Facebook wasn’t designed for Churches.
I recently read about Mom’s who are using Facebook to host live auctions for children’s clothing. Being completely based on the honor system, I guess this is a slick way to avoid eBay fees? A few do it from home, while other auction hosts are from larger organizations. At a scheduled time, these kid clothes auctions post a picture, the price, the sizes, and the auction begins!
I’m sure this isn’t what Mark had in mind when he started Facebook.
Just because Facebook wasn’t designed for this, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. The same goes for Churches.
How does your Church use Facebook?
Facebook was designed for socialization. So, placing your Church on Facebook should be natural. Unless your congregation is void of Facebook members, there’s no reason your Church should be left out.
There are a number of things you should be putting on Facebook.
- If it’s something for the Church bulletin, put it on Facebook.
- If it’s for the prayer chain, more than likely, put it on Facebook.
- If it’s a flyer posted-up in the Church, put it on Facebook.
- If you put it on the Church website, put it on Facebook.
The list could go on!
There’s no way around it. People are on Facebook, and where people are, your Church should be also.
Too Much of a Good Thing
As Google+ Plus has emerged onto the scene, we should be reminded not to place all of our eggs in one basket. Facebook is here, today, and that’s all we know. A new day brings new technology, so don’t think about forcing or pressuring Church members to get on Facebook so they know what’s going on next Sunday.
Some Church members rely on the Church bulletin, the prayer chain and the posters hanging in the Church hallways for their information. Don’t solely rely on Facebook. Keep printing those bulletins for those that want them and don’t delete your website!
The Real Church
As an online generation emerges and more and more of spend more and more time online, we must never forget that just as the building isn’t the Church, neither is the Church Facebook Page.
Being social is great. Connecting with others is important. Keeping in touch is valuable. Knowing about each other’s lives is huge. But, social networking tools like Facebook should never replace face to face interaction and group participation.
After all, Facebook wasn’t designed for Churches.
What cool and creative ways does your Church use Facebook (and other social networking tools)?
[HT: ACS Technologies | Images via Carol Browne, JD Hancock and brooklyn]
Joel says
We are a traditional church that doesn’t put a ton of resources toward IT/tech, but we found a free Facebook app that is highly customizable and is perfect for churches – http://www.shortstackapp.com
Eric Dye says
Great link share! Thank you!
Brian Davis says
We use Facebook Events, Photo Albums, News Feeds at my church (www.facebook.com/ccvsocal) to update the congregation. Using the Graph API we have also pulled these elements from all of our various ministry facebook pages and have them set up to display on our homepage (www.ccvsocal.com), Facebook driven news section (www.ccvsocal.com/facebook-feed/) and ministry sub-pages (www.ccvsocal.com/adults/college/). We also pull from our Facebook Photo Albums to drive the photo albums on our website (www.ccvsocal.com/media/photo-gallery/). It’s all very much a work in progress, but by tying to Facebook these elements that were previously a huge pain to update in a timely matter are now updated automatically as ministries update their Facebook Pages. In the long run it would be great to start from scratch, clean up the look and develop this integration into a WordPress plugin, but for the time being we are just piecing it together in PHP. Any ideas for future development or improvement would be much welcomed.
Eric Dye says
I’m impressed. Really impressed.
Rebecca Anderson says
I was a bit hesitant about using Facebook for our church – since we are updating our website (www.trbcphx.org) with daily posts/devotions, it seemed like putting the same thing up on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/trbcphx.org) would just be a duplication… But, not everyone visits the website regularly – so having our daily posts/devotions show up on the Facebook newsfeed is a benefit we can’t achieve through just the website.
We use a WordPress Plugin to automatically post our website updates to our Facebook page – making it almost worry-free. Plus we’ve begun to experiment with Facebook ads, which are increasing our Facebook page traffic as well.
So far, so good – but always interested in ways to make it better!
Eric Dye says
Great integration!
It’s great that you’ve found a solution, so you only have to update in one place.
😀
Alexandra says
Hi Rebecca
Which plugin do you use? As we also have a WordPress blog as well as a facebook page, and I just have not found the right plugin to use.
Rebecca Anderson says
We tried several, but the one that works best for us is called “Link to Facebook”. After set-up it doesn’t require any manual action – automatically puts a link for our posts up on our FB page (creates a post including the featured image pic from the post). Here’s the link to the WP plugin info: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-link-to-facebook/
You can have a peek at the way the link posts look at:
http://www.facebook.com/trbcphx.org
Eric Dye says
That’s great!
Alexandra says
Thanks so much Rebecca ! Will definitely have a look at it!
Stefan Tribble says
We normally post verses, sermon videos, announcements, and various other things on our page. Also, we also integrate our facebook into our website and our website into facebook. All of our facebook post go to our twitter feeds, and we also made a custom welcome page to give first time visitors a little information on our church.
http://facebook.com/StarkvilleFUMC
Eric Dye says
Very nice! I like it!
Adam says
I started messing with Facebook for our church about 2 years ago or so. We were first a group and then got a page last year sometime.
We post message & music audio/video, verses, announcements, etc. But I have recently started trying interaction questions from the week’s message or just random fun stuff to help people engage.
We did a custom landing page pretty recently (it’s a free one but I like it so far), looking to do something more professional in the near future. FB Events is a great way to get extra space on the news feed when we are doing a service project or launching a new message series.
We’ve found FB and Twitter are pretty helpful for getting something together in a hurry (immediate needs and what not). I had a lady who needed a ride to church, I posted Saturday afternoon and by saturday evening I had a half-dozen people offering to pick her up. A lot more efficient then emailing a huge list!
We are using a Clover Website which overall I love (so easy to update and manage) but we don’t have integration with facebook or twitter. We do have nice links setup and all that, but there isn’t any give and go. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!
I’m really excited about the possibilities it brings up. Thanks for starting this thread!
Eric Dye says
Your Clover site looks great, and so does your Facebook Page!
It sounds like you guys are doing an awesome job. FTW!
Rebecca Anderson says
Any chance we could get a link to Adam’s site? I’d love to see what he’s done – always looking for better, newer, faster, splashier ideas!
Adam says
Hey Rebecca! Our site is http://www.watersedgegathering.com and our facebook is http://www.Facebook.com/watersedgelc
Would love any feedback! We are always working on trying to get better!
Eric Dye says
Thanks, Adam!
Rebecca Anderson says
Thanks Adam – WOW! Your website especially gave me some great ideas for simplifying/clarifying our message.
Alexandra says
I am the Social Media administrator for our ministry and we use our Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/andrejennyr) for “live time updating” while our service is on. Some of our fans rely solely on this as they might not have television to watch our broadcast but can still keep updated on what’s going on during the service. We have also by way of custom tabs (iframewrapper) included our live stream straight into our Facebook Page, which makes it nice for people to not have to move away from the page (I’ll be adding the comment feature there shortly too).
We post our daily devotional, events, photos (during the service) and scriptures, comments. We even do salvations via our page, prayer requests, testimonies – all our activity is on our page. Our facebook page has definitely not replaced our website as we still have a lot of traffic there too.
Eric Dye says
That’s some serious use! Way to go!!!