Most Ministries Are Ignorant of Social Networking
According to the study done by Drew Goodmanson and Co. most ministries and churches are pretty much ignorant of Social Networking and applications/software that enable social interaction.
This is not a surprise, but it’s always helpful to have a bit of “raw” data to fill the banks to compete with the copious amounts of assumptions that are made out there about the state of the church.
There’s a good .PDF that Drew has handed out on his blog or you can download it right here.
I was actually on the webinar yesterday but was surprised they didn’t have any Q/A time at the end, and I would have definitely liked to say “hi” to Cynthia Ware, who also had a guest portion in the beginning.
Another interesting bit in the PDF covered some things that congregation members wanted in their website. Kenny covered it a bit on his blog and asked the obvious question of whether or not you know what your congregation really wants in their web property:
- Ability to find, register, and/or get details for events.
- Ability to post prayer requests or needs.
- Ability to find serving opportunities at the church based on interest or gifts.
- Ability to join and interact with home/bible study groups.
- Integration with existing church website.
I think all the features and functionalities listed here are valuable, but I think #5 is something that Drew and his team over at Monk Development is definitely trying to answer.
Buzz it!
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23 Responses to “Most Ministries Are Ignorant of Social Networking”
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K, but I've never heard of most of those either. Are they all churchy social networking tools? The kind that let us just network within our churches? Some of the names seem like they would be, and if that's the case I'm not sure it's a bad thing that most churches aren't using them.
Did he ask about Facebook? Twitter? Seems like that's where the Church should be using social networking.
I hear proof of that whenever I speak of the Social Networking with members of our church.
but at least we are addressing it.
thanks for the effort Drew
I'll be real honest. I think attempts to create walled-gardens for online church community is both unnatural and counter-productive. I understand the concept, but why create another (private) network where only their church-people can congregate when you have services like Facebook that offer pages, groups, causes, etc or products like Google Groups that are simple to get into and can be made public for quick adoption?
I'm a big fan of Mars Hill Church, but even The City (which is probably the coolest out of the list here) isn't doing very well. Bottom line, people want to network with people in the their church AS WELL AS people outside their church. That's my opinion.
My conclusion from the top 5 features requested from respondents is that they aren't looking for "social networking" tools. They 're looking for private group communications tool (http://blog.memberhub.com/churches-want-private-g... All this research is going to help churches sort through the lot of those tools. Big difference b/w social networking and private community or portal tools. Drew and Kevin are doing some very timely and good works here!
I think that this is because most people want to connect and be a part of something. Being able to do that by means of these tools (Social Networking) enable them to do that online. It certainly does not replace getting together physically, but it definitely facilitates keeping the message alive between those times.
Knowing the available tool is key to making this happen.
A church blog or website that leverages the tools to facilitate being part of these groups whether as a private community or as a way to interact will be so much more successful in engaging the community.
And it is this engaging that I think will the Message of Hope alive between Sundays.
Lex,I think that particular snapshot is saying there are churches that utilize these tools, but most church members are not even aware of it.
John, this is excellent information. Thanks. I plan on forwarding that PDF to members of church leadership. This study will greatly build upon the proposal I made to them.
Another thing I want to add is that I am not a fan of Christian "alternatives" to sites like YouTube and Facebook. I remember a guest speaker at our church saying Christians are often like a football team going into a huddle, but they never want to say "Break!" and move out. They just want to keep huddling together.
Our goal as Christians is to reach those who do not yet follow Christ. We can't do that if we never break from the huddle.
Ok, I'm interested to see what the stats for Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are. I've never heard of these sites myself, but I'm on Twitter, Facebook, and I frequent some blogs. I consider myself fairly socially networked. I think that the "walled gardens" might have a place (i.e. a place for church members to post prayer request, get info about their church, etc) but if we're talking about reaching out, then the "walled gardens" won't work.
I'm familiar with several of those, but each body is uniquely different from each other(as the individuals are) We have to continue to talk within the walls and outside. I'm the outside person.
I would change the title of this article to: Church-specific Social Networking Sites Have Limited Reach.
As has already been well-expressed in the comments to this article, “church-only” social networking is not the way to go. Social networking must be holistic for it to be successful.
The PCC’s Communications Office takes the Wayne Gretzky approach to social networking: “go where the people [he said puck] are going to be.” This is why we work hard to build and maintain a presence on Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere.
i like that. good quote!
title change… huh.
[youtube 7Je_vU5Wd1k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Je_vU5Wd1k youtube]
wow, that is cool! do you have seesmic?
seesmic, looking into it now.
tks
ok, I think it is harder to click 'Post' for the video than it is to click 'Submit' for the blog.
I sound like an idiot
ha ha ha
It might be a blessing in disguise that the explicitly Christian social networks aren't gaining traction as of yet. This point in time is a huge opportunity for us (YOU + me + he + she…) to start to define what Christian living is like online.
I'm interested in developing great models for how we as Christians are to integrate our faith + life together vs. have parallel online identities/lives similiar to the Sunday Christian + Secular Mon-Saturday living. Tim Keller's Redeemer Presbyeterian in NYC has a Faith & Work ministry that is working the offline-framework for how to integrate the Gospel worldview with work/entrepreneurship with an effect of transforming culture and people. We have a similiar opportunity to do the same with online social network activities. Less Xtian-Facebook and more Facebook-Xtians!
sadly i think the situation in germany is even worse because most ministries here are ignorant of the internet as a whole. i am in charge of the parish newsletter in our community and it´s really a fight with the parish council here that we finally get a website. In Germany most people who get involved are pretty old and they just don´t care. i often get handwritten texts for the parish newsletter (which i made into shiny full color magazine btw ) instead of files. So yeah, christianity here has to arrive in the 21st century first before i can even think about social networking. Our neighborministry has a website, but it looks like those beepworld sites from 2001 (rly, they even play midi files with music there lol)
So back to the real topic: I recently had a pretty long discussion about that topic and I say it´s wrong to have an separated place for religious groups. Sometimes the church has to come to the people to get the people involved with the church. The people in charge often prefer places made especially for christians because there are many nonbelievers on the web who make fun of religion as a whole and they don´t want to deal with this. They also want to avoid contact with other religions because we all know the discussion abour right and wrong religion etc etc. plus they fall for marketing aimed at christians. while i think jokesters and those unnecessary discussions that could come up are an issue, a minstry should be near the people and don´t turn away from them. Because if the church turns away from the people, the people will start turning away from the church. That´s probably not only an online issue but also very afk.
(i should add that this might not apply to the US, the discussion i had was with people from the UK, South Africa, Malta and Spain, hope my thoughts were still a bit interesting)
wow,
what do you think needs to happen over there? what are you doing to move it forward?
i have to admit that i´m not doing much, because we have a complicated situation in our community. We complained about our priest at the bishopric, because he just didn´t follow his duties in spiritual guidance, organisation and he was drunk way too often. Before i took over the parish newsletter, there hasn´t been one out for one year and it´s supposed to come out at least every 3 month. On a local festival he also insulted the comudsman of the parish council with "i wish you the plague". A Priest just can´t do sth like that. Of course he also had his good qualities, like very modern services with selfwritten, very spiritual songs, he´s a rhetorical genius and his sermons really got you involved. But that just couldn´t make up for the flaws.
So he was removed but now they don´t want to send us a new one because of cost cuttings and we work a lot in this direction, speak with politicians that they support us, organize meetings with decision-makers of the national and state churches to address the issues etc… we even had a protest march lol. maybe i can work into another direction when this stuff is behind us, but in the past month there has been too much going on for us to even really address this.
John, I don't believe it's that ministries are ignorant of social networking… they're ignorant of *Christian* social networking (and, imo, that's probably a GOOD thing). If you'd look at the other slides Drew presented, you'd see that several churches are on Facebook, Twitter, even a few on MySpace, but most of those same 'connected' churches haven't even HEARD of "Christian" services.
As Drew mentioned, creating Christian ghettos isn't the answer. Get out where the unsaved and unchurched are, not where the ones that know salvation already are.
very true. good point and clarification.
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