Over the last few months, several youth ministries have begun to adopt a policy to make a Facebook Page or Group their one and only presence online. They have put together a great list that I find fascinating to analyze and way the positives and negatives.
Here is the list that they came up with to make this move from a youth group website to solely being on Facebook.
- Teenagers are already on Facebook. We need to meet them where they are at now.
- We have created a website three years ago and I keep forgetting to update it.
- We do not want to have the extra cost of the website that we have to pay every month to host.
- I do not have the time or knowledge to create the website.
- Our website is not being used.
Some of these are great ideas and understandable in light of the recession and how busy youth workers really are. We do need to make sure that we properly utilize the resources we have and maximize our time with people, not websites. You did not get hired to create websites. But for me, these reasons are not enough to cop out and give up on websites.
Here are three refutes to the reasons above and why a website is still very necessary.
1. You Alienate Non-Facebook Users
Facebook was made to connect people to others and create social networks, yet parents have had a lot of reservations for allowing their teenagers to sign up for an account. In fact, middle school youth workers specifically should listen up because many are not on Facebook. At the same time, even though many adults are on the social networking site, just as many do not have an account. Using a Facebook Page as your only online presence means that teens and parents need to sign up to see and interact on the page, forcing parents to make decisions that you should not be making them have to make.
Even if EVERY single student has Facebook and parents can access and interact with your Facebook Page, promoting Facebook may be a big problem. Teens are spending too much time online, spepcifcally Facebook. We should NOT promote online bad habits. Look at some of the statistics of teens online usage from Retrevo.com:
- 56%: Social media users check Facebook at least once a day.
- 12%: Social media users check Facebook every couple of hours.
- 40%: Respondents who said they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message.
- 32%: Respondents who said using the sites was not off limits while eating a meal.
- 48%: Check Facebook after going to bed.
2. You Can Make Time for People
The excuse that you do not have time can be used for anything. Priorities should be established and you need to advertise your events, both on Facebook and the website. But when you through out that you need to spend more time with people than administrative work, you are not exploring all of your options. Let a volunteer or student leader own the website and meet with them regularly. Give them the tools, content, and empowerment to own this portion of the website and meet with them regularly. This delegation is both productive and Biblical. (Check out Exodus 18)
3. Websites Do Not Have To Be Hard Or Cost Money
WordPress has a great easy-to-design and use web application and they offer a free or inexpensive option. Completely setting up your website can take just an hour and cost you nothing while doing everything you want it to. Make the investment of an hour or two and put some great content out there, but remember that you need to keep it up-to-date and even link it to your other social media outlets.
Conclusion
Facebook was created to be social online, not to be the sole online presence for a company or organization. Instead of making this the only way to get the word out about an event or interact with students online, let it supplement your website.
What do you think?
Ben Read says
Totally agree. I think in some ministry contexts, only using Facebook can be ok. But for the most part, it shouldn’t be the only option. Youth Ministry websites can and should be an extension of the ministry as a whole. My prayer for our youth group’s website is that it would be designed in such a way that if a student not attached to our ministry, heck, even a student across the country were to google an issue, they might be able to stumble on our website and find resources to help them in their struggles.
Jeremy Smith says
The only time I can really justify using only Facebook is if volunteers or other adults are already plugged in and we can converse through this medium. Of course, I am in a position that only two of my volunteers use it, but all of the area youth workers I interact with are on Facebook and this has been the perfect tool to schedule meetings and share ideas! Great thoughts!
Adam Lehman says
I think youth ministry websites – in general – should provide resources to teens & parents – and be informative to parents. Help parents trust the ministry.
A facebook page doesn’t do this the same way a website would.
Though, if I had limited time & resources, I’d DEFINITELY go for facebook rather than a website.
Jeremy Smith says
I completely agree with you, websites should be designed to empower teens and their parents. What better way to give them the resources! That issue of time is more about a priority issue and I would suggest looking at the whole of your ministry and seeing what is truly important to you: empowering parents or another outreach event?
Brendan says
I generally agree with the article except for point one. Facebook Pages are public. Folks without an account can view events and group/organization info like youth service times and such.
Jeremy Smith says
They can view, but cannot interact. At the same time, just suggesting someone go to Facebook implies you want them to sign up and interact.
Jonathan says
They may not be able to interact on Facebook but you would run into the same problem if you were doing it on their website. An argument could be made that why would you force a parent / student to create an account for your website when they probably already have one on Facebook.
Jeremy Smith says
The point is not creating an account but forcing a parent’s hand. Many, many parents are against it. Your role is to support them.
brad says
I agree that FB should be a supplement to our websites, but this is actually a dumb topic altogether. Use whatever legal, moral, available means of communication to get the Word out and keep students, leaders, and parents informed, encouraged, and connected: texts, e-mails, web site, facebook, you tube, live announcements, video promos, bulletins, posters, mailers, morse code, homing pigeons, etc. God forbid that by using these means we would “imply” that someone should buy a phone, computer, DVD player, mailbox, or pigeon coop. c’mon man!
Eric J says
What worries me about facebook and youtube is that you have no control over the ads that appear on your page.
Jeremy Smith says
Definitely! Nor do you have immediate control over what people post. A website, you can establish that you review all content before it goes live. Facebook, while it does have controls to establish, do not give you the ability to review comments or wall posts. This could be a HUGE problem with photo comments and tagging.
Eric Dye says
Agreed.
Graham says
I helped create the youth website for my church’s youth group. They of course also use a Facebook group but for the reasons you stated above… it is not their sole online presence.
http://oslcyouthministries.com is the website that I setup using Standard Theme 😉
We’ve been using it for the past two years now and have about 365 parent’s and students subscribing to it’s Feedburner via email. So that’s pretty awesome!
Eric Dye says
Is there any other theme?
Jeremy Smith says
I love that the website has been such a success for you. What have they said is the best part about it? Also, love the logo you have at the top.
Graham says
The best part about our site is definitely that we have the majority of the parents subscribed to it.
Jeremy Smith says
Let me say that I am envious of that number!
terry says
Jimdo (http://www.jimdo.com/index.php) is another very user-friendly webpage platform that allows you to create and maintain a nice page without lots of time or design knowlege.
I agree – if you can do it… it is really worth it to have both FB and webpage presence…
Jeremy Smith says
Thanks for the share. I’ll have to check it out.
Joanna says
Another reason is making information easily find-able by new people. If I was new to a church and looking for information about the ministries it runs, I would usually go looking for a website and probably wouldn’t think to look on Facebook first for the information. I’m someone who uses facebook a lot, so it would probably be even more the case with infrequent or non-users.
Jeremy Smith says
Great point. And integrating your youth group into the main church’s website a must! But some people would only link their Facebook page from the church’s website. Still a big no-no!
Ruben Nuñez says
I highly recommend starting on Facebook and once you have the budget and resources launch a website that is highly integrated with social media. This would include Facebook and twitter feeds and icons, as well as using commenting features, flickr, calendars, etc…
A great deal of YM abandon their websites because they are just not dynamic enough. Updating them becomes a chore. If you integrate it with social media well enough, you in a sense create a community around your online presence. This leads to your youth actually using the site (as well as Facebook/twitter/flickr).
Jeremy Smith says
That is all fine and good, but if it is not a priority, then do not do it. Otherwise go all in. The cost is not more than $18/month which can be your greatest marketing tool! Look at it as a sound investment into the ministry and community.
chad swanzy says
If a youth ministry wanted to position itself in a relevant web environment where there was transparency, creativity, and viral sharing it should look more into tumblr. Tumblr’s popularity and rise among teenagers is a reflection of the growing annoyance with facebook’s chaotic culture. A youth ministry on tumblr would have a great chance of spurring creativity, affirmation, and authentic dialogue with non-believers. http://www.heartsweat.com is the tumblr landing space for a community I run in Austin.
Jeremy Smith says
Great thought! I have asked if anyone uses any other social media and my students only use Facebook, so this would not be a good use for myself. But great ideas.
Antoine RJ Wright says
I almost agree with this. Almost…
What’s missing in the article and resulting discussion is the context of the global uses of Facebook. For example, if you are in places where Facebook can be used on a mobile for no costs to the user, and these would be areas where the majority of folks are going online using a mobile, then making FB your website makes a ton of sense, and shouldn’t be overlooked at all. In fact, the expense of making your own mobile friendly site is more, no matter what kind of solution you use there. This happens to be the context for many non-English speaking and FB-using audiences.
On the other side of that, if you can make youth ministry or any other ministry resources available, without the reliance on a social network, or other server platform that you don’t own or can maintain, then yes, it’s a grat idea to not go that route. You can spend that energy on those social networks pointing to your wealth of resources and emphasizing the connections/conversations those services provide instead.
Context is important. Many of your churches need to consider both of my above paragraph as your missions IT focuses need to be different in domestic and international/affluent and non-affluent/mobile and non-mobile contexts.
Jeremy Smith says
Great cultural point. Thanks for the share.
James Cooper says
I’ve just re-launched a youth ministry site for a guy who’s an elder in my church: http://andrewpalmerministries.org.uk/ Andrew’s got loads of audio teaching on the site, which couldn’t be done on FB.
It’s responsive so it’s mobile friendly.
Andrew’s got a ‘normal’ profile on FB but hasn’t gone down the page route as he wanted complete control over what was said/commented on his site.
Jeremy Smith says
Exactly!