It didn’t make any sense.
It was four days after the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. 163 people in my community had liked the Facebook post proposing a neighborhood prayer vigil. At least 30 had indicated they planned to attend. So we made a quick run to buy several dozen candles, and prepared for a good crowd of people on that Thursday evening.
Six people showed up.
I asked a colleague why so many people would be in favor of the idea, but so few would actually participate. His response reoriented my approach to social media and ministry.
He said, “Those people who liked and commented on your Facebook post did participate. To them, that’s how they contributed to the event. In this era, online engagement is as real as in-person engagement.”
My colleague was right, but his response raises as many questions as it answers:
1. For churches who have lived and died by the worship attendance metric, how do we adapt our measures of success to include online engagement?
1. For churches who have lived and died by the worship attendance metric, how do we adapt our measures of success to include online engagement?
2. How do we help people move from social media engagement to in-person attendance? Or is to enough to build online community?
3. How is community that is built online different from traditional church communities?
4. How do we foster stewardship, voluntarism, and other forms of investment for people who engage through social media?
5. What about the fact that many people in our society still don’t have access to or the desire to use the Internet? How do we avoid creating exclusivity through our social media ministries?
These are just a few of the many issues we face as we plunge ever deeper into the Digital Age. It truly is a brave new world. As our experience with the prayer vigil taught us, it full of surprises and challenges.
In what ways have you done ministry through social media? What success and challenges have you faced?
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