Meet Your Church’s New Director of Social Media
In: Church|Uncategorized
13 Aug 2010
I’d like to introduce you to Chris.
She manages social media interaction at your church.
Chris saw an exasperated mother’s posts on her Facebook feed, and offered to watch the kids last Friday night.
Chris uses her WordPress blog to keep a public journal of what she’s finding in her daily… ok semi-weekly… Bible reading.
Chris’ tweets got the word out about a new family that needs help unloading their moving van.
Chris live-blogged last week’s sermon on her iPad.
Here’s the thing… Chris isn’t on staff at the church. She isn’t even in an official volunteer role. She doesn’t have an account on your website CMS, and she doesn’t know the login for your church Twitter account. But, whether she knows it or not, she is leading your church’s social media interaction.
So while your office staff debates whether you should establish a Facebook page, or a group; As you pour over each carefully crafted 140 character sermon nugget; As you stand in the digital pulpit and preach to the virtual masses; don’t forget about Chris and what REAL ministry is.
11 Responses to Meet Your Church’s New Director of Social Media
Ivan
August 16th, 2010 at 8:42 am
Meredith Gould
August 16th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Thanks for posting this — real wisdom about real reality, really.
Jay miklovic
August 16th, 2010 at 10:01 am
This is a good article, and it is critical as church leaders to discover who the “chris” people are. Chris is a good example, we also must be conscious of the social media trolls in our congregations that bring every staff decision into question, and spread opinion w/o knowing all the facts. We have great unseen ministry going on in the social web, there is also great unseen distruction.
Carl
August 16th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Great reminder Jay.
I’ve had a history of worrying too much about the latter, and completely ignoring the support that “Chris” needs.
Paul Steinbrueck
August 16th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Excellent post, Carl. Most churches are already in social media via the people in the church. The question for each church is whether they are going to engage in that conversation – listen to it, influence it, grow it – or not.
@scottayrs
August 16th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Great post.. I was Chris at our church. ( http://www.thrivefacebook.info ). I started going there last November and loved it. Posted sermon thoughts, pics, vids and etc.
Our pastor was smart enough to see that and approach me about officially running our social media, seeing as I was already a driving force behind it. Now 6 months later we have grown our Facebook following from 200 to over 1000 and are now leveraging it to create more conversation..
Oh.. and I’m not paid any $$.. Although Tom did buy me Panera Bread the other day.. Crap.. now I”m on staff!
Jerry
August 16th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
The back channels (represented by Chris) are the most important communication channels in any church. You could easily argue that they always have been.
The beauty of Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, etc is that leadership can monitor and adapt to REAL thought currents. Eliminates a lot of guesswork. Of course, it also demands the courage to accept that you aren’t going to drive your agenda via a talking head anymore. The premium is on listening, monitoring and morphing.
Thanks, Lauren for this reminder.
Iamepiscopalian
August 18th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Great post, it captures a typical progression and great food for thought for ALL houses of worship.
Churches: Stop contemplating social media and just dive in.
August 18th, 2010 at 10:36 am
[...] we go any further, read this short post from CarlBliss.com about Chris. Guess what? Your church probably doesn’t have just one “Chris” [...]
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Matt Brown
November 18th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Great blog – great thoughts!!