The Social Media Church

Courtesy of Edudemic.com

Let's face it, social media has taken over our society, our culture, our entire world! Many churches have realized this and have utilized it to reach their congregation or to gain more information about them. But how can you use social media to grow the church, to reach the masses? The church I work for, Heartland Christian Center,  posts videos of the pastor's messages onto their Facebook page, specifically on an evangelical outreach group page that has thousands of people from 20 different countries as members. When looking at it this way, our sermon videos are not only being viewed by the 400 plus people on our Facebook page and the members of the evangelical group but by thousands of others who are friends with those who are friends with our page or in that closed group.

Social media can quickly lend itself to becoming a church planting tool. Think about it, on any given Sunday morning my church will have on average 600 people in attendance, 100 people viewing our service live over the Internet, and at least 1,000 people watching the rebroadcast through Facebook or our website. If you add it all up, we have a church of 1,700 people that get the message every week and possibly more. Because of the Internet, streaming video, and social media we have been able to launch two other campuses that reach two different groups of people that we couldn't reach before.

Churches need to learn how to use all facets of social media to their advantage, to get past the notion of just another way to communicate with the congregation, but to use it as a tool to reach the unreachable in a different state or country, even in the next town. Evaluate what you are posting on all of your social media sites, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. Ask yourself if this post, picture, or video something someone will share with someone and does this convey the message that the church puts forth.

My hope is that every post I put on here is in someway helpful to churches out there who are struggling in the area of media or just feel lost, let me know how this helps or if there is a topic that I haven't covered that needs to be addressed.