what does your ministry marquis say?

April 14, 2009 in blogference with 3 Comments

I have appreciated so very much the particpation of everyone here at blogference! I’ve had so much fun blogging and commenting with you guys! I’ve even twittered about it quite a bit using hashtags #blogference and #cccbf.

These conversations on social media have caused me to think differently about how I blog and how I utilize my blog. I definitely want to be a good steward of my readership and of my webspace.

I’ve been looking for articles and even had some of you send me some good ones. I follow Relevant Magazine on Twitter and just today they sent this article: Twitter: What’s It Doing to Us? that gives some really good insights on how 140 charaters just isn’t enough sometimes. Which discusses the negative affects of Twitter:

There’s also some fairly disturbing indications that this growing self-absorption may be dulling our society’s conscience. Researchers at the National Academy of Sciences have found that the lightning pace of media brought on by Facebook feeds and Twitter has made the average person increasingly indifferent to human suffering. Constant updates give us little time to reflect upon the information we’re receiving. The study found that humans have the capacity to sort information very quickly, but complex reactions like compassion or admiration take much longer to process. When we’re constantly inundated with tiny bits of information, we rarely take time to think or feel deeply about it.

As well as some of the positives,

But Twitter can also be an amazing tool for news and community. In fact, the use of Twitter last year during the deadly Mumbai siege helped to coordinate police and emergency response. Victims and bystanders of the attacks used Twitter to give real-time updates of the events as they unfolded, and the on-the-spot reporting it provided helped to hasten response.

Why should we be surprised? Most things can be used for good or for evil depending on how they are used.

It seems as if there is a bottom line that is surfacing among this research and in our themes across the board. Truly loving people, and truly caring about others can’t be replaced. After all Jesus gave us the real model for this. And as it says in 1 Thessalonians 3:12

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.

I found this website called, Church Marketing Sucks (sorry for the title – but it’s just what it’s called) and this is what they have to say on the topic of using social media:

Your church will never be great because you figure out how to use Facebook and Evites. Your church will be great because you commit yourself to living the gospel in a radical way, and you can use social media as a balanced part of that gospel-centered diet.

While I agree with what they’re saying, and to some degree I can see where they are coming from. After all church marquis signs are sometimes embarassing for those of us who are trying to not come across like those signs sometimes do. But can’t these marquis signs be an analogy for what our ministry says to people as they drive by or notice us? What do people notice about your ministry? What do they know about you? Do they think you’re an outdated student organization? Or do they think you have something worthy of their time?

We’ve seen the trends, we know that social media is it, it is NOW, and we as the Church must embrace it as one of the ways that we use to communicate God’s love and forgiveness.

There is no doubt that social media can be leveraged to reach more people, we as the Kingdom, have a task before us to figure out how to do that and how to do that well. Brian Barela, wrote this on his blogference post today,

I believe that there is someone out there with the ability to produce a culturally relevant, massively popular, viral action, evangelistic tool that could affect millions. Unless we as an organization die to this premium model philosophy in not only evangelism but in other areas as well (a great topic for the next blogference), we should not be surprised at our lackluster results in spite of a high investment of resources.

Just as we trust God that within a certain number of miles of every campus there are the resources to reach that campus, we need to trust God for tools that are relevant, that use social media, that would be viral and spread like (umm…) fireseeds throughout the world.

Or maybe the tools are already out there and there just needs to be someone, or a group of people, committed to looking for them. As I was thinking on this, I just thought of how this video my church did for it’s Christmas series, called “The Arrival” could be used to drum up conversation evangelistically, [rss feed readers video embedded]


“The Arrival” Intro from PC3 on Vimeo.

You could ask questions to follow up from this video like,

  • What do you think is going on in this video?
  • Why are some captivated by the door and some are not?
  • Who do you think is knocking at the door? etc, etc….

I have a few questions for us to think on. Let’s get the ball rolling here…

  • Are there any tools that you know of that are out there that you’ve used to share the gospel that could be shared through venues like Twitter, Facebook, etc effectively? If yes, what are they?
  • Do you have any suggestions for how you can “use social media as a balanced part of a gospel-centered diet?”
  • What do you think is the Church’s biggest barrier when it comes to using social media – lack of knowledge, lack of willingness, or something else altogether?
  • How do you think Twitter, facebook, etc could be an amazing tool for community? How have you used it in your ministry to build community?

Thanks for all of your comments on if they blog it, will they come? and on an online movement?. I would love to keep this conversation going even though blogference 09 is drawing to a close. Be sure to follow me on Twitter.

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facebook comments:

  • Stephanie Raquel

    Kelly,

    First of all, I loved that diagram/ chart of all of the available social media tools. Great stuff!

    Briefly, let me just say I am a Crusade alum with a degree in Media Studies, so all of the impacts of media on society are fascinating to me. I went to the U. of Illinois and first met David Martinelli when he was still in grad school and we went door-to-door during Christmas Conference in Indy. Currently I’m a full-time mom of three, leading a discipleship group in my church. My husband is an entrepreneur who’s launching a social networking web site for sports fans, http://www.fanfuego.com.

    That being said, I love the quote about using social media within a gospel-centered diet. Yes, churches and ministry organizations need to use *every available tool* to reach others for Christ. At the same time, so do individuals. And ultimately, I think we can agree the best use of social media tools will stem from people having a genuine heart to reach the lost.

    That, however, does not just happen. It takes time for people to grow in their walks and develop a heart of compassion, and to see what that looks like in real life. It means having an open seat within a church small group, taking a leap of faith to invite someone to attend a weekly meeting with you, praying over a Top Ten list and watching God show up and show off. It involves authentic Christ-followers sharing their struggles, and yet genuinely striving to follow God and make wise choices.

    So in the end, social media tools can reinforce people’s beliefs, and even promote or introduce seekers and carnal Christians to spiritual truths. But beyond that, it still comes down to God’s people spending quantity time with God’s people to change the world.

  • http://danielcurran.blogspot.com/ Daniel Curran

    twitter is like the buzz at the street corner, or at the water cooler or at the lunch table. It’s worthwhileness correlates to the quality of words spoken, …and the timing of those words. It can have the same effect as “salt and light” —if indeed those qualities are seasoning and illuminating the heart of the one Twittering. We have all this marvelous technolgy — but it will not be transforming unless the soul of the one using it is full of faith, hope and love.

  • http://www.hearditonthestreet.com Rich Street

    Thanks for the post. I might be in the minority here when I say that I like the new facebook structure. I love to be able to post something on someone’s wall (e.g. an article from everystudent.com or a good video from youtube). Obviously, I can put it on my own wall or put the URL in my twitter updates.

    It is not that we just use social media strictly by it’s own (although I think that is still necessary and every increasingly so) but it goes with a more integrated approach to campus ministry. I need to be able to share the Gospel with people face to face as well as augment those conversations with social media (a post on a common blog or a facebook post or tweet directing someone I’ve talked to to an article or video or mp3 or whatever on the web that is relevant to our conversation). Also, it works in reverse where there is someone I meet online and then am able to augment our online conversations with face to face ones. You just can’t separate the 2 and say that I’m strictly doing online ministry (or using a strictly online approach) or the reverse where I doing strictly face to face ministry. That’s just not a 21st century approach.

    As far as the church goes or CCC for that matter, the leadership is mostly over 40 something people who have never used social media when we (I include myself in that over 40 club :) were on campus and thus don’t see its necessity or relevance. However, what makes this problem even worse is that we are training the next generation of campus leaders according to the same models and methods that we learned which were totally absent of using any sort of online tools. If the church or CCC wants to continue to thrive and survive we have got to embrace a more online approach or we’re going to go the way of the dinosaurs.