the cheapest, most effective ministry tool I've found
Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 12:03AM Early on in our preparation to launch MERGE, I asked Kem Meyer, our communications director, what it would take to create our own social networking site for MERGE or even GCC. Kem is much better at these things than me, so she spoke with stunning wisdom and clarity. It was something like, "um, Jason... have you heard of Facebook? Why not just use that?" Brilliant. You might be thinking, "wow jason. it takes a web guru to point you to facebook?" Yep.
Thanks to Kem's insight, we've had a Facebook group for MERGE since the beginning. I can't imagine doing college ministry without it. Each week when we meet, we invite people to track us down on Facebook. The group is also linked from our page on gccwired.com. Here's why it works for us:
- Everyone is already using it. With 175 million users, it's a part of people's everyday life, so why not meet them where they already are?
- People elect to join the group, so we know we're not 'spamming' anyone who doesn't want the messages we send to group members with MERGE updates.
- It's easy to create events related to the group, and the response is terrific. We'll create an event and invite the MERGE group members, and within 30 minutes we'll already have 50 responses. With time, we've learned that it's normal to have a 3:5 ratio between 'yes' RSVPs and actual event attendance. The ratio might be different for your group, but with just a few events you'll get a feel for what to expect.
- It lets me (and anyone else at MERGE) place names and faces. A quick scroll through the member list reinforces the connections I made during the last Wednesday night. It's also a great way to ask myself "who should I be inviting onto the team?"
The bottom line is that it works. It's a natural way for the MERGE crowd to connect, and that equals a win for us.
Are you using Facebook in your ministry? What have you learned? What about other web-based social media? Are any of you working with internet campuses? I'd love to hear from you. Whether you're a ministry leader or simply on the user end of a ministry's online presence, I'd love to learn from your experience.
See you in the comments...
Reader Comments (5)
Hey Jason,
Awesome website man, I really enjoy reading and learning from you. As for your topic, here are my experiences:
1. Last year I was a college minister with The Navigators on the campus of West Texas A&M University. We had one of our student leaders set up a Facebook account at the begging of the year for us, but it really was worthless for us. The idea was great, but the commitment to continually update it was not there. Instead of a student leader, one that really was not that involved then, we should have given it to either a staff member or very committed student leader...then I would postulate that the impact would have been much greater.
2. The church that I attend currently has created a church-wide social network on NING. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the church attendees are on this private social network, which is very similar to combination of Facebook and Myspace. However, as great as it is for the church as a whole, the young adults and student ministries are not making the most use out of it yet. Instead we have found more effective for our students to use texting and monthly newsletters, but there is still a desire laying underneath to incorporate more electronic methods.
Keep up the great work man! By the way, how do you approach the whole arena of discipleship in your ministry?
Thanks, Tom!
Regarding your church's social network, NING, do you think it fares better for your church than finding a way to use Facebook or MySpace for that purpose? Are there unique benefits to having a church-specific online social network? Do you think anything is lost?
As to your question, "how do you approach the whole arena of discipleship in your ministry?"... I'll be sure to post about that next week.
Jason,
Great questions. I emailed one of the pastors to get his perspective on our private network. From the church's perspective they see it has many benefits: people feel more protected and everything that goes on is behind a firewall, they can do all church things, annoucenemente, etc. They see it as a great community building opportunity.
The benefits would be the ability to craft the website to suit the specific needs of the church, instead of being forced to conform to the prescribed forms of Facebook, etc. It is more secure, as you can only have access by signing up AND being granted acceptance by those who run it. It also creates another aspect of community since everyone on there is a member of the church.
Things lost would be the universal outreach aspect of social networking. It is limited to only those who sign-up and use it. Plus it creates an additional network for people to put time into.
A thought about public VS private. The camping club we camp with has open forum and closed forum areas. Any one can view the general topic areas. The individual chapter areas (where the outings are planned and attendance registered) require club membership to view. You must be a member to post anywhere in the forum.
In our case, the privacy for events is to preclude anybody from casually finding out where we are going to be and who is going to be there (and who won't be at home that weekend). So it's really about security.
Even at church there is tension between creating an open and inviting place that still has a secure environment - especially for children.
You know - I'm a holdout on the Facebook thing. It's not about the pro's and con's of Facebook. It's about finding time for one more thing in my life.
hey jason,
we just started our college gathering a year ago, and wanted communication to be as simple as possible, so like you we use facebook primarily. Our church also uses fellowship one, so guests fill out a card with their email+info then we add that to the church mailing list, and have our own college list. We might send one major announcement a month to the email list, but facebook is SOOO easy to shoot everyone a quick message.
Like you said, everyone's already on it, checks it - why reinvent the wheel. We've been really happy with it.
Keeping it simple.