I repeatedly get asked by pastors and church leaders about Facebook. Each time the conversation is similiar; usually a pastor that understands the need to utilize facebook for their ministry, yet is concerned about losing the personal touch with people.
Scott Ginsberg, a great author and friend of mine recently posted on his Twitter feed that “You can manage relationships with software, but you can only nurture them with humanware.” He makes a great point about the balance that needs to be taken between using software to manage your friends, but we still need the personal interactions for more meaningful connections.
Here are a few thoughts for utilizing Facebook for your ministry.
1. Look for personal pages of your visitors on facebook and “friend” them. Seems simple and almost a bit corny, but that small measure could end up being the connection that brings that family to your church. Plus, it adds a great, non-invasive way for you to maintain a connection with your visitors.
2. Keep your posts simple, yet engaging Once again, this could sound like an oxymoron. However, people will appreciate thought provoking posts rather than letting people know how many times you opened your car door yesterday.
3. Share the posts of others. There are millions of people in the social media realm. Follow other pastors and leaders that you can relate with. Almost everyday one of them will post something relevant to your ministry that could benefit the people who follow you.
4. Follow others who share your values and interests. This became glaring apparent today as I found another blog post both re-iterating my point, but also providing a few extra solutions on using social media. Check out Michael Hyatt. His blog post today, 5 Steps to Building a Platform When You Hate Selling Yourself, filled in the gaps of my post and will be very beneficial to you as you develop your ministry social media platform.
Many pastors are looking at social media with skepticism while others embrace it. I have heard the arguments on both sides and in many ways can agree with both. There is, however, no debate that people are utilizing social media as a major communication tool and we are doing a disservice to not adapt our methods to include it into our ministries.
If you’d like to know more about how to include social media in your ministry, get in touch with us and we’ll help you out.
How many potential visitors (lost souls) could you have reached last month on Facebook?
