Better Late than Never April 6, 2010

One of our readers, Dan Simmons, had this to say in a comment about the church and social networking sites:

“We are looking at putting our church on Facebook…most comments I have received from others are positive, what do you guys think? Do you have any lessons learned, or advice for a chruch doing this? We have a website, but people do not use the blog feature, and I thought we would try FB as a blog and communication tool. Appreciate any help you can offer. Thanks.”

Below is what I wrote back to Dan in his comment. Since we’ve never had a blog post about this, I thought I’d re-post it here. Many others have already written on this (most of them probably with a lot more experience at it than us), but it’s better to be late to the table than to miss dinner entirely.

Facebook and other social networking sites seem to be the “hub” of today’s informal communication. Whereas we used to tell our friends things around the water cooler or over the phone, now we post them to our profiles–as you said, even blogs don’t get much traffic anymore compared with social networking sites. Many businesses have jumped on this bandwagon, using Facebook as a way to connect their customers to each other and draw them deeper into their market with coupons, contests, and special offers. We have our own Facebook page which hasn’t taken off quite as I’d hoped yet, though it is opening more connections with readers than a totally one-sided model.

For churches, Facebook can be a blessing and a curse. Putting yourself out there definitely can open doors of ministry, by providing visitors and members an easy way to connect with church staff and other members and for you to communicate with members about upcoming events, etc. However, it can easily devolve into pettiness if you aren’t controlling the content of what people post.

I think you should move forward with the idea, but here are a few guidelines to remember:
1) Set the tone. Make the Facebook page feel like an extension of your church, with an emphasis on Christ, Scripture, discipleship & ministry. Get involved because this is a new way to further the cause of Christ, not because it’s “hip” to be on Facebook. Relevance should never be our goal as believers–becoming and making disciples of Jesus should always be our focus.

2) Control the content–gently. You can edit settings to control how much (or how little) you allow “fans” (the equivalent of “friends” for organizations) to post to the page. The best policy is to allow user feedback–that’s what makes Facebook different from a static website–just don’t let it get away from you. Check the page often, and if any comment threads or discussions are going in a poor direction, you have the ability as the page administrator to remove them. You want to facilitate healthy, spiritual interaction through the page, not serve as just another place for gossip or complaining.

3) Take what you do seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. You want to make sure that you use your page to impress upon those who visit it that the church (and the pastor) are sinners saved by God’s great grace. Don’t use the page as a platform for moralizing, but turn people’s attention to the Lord. It’s okay to “be real” on Facebook within the context of pointing readers to Christ.

4) Don’t let it stop there. If visitors never make it past your Facebook page to a real interaction with you or members of your church, it’s not doing its job. “Community” is a word that gets thrown around a lot in Church circles today, and Facebook can be a way to create a pseudo-community that makes us feel good without actually accomplishing ministry. Be intentional about pursuing further conact with the people you may meet through the page, invite them to church if they’re local, and certainly take every opportunity to magnify the name of Christ. Used wisely, Facebook and its ilk can provide a great opportunity to move beyond the four walls of the church, but it doesn’t happen automatically.

The Sin of Boredom March 10, 2010

Did you ever stop to wonder why in an age where the entire world is quite literally at our fingertips through the internet and other digital media that we (I’m extrapolating from my own experience here) spend so much time being bored? We have so many choices that we can’t possibly decide what to do in any given situation without a nagging doubt that we’re missing out on something better. The end result is a something of a shutdown of our ability to make decisions and our desire to act–just look at the proliferation of devices whose appeal is based on randomization. We set our music players to “shuffle” because we have so many songs we can’t possibly decide what to listen to; we have iPhone apps that will select a restaurant for us; Wikipedia will pull up random articles for those craving information without direction; “Can’t make up your mind? Let us do it for you.”

We tend to view the inevitable dissatisfaction and boredom that our way of life brings as something that plagues us, something external to be removed (by what, more choices?) rather than something deeply wrong within ourselves. Are we bored because there truly is nothing exciting or meaningful to do, or because we know what to do and we know that it places demands on our lives that we are unwilling to accept? Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop in more ways than one. Boredom can open our hearts to sin, sure, but the boredom itself can be just as effective a tool for Satan to keep us from obedience to the Lord.

Perhaps boredom is God’s way of calling us back to Himself and reminding us that nothing of this world can satisfy our souls. Perhaps He is using boredom to open up an empty space within our souls to be filled with prayer and meditation on His Word. Are we listening when that still small voice creeps into the void (in spite of our best efforts to squeeze it out with entertainment and the noise of life) or do we run from what it calls us to in pursuit of ever more unfulfilling “pleasures”?

Maybe you found this post because you’re surfing the internet out of boredom, no shame there, but I’d encourage us all to listen when the Lord is trying to get our attention. When those “lulls in the action” of your day come, take it as a cue to take your soul off “shuffle” and bow your heart to God in prayer. Take time to read and re-read His Word. Spend a moment reflecting on the magnitude of His blessing and sincerely ask Him what He would have you do with your time, talent, and treasure. You may just find that boredom only exists when you actively ignore God’s presence, and that there is nothing in life quite so exciting and consuming as prayerful obedience to Him.

Posted by Justin Lonas

Welcome to the new Disciple Blog! December 4, 2009

Ah, the blog–that repository of semi-collected thoughts that we float across cyberspace, hoping desperately to connect with someone else who’s thinking along a similar vein.

We attempted the blog on pulpithelps.com when we redesigned that site 2 years ago: 44 postings later, we had a grand total of 13 comments, only 5 of which were from people not known to me personally. In other words, it flopped.

Still, we thought we’d try again, and our first couple of posts will be some of my timeless favorites from the old blog–my apologies to those of you who did actually read them at the time. We’re doing this, not because it’s a fad (blogging is so early 2000s!) but because it provides a great place for the interaction of ideas without the pressure of “publication” (deadlines, editorial process, etc.). We see it as part of the relationship we’re cultivating with our readers for the purpose of discipleship, which is, of course, our name and the “theme of our song.”

Here’s hoping it takes this time…