Arbitron and Edison Research have conducted an annual survey focusing on trends in digital platforms since 1988. The 2011 report shows that the majority of Americans aged 12 and older now use Facebook. In three years the percentage of people using Facebook has risen from 8% to 51%. So What? Churches are also getting more involved on Facebook. According to LifeWay Research roughly half (47%) of all congregations now have a presence on Facebook. Creating a Read More …
Social Media
Thursday + Friday = Maximum Facebook Engagement (#0340)
Buddy Media released "Strategies For Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review" earlier this month, which amounts to a comprehensive analysis of more than 200 of their clients' Facebook pages over a two week period. The full report (available as a free download after registering) features fifteen pages of information including a detailed breakdown by industry of the best days to post. Overall, for all industries considered, the best days for engagement are Thursday and Read More …
The Most Popular “Church Blogs” or Are They? (#0332)
Kent Shaffer is the founder of ChurchRelevance.com, an online resource created to inspire and train ministers to be more relevant and effective, and a volunteer strategist for lifechurch.tv. He recently published his updated list of the "Top 200 "church blogs." His list intrigues me for several reasons, beginning with his methodology, which he describes as follows: Several hundred blogs are reviewed in a preliminary screening to determine if their statistics are competitive enough to be Read More …
No Generation Left Behind: Social Media in Ministry (#0331)
Earlier this year I wrote about generational differences in online activity based on data from a Pew Research Center study that showed how many people in each generation participate in various online activities. The percentage of people who participate in a given category tends to decline from generation to generation, but even the oldest generations still engage in a significant amount of online activity. Increasingly the digital divide or gap between those who Read More …
Who Do You Follow? (#0326)
Recently technology expert Scott McClellan, editor of Collide and director of Echo, asked people to answer a poll about how they determine who to follow on Twitter. As of 11pm EST on April 7, the responses show that almost all respondents (92%) follow "anyone who might add value." Interestingly, of the 116 votes cast only 10 were for another option (4 for "only people I actually know," 3 for "everyone who follows me" and 3 for "as few people as possible." So Read More …
Social Media for Lent: Fast or Engage? (#0308)
Bruce Reyes-Chow is a forty-one year old Presbyterian (PCUSA) pastor who serves as founding pastor of Mission Bay Community Church, which primarily attracts young adults in their twenties and thirties. He served as the Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the 2.3 million member PCUSA. Serving as the youngest person ever elected to that office, Reyes-Chow became a pioneer in the use of social media in the mainline Protestant world. To connect with Read More …
The Day Jesus Followed Me (#0307)
I remember just what I was doing the moment Jesus Christ followed me. Yesterday afternoon while I was watching Florida defeat UCLA in a basketball game, I received the following notification: So What? I find it interesting that the person who tweets as @JesusOfNaz316 has chosen to follow me (@sowhatfaith), especially since my bio there describes me as a "progressive postmodern postdenominational follower of Jesus." For those who wonder what this Twitter Jesus says, many of his Read More …
Face-to-Face vs. Digital/Virtual Worship (#0306)
Chuck Fromm has spent his life in the worship music business. Currently he is the publisher and founder of Worship Leader Magazine. Previously he served for twenty-five years as president of Marantha! Music, which he bought from his uncle Chuck Smith. His doctoral dissertation is titled Textual Communities and New Song in the Multi Media Age: The Routinization of Charisma in the Jesus Movement. In the March/April 2011 edition of Worship Leader Magazine, Fromm Read More …
Learning to Be a Better Blogger (#0303)
Matthew Paul Turner is best known for his Jesus Needs New PR blog. Additionally, he is the author of ten books and the former editor of CCM Magazine. Recently he shared nine suggestions for bloggers who seek to improve their craft: Stop reading advice posts about how to blog and instead just go blog something. Chances are, if you follow MY advice, it won’t work for you. Yes, I realize those last two sentences sort of contradict each other, but they’re both true, so you have no Read More …
Theology in a Post-2004 World (#0301)
After writing about Philip Clayton's “Theology and the Church After Google: How This New Age Will Change Christianity” a few days ago, I found myself in several discussions about the topic. One of my conversation partners directed me to an article John Dyer wrote on the topic for Christianity Today's guest opinion column "Speaking Out," which was published this past weekend. Dyer is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary where he is now employed as Director of Web Development. Read More …