement over what was online before. Still, all the ways the site could be used to engage (with youth, with mission, with the arts, etc.) mean change and, unfortunately, this is a parish that tends to shy from change or taking a risk with something new and different.
As in business, so in the church. Creativity and access to a great site or great Social Media tools are not enough. Leadership from the rector and the vestry and membership is needed to bring forth change, to manage it, and to sustain it.
Maureen, you’ve hit the nail on the head. There has to be significant leadership buy in for any social media effort to be effective. I run into that same challenge with my business clients all the time.
The good news is that with social media is plenty of room for volunteers to get active, start seeing results, and with their success convince leaders who might be a little more traditional.
here is how i see it.
if you are only thinking people that attend an organized group, using the media through that group, then you are not seeing the whole picture.
i think that Jesus and the Holy Spirit work through some of His church that you might not be able to see. and so can not be counted in any way. there are many things that the chruch of Jesus does under the radar…even using social media in a social way.
there is more being done than we know, even without the the buyin of any human leadership. also, i think that there is always room for people outside of social media to be used by God.
all in all, i don’t think that one is better than the other, because God is bigger than our little computers, our resistance to change, and our traditions. it is more about where our heart is and who we are following…as we relate…in what ever way we do relate.
nAncY, I totally get that there are believers engaged in social media outside formal church structures. HighCallingBlogs here is a great example of that! Although working in the field full time for the last couple years it still seems to me that there are surprisingly few believers engaging social media. And yes there are a myriad of other ways to relate beyond social media.
My point was about social media though. The principles I teach my business clients about building relationships via social media aimed at expanding influence work the same way for churches as organizations. They’re principles I learned myself only as a result of my faith walk.
If our churches as organizations have a primary mission to help believers relate to one another in more godly ways why do they generally tend to be on the back side of social media engagement instead of leading the way?
thanks for your reply chris.
i will continue reading the comments below, and see where this is going.
My friend nAncY is right on, I think. Business, historically, adopts organizational structures that resemble prevailing technology — from the top-down cotnrol of mass production to the networked, matrixed models used today. But, and again I’m speaking about business, technologies as organizational structures can have some pretty profound and unanticipated effects. We like to think we’re so much smarter than the technologies we create, that these are “just tools,” but that’s our ride slipping through.
This belief of “they’re just new tools, new ways to deliver our message” is rampant in organizational communication, which is where I work. But the tools in turn shape and reshape; they are not neutral. The form matters; it’s not just content that’s important. That’s where the church needs to tread carefully. Social media can be useful, but useful in the right ways and the right times.
Thought-provoking post.
Make that “control” and our “pride” slipping through. So much for double proofreading.
Glynn, That’s an interesting thought about disruptive technologies and how they affect organizations like churches. I’d really like to chat more with you on that topic.
I can see how social media has shaken up the PR and corporate communications field because it is much more participatory and harder to “control” messaging.
But it seems to me that the traditional church consists in most cases of fairly top-down organizations where the bulk of the communications and messaging comes from the preaching/teaching pastor. Social media can be a very effective tool for lay members (and pastors alike) to engage in more “relationship evangelism” and balance out that top down structure.
Like in business, when the emphasis is placed heavily on the relationship side, over time the opportunities for speaking to the primary messaging will come up.
Chris, I think the top-down organizational structure is part of why many churches are reluctant to engage in social media. Many church leaders are afraid of losing control of the message. Social media is a conversation where everyone has a voice, and many church leaders are afraid of what people within their church will say. They could be rude, racist, disagree with the church leadership, have unorthodox theology, use profanity, post pictures of themselves drunk, and so on. They could reveal that the church is full of sinners and hypocrites, which of course all churches are, but many don’t want to admit or embrace.
I think you’re right when it comes to “fear of loss of control” with some in church leadership. I see those same fears expressed pretty regularly by businesses too.
Glynn covers that very eloquently below.
They’re clinging to their illusions of “control” as if they were in charge (and not God!)
Consider that most corporations are still run “top-down,” like most churches. And Paul is right — it’s the fear factor for all hierarchal organizations. But we’re all kidding ourselves if we think, in any organizational setting, that we “control” the message. We don’t. We still think in terms of people as “audiences,” and they’re not. While the ideas had been around for a long time, “message” and “audience,” in fact, were concepts created for the broadcast communications model of the early 20th century — one-way communications. It works for a mass audience — like for radio, TV, movies. But the internet/web/message board/chat rooms/blogs/social media are shoving the one-way model aside. When corporations discover that their reputation scorecard is the first page of the Google search results, it’s a rude awakening.
I said above that form matter — it’s not just content. Form shapes content in ways we don’t always understand. Every communications medium both expands and limits. Intranets and web sites are great — except for those people who can’t access them. Same thing appplies to social media. And even for those who do have access, the medium shapes the content (yes, I know, I’m being McLuhan-esque). The advent of electronic/online media is bringing us rather rapidly to a kind of return to an oral culture, and we haven’t had one of those since Gutenberg.
What we’ve been finding in business settings is that all of this is creating a situation where employees are becoming more knowledgeable about the organization’s external operating environment than the leadership is. And what is that going to mean? What if that happened in the church, too? How does that redefine leadership?
Sorry to take up space. I could talk about this forever, I suppose, because I’ve lived in in my day-to-day work for the last 15 years.
Please don’t apologize for taking up space here, especially when I ask you for more info.
Your question about how that all redefines leadership is something I need to think about. I’m pretty sure it does, probably in a big way. Hmmmm…
what does external operating environment mean?
has that already happened with orgainzed religion?
i am wondering if that is why many people are looking for other forms of “church”.
Chris – thanks for the mention and the link. Social media has been important in my ministry, even in small town Minnesota. Times they are a changing, and we (the church) need to keep up or be left behind. Far too many churches in the past have chosen to be left behind.
Chris Meirose
Thanks for bringing up the topic Chris. You helped spark a good discussion.
I’m probably a little biased but I think this is a subject that should get a whole lot more attention.
My, but you’ve hit on a “hot-button” topic for me! I’m not a staff person, but have always been in lay leadership. I’ve been working on this for the last several years, starting with better web sites and, most recently, with social media, in two different churches (we moved) and in other Christian ministries. The view has been “it’s impersonal”, “we’re about people, not technology”, etc.
I think the main fear is that they’ll invest too heavily in an online presence, connecting virtually, and miss out on the face-to-face. Oh, that they would understand that it helps foster the relationship on BOTH sides of the screen, reaching much further than they are able otherwise accomplish. You are absolutely right: Social media IS about relationships…not technology.
I agree Melinda! The beauty of social media is that it takes the conversation around faith and life outside of the church building and lets people discuss what they think when they are thinking it. The dialogue helps people searching to work out their faith discovery and for the believer it gives them a forum and medium to discuss how their faith and Biblical principles are applied and practically lived out…it is a tool to foster greater maturity and authenticity.
Churches have to realize that social media is not going away and tools like “smart-phones” allow our culture to take technology and social media with them wherever they go.
I heard someone wiser than me say something to the effect that the question isn’t if organizations will get on board with social media but rather when they will.
That’s right, Melinda. Social media is not a replacement for anything the church is doing. But it can help churches build relationships and reach more people.
it is a lot about the person and how they use it. if a person is open and relates, then it does help to foster relationships. if the person only posts and does not try to relate then it may not do much good in relationship.
Cool discussion (Glynn, I can’t keep up with all the big words! ; – )
Something Maureen said suddenly made me think, “What church are we talking about?” In other words, I suddenly had this picture in my mind of a generational gap (I know, how did I get that from what you said, M? Who knows
).
Anyway, it made me think… well, is the young church not involved in social media? My guess would be that it is. What does it take to bring the generations together? It’s a question that’s been haunting other aspects of church life too, from music/worship to issues of devotion/social action.
L.L., I’m sure the young church is active on social media. But if the church waits until they are in leadership to embrace social media it will drift that much further into perceived irrelevance. I’m just saying.
From conversations I have with my pastor, I can tell he distrusts anything to do with the Internet, due to all the p*rn. He’s a grandfather. Winning him over to this new form of communication might take a miracle.
I wonder how many other pastors feel the same way he does?
You’re pastor is right about p*rn being a big problem on the, Monica. Perhaps this video will encourage him to be more open to social media engagement. Especially the point that social media has overtaken p*rn as the #1 activity on the web. (At 0:22 into the video.)
That video was posted less than 5 months ago and already it’s a bit out of date. For example Facebook now has more users than the US has population. But that sort of thing just reinforces what they are saying about the social media revolution.
Maybe it is just me, but I really don’t see much inappropriate material on the internet. Yes, I know it is there, and not hard to find, but my Gmail (Google) filters out racy spam, and my Google Search is set to moderate so I really don’t stumble into inappropriate things. I use Firefox, so I don’t get pop-ups either. But if you have an unfilter email account, then I can see how you might think there was bad stuff everywhere.
Chris, I agree, but for these old school pastors, I think they are so accustomed to thinking of the Internet as the enemy, it’s difficult to accept Facebook, Twitter, etc.
If Moses could change at his age, so too can your pastor. You can quote me on that.