February, Facebook, and the Future of the Church
Facebook just celebrated its 6th birthday last week. At that time, it announced it had 400 million users. It doubled its user base in the last year. In terms of sheer magntitude, this kind of change in social practice is unprecedented in human history. Facebook is currently is growing at 21 million new users a month.
During the month of February (or what is left of it), I want to explore the impact Facebook has on the future of the church. I will be posting ideas and hosting discussions related to Facebook and its impact on day-to-day church practice. Some of the questions I would like to explore: ought churches to ignore, engage, or celebrate Facebook? Do you think faith communities need to have a presence on Facebook, why or why not?
I will look at examples of churches that engage Facebook, either by having a wonderful page, or… (not). I will also be examining both individual congregations and denominational Facebook pages as well. If you would like me to evaluate your church’s Facebook page, in light of our discussions, I would be happy to analyze it and feature it on this site.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am currently on sabbatical. During the sabbatical, one of my research projects involves looking at faith communities and their interaction with social media. I would like to share some of my findings with you as they arise — to think out loud through this website — hopefully to stimulate conversation about the church and social media. My hope, through this February discussion, is that our mutual understanding of the church’s mission in a Facebook world grows deeper.
So, in this first post — what are your initial thoughts about Facebook and churches? Concerns? Passions? What ideas ought we to explore here for the month?
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A timely discussion, Ryan. Most of our staff (5 out of 7) of our Leadership Staff (6 pastors and administrator) are all on Facebook, including our senior pastor. We have found it a unique and good way to keep in touch, even in more casual ways, with our congregation–especially the under 40-crowd. Comments and threads that we post are viewed differently, we think, than what they hear from us from the pulpit. It is another way to give healthy input to matters of faith, ethics and our attempts to be a truly missional church. It is also a great way to know what’s going on in the minds and hearts of quite a large number of members every day. Yes, there are some potential “dangers,” but I believe it has been a very positive way to communicate, be authentic and gain some insights. I’m interested in learning what your research is showing.
Comment by Jeanie McGowan — February 8, 2010 @ 11:53 am
I got into Facebook because I’m in youth ministry. I got an account the first week they opened it to non-students. There were lots of concerns from parents of middle schoolers and elementary ages kids. Which I thought was odd, since I’m a high school pastor. It was the ignorance of the unknown. Now I see partents thinking about FB in the same manner as movies, music, and who their kids hang out with.
The sheer amount of people on Facebook tells me we as the church have to have a presence there. When churches decide not to be on FB I’d put that on the stack of culturally obtuse things we’ve done in the past 15-20 years. To me staying out of FB is like saying money is evil so we’re not going to use it. Money’s not the problem, sin is right? Facebook creates a great opportunity to do ministry. Let’s not be caught on the sidelines.
Comment by Randy — February 8, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
In a shameless bit of self-promotion. the significance of Facebook and other digital communities, as well as videogaming, makes books like the new Halos & Avatars, edited by Craig Detweiler, all the more important. This book by John Knox Westminster Press looks theologically, culturally, and missionally at the digital revolution.
Comment by John W. Morehead — February 9, 2010 @ 11:02 am
Thanks, John, for the tip. Could you share how this book specifically focuses on facebook and social networking and church? That would help our discussion. Thanks!
Comment by Ryan Bolger — February 9, 2010 @ 12:31 pm
I posted this on facebook, but the conversation is here. Doh!
Hey Ryan, the church I pastor (Freedom Vineyard, Ottawa) connects and organizes around facebook rather than a building. Let me back up. We have a dispersed model community meeting for worship in homes across a fairly large city. We spend a lot of our energy building community that includes both Christians and non-Christians, and as a result most of our people did not come into this with a high value for Sunday services. When we’ve tried to move towards this type of format there was either a push back (“you can’t take our family day”) or no real commitment. So we encourage the few folks who like Sunday worship to attend either one of the other Vineyards or a church they like nearer to them. But this also made organizing events (we have done a lot of training type events over the years) and gatherings difficult.
After trying out a simple webpage and then a yahoo group, a bunch of my congregants dragged me onto facebook. My hesitation came from trying out mySpace and not finding it very useful, but still sucking up a lot of my time. But facebook has been quite helpful. We maintain a main group page for our church, event pages for training/equipping/worship events and also a group page for our current reading group and even pages for our mixed communities. There are only a few folk who are not connected to one of these, so we keep them in the loop by email or phone. But it is like having a dynamic announcement sheet that everyone can participate in.
My big concern is that despite folks using it as a notification system, it really only suits a certain type of person as a means of continued dialogue. For example our reading group has discussions set up for each chapter, usually with some guiding question posed by the leader – but it is rare for a discussion to break out. When the group meets it is always a very lively discussion, but online this is harder to foster. I find this frustrating in that I’ve been involved in online communities since FidoNet. I am involved in a couple larger Vineyard efforts (VBI, Canadian National Forums) to foster dialogue and worry that the lurkers will far outweigh the participants.
Comment by Frank Emanuel — February 10, 2010 @ 9:08 am
Frank, I find this so interesting. Your folks didn’t need to be drawn into facebook, what was challenging for them was the Sunday service. Wow. I think we will see this as more and more the norm as folks have a hard time getting to Sunday every week. Do you find that your community has lost anything by communicating more online? Do you see yourselves as a close community?
Regarding your discussions , what about mixing it up — one week meeting and the next week online. Do you think that would get folks in the pattern of more dialogue? How much say did they have in the selection of the topic?
I see that you are doing most of the writing on the wall — can anyone post there? What about anyone adding photos, videos, etc.? Is it available to anyone but the interest isn’t there?
Just brainstorming — thanks for sharing, Frank…
Comment by Ryan Bolger — February 11, 2010 @ 4:53 pm
Thanks Randy — I hear what you are saying – this is the meeting space of our youth and increasingly older ages — to stay out of FB seems to ignore our present reality…
Comment by Ryan Bolger — February 11, 2010 @ 4:56 pm