Catholics and Protestants are uniting around the importance of social media.
Earlier this week at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops annual Fall General Assembly, Bishop Ronald Herzog of Alexandria, Louisiana, a member of the Communications Committee, gave a speech in which he said:
Although social media has been around for less than 10 years, it doesn’t have the makings of a fad. We’re being told that it is causing as fundamental a shift in communication patterns and behavior as the printing press did 500 years ago. And I don’t think I have to remind you of what happened when the Catholic Church was slow to adapt to that new technology . . . If the Church is not on their mobile device, it doesn’t exist. The Church does not have to change its teachings to reach young people, but we must deliver it to them in a new way.
Last weekend Marc Ramirez wrote an article in the Dallas Morning News exploring how several Dallas, Texas area congregations utilize social media. A story of The Rev. Mark Craig, Senior Minister of Highland Park United Methodist Church, the second largest congregation in the denomination, recording a video in his office for his parishioners was the first of several examples of how congregations are using Facebook. Bishop Kevin Farrell of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas believes embracing social media is important enough that he wrote, “If St. Paul were alive today, he would have a BlackBerry, a laptop and a blog.” Ramirez finds that social media is changing the way religious leaders do ministry:
Welcome to ministry in the age of social media, as religious leaders nationwide realize that in order to reach their flocks – and to thrive, if not merely survive – they have to go where the people are.
So What?
Establishing a Facebook presence is a common first step congregations take in developing a social media presence. According to Ramirez, a recent survey by LifeWay Research found that 47% of all congregations utilize Facebook.
- In what year did your congregation first establish a social media presence?
- How has it grown since that time? Do you currently have a social media strategy or written plan that guides the continued expansion?
- In addition to a congregational presence, how are your pastor(s) and other key leaders using social media?
- How have you experienced the changes in how people and organizations communicate since the birth of social media? Are any of these positive experiences ones you can leverage in some way for your congregation?
- What does success look like? How are you measuring social media activity?