This is the 2nd Part of a 2 Part Series by Guest Poster Graham Brenna.
As I mentioned in part one, my wheelbarrow is patience. This is the type of call to action that gives me no patience
We have the will of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the best news anyone could ever receive and all the social technology imaginable to build powerful community everywhere that creates disciples of Jesus. So let’s do it!
The last line there… “So let’s do it!” is seriously the best call to action ever.
There is no doubt that social media is playing a large part in our lives right now. Our interaction with Web 2.0 will only continue to grow. As I mentioned in part one though, there is some big change involved in doing this. The DNA of the local church will need to make a shift in order to accept the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Blogs etc. as valuable assets.
My biggest problem with patience is laid out in Nick’s quote.He says that “we have the best news anyone could ever receive!” My thought is that the longer we wait, the longer we don’t make social media for ministry a priority, the bigger the chances that we will have missed an opportunity to minister to someone who really needs it! So when an idea like ministry via social media is recognized as good… I need to have the patience to realize that it will happen. It’ll just take some time. Using social media for ministry takes a real plan.
A plan is only as good as the degree of implementation of the plan. Many have big goals, but to achieve them takes real effort
Ron totally put me in my place. I have big goals… but I need to make sure I’m implementing a strategic plan when it comes to carrying out those goals. This often takes patience… one can rarely just wake up and be strategic about something. When you’re in the business of changing DNA it takes a plan, it takes follow-through, it takes real effort.
So I pose the question to you… what are you afraid to jump in to? What is your wheelbarrow?
[Image from Kazukichi]
jaycaruso says
I feel your pain. Over the last several months I have seen how social media has been such a boon for Christian ministry and trying to convince the leadership at my church to get with it has been a struggle. What's more frustrating is that out of the four full-time Pastors our church has on staff, three of them are under the age of 40. One would think getting them caught up on social media would be easy, but it hasn't been. Three of the Pastors have blogs. Only the main pastor's blog is the one I read. The other two built it around the ministry they oversee instead of around themselves and as such, the content is very stale.
They're missing the boat and it's frustrating. They're getting ready to send out 30,000 mailers around the city for our Easter Services. We did the same thing for Christmas and yet attendance only went up a nominal percentage over regular services and that's largely because it was Christmas. I suspect most people do with mailers like that what I do with them – throw them in the recycling bin or the trash.
I just recently (within the last two weeks) submitted a proposal to our leadership to kind of wake them up a little to the opportunities we're missing by ignoring social media as a ministry tool. Rather than throwing a whole bunch of stuff at them in an email, I prepared a document laying out the steps I feel need to be taken, to improving our website with more images and video to getting the church to embrace social media (explaining with hard numbers the growth of Facebook and Twitter) as another outlet for ministry and as a successful tool for marketing. The best part about using social media is that it is by and large FREE.
It was very well received. The question is: Will they be willing to jump in?
Graham Brenna says
I hear ya man. I bet that felt good to type?! I'd love to see the document you wrote up that you sent to your fellow staffers. My email is graham [at] gbrenna [dot] com.
Perhaps we can learn from each other and discuss what works and what doesn't?
jaycaruso says
I'd be happy to send it to you. Oh and I'm not even a staff member. I'm just a volunteer representing what I see is the outside world looking in. Granted, I have a good relationship with the leaders so it's not like I'm just some guy out there they don't know, but it's more challenging because I'm not there to push this on them on a more regular basis.
Phillip Gibb says
I don't think I have a problem convincing our church about social media. The big wheel barrows we have is volunteer overload and adoption or buy in by the general congregation to participate – but then that is very short sighted because the inherent thing about social media is that it transcends the boundaries of the local church.
Personally when it come to video (being the guy that does 90% of the video at church) I find myself hamstrung because we don't have enough content and the push is to use the stuff provided by out partner church. I hate that because I cant to do independent stuff that we can post all over – copyright free etc. But it is way way too much effort.
You know I still find people at church asking what twitter is. Only 3 people in my community group (11 in total) don't do twitter – he he we are a progressive group. But most people don't seem to understand the hooHa in twitter and facebook and other social networking efforts. I see this evidence in the number of people that view and participate in the church blogs and FB pages. Sometimes I wonder what the point is. Sometimes I want to press the button that says "wake up Call"
Graham Brenna says
You have a "wake up call" button?!?! Does it resemble the "EASY" button? haha.
I totally understand the video thing. I'm the guy who produces about 90% of our videos as well. I'm actually trying to do less of that even though I love it. I'm working with a volunteer to build a volunteer based video production team! We want to become a little more "professional" with our productions and if I were to do it all alone… like you said, it is just way too much effort.
I'm also trying to get our congregation on Twitter. It's happening… slowly. I've started putting my twitter URL and my blog's URL in the signature of my emails. Hang in there man… good to know other's are having the same slow responses as I am.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel!
jaycaruso says
"the inherent thing about social media is that it transcends the boundaries of the local church. "
Perfectly said.
Phillip Gibb says
Yeah, trying to 'replace myself', just not easy finding someone willing to put in the (after)hours during the week.
Busy reading the Google Story by David A. Vise, in it there is this phrase by Larry Page: "You should try to do things most people would not." Guess that that could be a wheelbarrow breaking philosophy.
If I could win volunteers over into that sort of mindset then the so-called 'impossible' would be fun. Of course, while remembering nothing is impossible with God.
Graham Brenna says
I like that quote… I manage a volunteer staff of about 35+ people. Only a handful of them go above and beyond without me asking them to. Weekend worship is much easier when that handful is on the schedule 🙂