Today I’m giving a presentation on “Social Media and Ministry” to a group of Christian Educators. It was fun actually using social media to prepare for the presentation by posting a request on Facebook and Twitter for people to share ways they’ve seen social networking impact ministry in positive and negative ways. The response was amazing. I got comments, twitter responses, and phone calls – all because people wanted to talk about how this topic is changing the way they do ministry.
Although I’m not a professional in social media, I am a practitioner. I love the ways that it has helped me connect with people inside and outside my church for ministry and relationships.
I also feel it’s misunderstood and ignored by many churches and people in ministry. We need to be talking and learning about how this can be a great asset to ministry. As great as the first printing press was for the Bible. The church needs to stop lagging after cultural trends and be on the leading edge of how people communicate, relate, and learn.
I want to offer you some of the resources I’m using in the presentation. If you know of others, please add them in the comments.
Here are some websites and resources to get you started:
Social Media Revolution Video (4:19)
Justin Wise has an exhaustive compilation of resources here. Many of them are great places to start. This is the list that I would type here, only Justin has already done it for me.
http://justinwise.net/social-media-resources#more-1451
Church Marketing Sucks blog
http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/
Start with their “Read This First” tab – especially the series: “Facebook for Churches”
Church Social Media
Blog http://churchsocmed.blogspot.com/
Twitter @chsocm
Here’s one on from Justin Wise on understanding the relationship between an overall communications strategy and a social media strategy. Both are so important.
http://justinwise.net/communications-pyramid
What else would you add?
That’s interesting Jessica! I’m not entirely sure it classifies as “social media” but on our site we had a neat mission recently. A young woman from England who’s mission is to “Regain her Faith”. It has been kind of cool following along with her so far.
In case you’re interested: http://www.loopchange.com/MissionDetail-367_166_loopchange-Regaining-my-faith
I guess my ignorant, uninformed take on it would be that ‘communities’ can be great forces of good and sometimes that community feel can be created via social media.
Fantastic post. Thank you for sharing and joining the small, but growing army of voices championing the use of social media for ministry.