Social Media for Ministry

Below is an article about Social Media from Vanderbloemen Search Group.  For more resources from them visit http://www.vanderbloemen.com

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By Holly Hall



Whether you like it or not, social media is not a fad. It's here to stay. Social media has rapidly changed the way we communicate with each other, consume knowledge, and make decisions. One of the easiest and cost effective ways for your church to remain relevant and expand its reach is to establish its social media presence.



Our friend Nils Smith is the Web Pastor at Community Bible Church in San Antonio, TX. He has become an expert in how ministries can use social media to engage their community. What I appreciate most about Nils is that his knowledge comes from his hard work building Community Bible Church's online community, which William and Nils discussed in this interview. He's able to guide ministry leaders in building their own online presence because he's built one from the ground up.



Nils' first book Social Media Guide for Ministry will be released to the public soon, but Nils was kind enough to send me a pre-release edition of the book a couple weeks ago to review. It's the most thorough, practical, and insightful guides to social media for churches that I know of, and I wanted to share some of it with you.

Here are 5 of my favorite insights from the book:


◦                     Social media allows the messages we communicate to go farther faster.

◦                     A church or ministry's Facebook page is just as important if not more important than their website.

◦                     One of the biggest mistakes churches make on their websites is not making it clear what time they meet/gather. This is true also for your Facebook page.

◦                     When you post something on a social network, you are initiating a conversation. Use inspiration, information, and conversation to guide your posts to social media.

When planning a strategy, set aside 15 minutes a week to review social insights from the past week and one hour a month to analyze the past month and restructure your strategy and goals for the coming month.

Service Transitions

Below is a good read on service transitions from our friends at Church Juice.  For more articles like this visit www.churchjuice.com.

Weekly church services require plenty of planning. We spend time picking music, writing sermons and lining up all the different elements that go into building a meaningful service. But there’s one thing most churches don’t spend nearly enough time planning: transitions; the moments that happen between all the individual elements.

Nothing kills the flow of a service like a bad transition. If you disrupt the flow, you’re jarring your congregation out of a worshipful state. You see, poor transitions give people time to think about something other than worship. Whether it’s a major letdown after a powerful song or lag time as someone walks up to the platform, poorly planned transitions get peoples’ minds wandering. They’ll start to wonder, “Why aren’t we still singing,” or “What’s going on?”

While most worship services are made up of little pieces carried out by various people, they should always feel like one cohesive presentation. Flow doesn’t just happen on it’s own. It takes planning and practice, and it also means knowing exactly what you’re going to say. Even if the timing of a transition is smooth, flow can get chopped by a bunch of ums, uhs or ramblings.

Whether you’re a pastor, worship leader or volunteer, you’re in the business of communicating God’s story. You miss opportunities to help people become more enriched in that story if you’re doing things to take them out of the moment. Transitions are one of those things you can easily clean up with a little extra effort. I heard Whitney George, the Arts Director at Church On The Move, explain it this way: The difference between good and great is the last 5 percent, which means you have to sweat the small stuff.

And for me, that means as church communicators, we should never disrupt the flow of worship.