Christianity has a significant problem: We don’t know how to communicate our story! We send out newsletters filled with information. We stuff as much duplicate information as we can into our powerpoints, bulletins, newsletters, and times of announcement in worship. There has to be a better way!!!
I'm going to steal some words from Leonard Sweet today: It's not a question of whether Jesus would have tweeted or not. It's a question of what Jesus would tweet.
You see, Jesus engaged in the community of the day and, I believe, continues to engage. It's not a question of whether God would use twitter. God is using Twitter and Facebook and Google...the church may not be, but God is present and active in community and our community is ever-shifting to the internet.
Today we have to ask ourselves a lot of questions about how we are going to communicate as a church. We seem to think, these days, that the goal is to get our church on the internet and that will be 'good enough.' Maybe a website or a facebook page will get more people to come to us...where the real church is (behind a big stone wall). No. Not good enough. We have to take our experiences of Christ into our online communities if we are to live out our faith authentically.
Do we remind people not just to "like" the church (which, btw, is waaayyy luke-warm) with our bulletin or do we ask people to check-in to show their friends they were at church. Do we put an informational announcement out on our facebook page or do we RT (re-tweet) the pastor or church friend so that our followers become her or his followers?
What the "Googler" generation has grown up in (and what us older people may never catch onto) is a culture about relationships. It is not just about what we say, but, just as importantly, how we say it. The church needs to delve into the relationship-building connections of the web. We need to become more social and less institutional...and we need to find authentic ways to share God's love with the people of this world.
Image from flicker: H Sundholm: "This door belongs to Torshälla kyrka, i.e. the church in Torshälla, outside of Eskilstuna in Sweden."
The days of "going to" church are nearly over. No, those days have been over for some time, now. The days when people looked for their own denomination when they moved into town and came knocking at the doors to get in were lost in the 1960's. There is a remnant, but the church has failed to respond to everyone else...
Today we have an opportunity to share the experience of faith with remarkable crowds. Don't believe me? While I was preparing for and recovering from surgery I blogged. Over the past 6 weeks my wife and I have averaged 1000 hits per week on that blog. One of the posts, alone, boasts over 400 hits. On a Sunday morning I don't preach to crowds that large, sadly. That means that if we take our faith to the web in dynamic, interactive ways there are untapped ways to share the Gospel.
We don't need to advertise the upcoming rummage sale or fundraiser, we need to authentically share our experience of life and faith. That is what changes lives.
I’ve talked to a number of
pastors and other Christians who have taken a stand. They say, “that’s
why I don’t facebook.” And those who do facebook, seem to struggle with
just what it should be. They find themselves frustrated by a social
media that is so popular (and even essential) yet doesn’t work for them
or their church in terms of evangelism. What a shame that our church is
unable to share such an important story as Christ when companies are
able to use facebook and twitter to so effectively to market cheetos and
radio talk shows.
What is wrong with us? Well the
problem is not in the social media. I mean, social media has its
problems, but it has the potential to be a highly effective tool and it
has the potential to be used for the greater good of growing people in
faith. So it seems that ignoring it is to turn our backs on a new
frontier of evangelism. Now, having said that, I don’t blame any pastor
for turning their back...up until now. This new frontier is scary and
confusing.
The problem is that as churches we
have become confused over which story it is we are sharing. Too often
we use social media to share the story of the institution. Worse yet,
it isn’t even really the “story” we share but information (and
begging). The primary story that we are to share is a story of faith,
that is, the story of Christ told through our: lives, faith,
circumstances and our reactions to those circumstances.
My suggestion to Christians, and
especially pastors, is to share your life authentically using Facebook
as a spiritual practice. It isn’t until you have built relationships
with your facebook friends that you should ever consider announcing an
event or making invitations, because that story is secondary to the
story of Christ as told through your life!
Like I’ve already written, people, today, don’t need
to sift through large amounts of information. If I want to find out the
top news stories of the day I can just bring up my personalized igoogle
page and I can see the top viewed news stories according to the search
engine, I also have a module that shows me the featured CNN stories and
Al Jezeera. I no longer have to go to multiple websites, not to mention
a newsstand. I also no longer need to leaf through all the pages of a
newspaper or watch an entire news program at 6 or 10. This may make me
lazy, but it also makes me a twenty-first century young man.
Hulu has further developed this
trend with entertainment programming. I no longer need to be at home at
a particular time during the week to see my favorite show, nor do I
need to worry about missing an episode. I simply login to Hulu and all
of my favorite shows are queued up and ready to go. It doesn’t matter
if it is CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, Comedy Central, etc. It also doesn’t
matter if it is a Monday night or Thursday night show. I get what I
want, when I want it.
The newspaper industry is
floundering because they are still operating on the old paradigm that
people will pay 75 cents to get the news from their paper. Many people,
of course, have subscriptions that the paper would come directly to
them, but in our information age news the next morning it is already
old. More importantly, people have to seek that information through a
subscription or going to a newsstand. And it is only from one
source for each purchase or subscription.
As a church we still see the world
through this old paradigm. We think people will seek out a particular
church and only be concerned for what that church’s materials and
perspectives. Even more peculiarly we, as churches, still seem to think
that people will tack up the calendar from the bulletin or newsletter
on their fridge; will surf to the web calendar several clicks into the
church site; or, more surprisingly, think that people have a paper
calendar they are writing everything on. What people really have in
their pockets -many at least- are PDA’s, or more likely internet
connected cell phones. What people are beginning to really value is
calendars that are delivered directly to them. Our church offices
should be using calendars that can be subscribed to directly by our
congregants so that our calendars are sitting side-by-side with theirs
(such as google calendar)....but I’ve partly digressed from my point. And the whole staff and leadership, more importantly, has to buy into this system.
The church needs to stop using
proprietary website stuff. No more calendars that can only be viewed
online or need to be updated by one particular person with web design
expertise. Videos should not be put on the site in such a way that
people must go to the website to see it. Youtube (or vimeo), google
calendar and other avenues of communication that people are already
using should be implemented, instead. If we do this then, yes, the website can be
more dynamic and more up-to-date for people who go there, but more
importantly the stories and content are out on the web for people to
stumble across, to subscribe to, and to share on social media with
friends. Why not setup the church website with “share” buttons so that
stories, photos and videos can easily be shared to their facebook,
youtube, twitter and email friends?
The church has to get outside of
the old paradigm. We have to take our story outside of the new
boundaries of church: the church website. ...and don’t forget we’re
taking stories and faith, not information!
As I’ve begun to consider
how the church (the people of Christ) must re-imagine how it shares its
story with the world and one another, I keep coming back to blogging.
Blogging has been around for quite some time now, but it is not going
anywhere. If anything, it is gaining in popularity. I think we have
underestimated this form of communication. Let me share a non-church
example:
One of my professors, Dr. Brook
Lester, integrated blogging into his Introductory class on the Hebrew
Scriptures. He is convinced that the blog is going to become mainstream
for communication in education. You see, so far there has been a sense
that PhD’s are not taken seriously if they blog, yet serious -even
ground breaking- work is being shared through blogs. There are
several reasons that blogging could be a powerful tool to education:
First-of-all professors have access to new and exciting projects and work instantly, there is no waiting for publishers.
Because
the work of these academics can be tagged and searched, “pipes” of
information can be setup so that all of the most cutting edge research
(down to the moment) can be seen side-by-side in, nearly, real-time.
The
communication is raw and narrative in style...but more importantly it
is two-way. Comments and photos can be quickly posted by others so that
a new collegial environment can be formed.
So, let’s break this down for the
church. The church website has always been far too static to do the
church much good. It is just another way for the church to put up
information in hopes that people will come looking for it. Imagine,
instead a church that encouraged interested members and leaders to begin blogging as
a spiritual practice. Using Yahoo “Pipes”, they setup the church
website so that church members whose blogs have a certain tag in them
are piped into the website. When ‘edna’ blogs about how she was
spiritually transformed through a recent bout with cancer.... or John
blogs each day of a church mission trip; the stories are being shared
with the community of faith. Best yet, their friends are seeing faith
stories naturally. You see, our church member’s friends can see these
blogs in a number of ways and it is not just another avenue to creating ‘dynamic, emotive [and narrative] content’ but also an avenue of bringing people to the website and even to the church, perhaps.
To get there: FIRST, pastors and
other church leaders must begin blogging about their lives and need to
make it part of their spiritual practice (not just something to check
off a list at the end of the week). SECOND, as we talk with our
congregations about spiritual practices and Christian witnessing.... we
need to talk seriously about this new, American schizophrenia where we
lead two lives a “real life” and, then, a virtual facebook life where we
say things or post pictures we would otherwise never show! We need to
begin modeling what it means to have an authentic witness not just
during an hour on sunday morning but out in the world and even in the
cyber-world. THIRD, we must be willing to let go of content control.
Someone may post something inappropriate or, perhaps, not-flattering
about the church....but as a community of faith, that is always possible
right in the sanctuary of our church. We must trust our communities to
respond to negativity with optimism and love.
As I understand it, John Wesley
kept two journals: one set of private journals and one set of public
journals. These were both for his own spiritual growth, but the more
public journal was also intended that others would grow in faith. If we
are to continue this Methodist legacy, it seems that blogging is the
twenty first century solution. Let us grow our faith as well as help
others as they seek to grow in Christ. Hmmm...Let’s take our faith
outside of the church walls! Let’s not just tell an ancient bible story
yet again, but tell our own stories relating them to faith!
For the
past two weeks I’ve spent a lot of time considering communications and
church. You see, as a church we have typical ways of communicating:
Weekly bulletin, monthly newsletter, sunday morning announcements, and
let us not forget those pesky phone calls and emails from the pastor,
secretary or volunteer coordinator. Now, of course we have many new ways
of communicating with our congregations such as e-news emails, but if
you look at the types of communication I have listed so far, I have
focused on informational communication.
The newsletter or bulletin are
perfect examples of informational communication. Green Bay First United
Methodist Church has a beautiful example of a newsletter. I mean, the
newsletter itself is perfection. It is professionally edited and
printed with color and photos and graphics. Yet no matter how often it
is sent out, no matter how much information is contained in it’s 12 or
16 pages, there are always people who chronically say, “Why didn’t I
know about [church event of choice goes here]?” How many church
communicators have had this very problem? Now before I try to diagnose
this issue let me step back and say that the newsletter is very
effective for those people who receive it and read through the whole
thing from cover to cover. (and this is not exclusively the action of
the elderly despite common misconceptions)
Well, for one thing, everyone
wants to stuff a newsletter or bulletin full of their committee’s or
groups news items not to mention local community announcements. Well,
this isn’t a bad thing. The newsletter is meant to be a clearing house
for information, like a newspaper. Yet, Newspapers are barely surviving
right now. Is it perhaps time to recognize that (generally speaking) a
new generation receive their news differently than the past? The
problem is not how much information is in the newsletter (sometimes, it
is actually an issue of prioritizing news: but this is not the
subject of this blog) but simply the way in which people are now trained
to receive news and information.
For me, I have iGoogle setup so
that when I bring up my browser, I have my favorite calendars (my
personal, school and church calendars) which show up to the left of the
screen, weather in evanston, pittsfield, and st. louis to the right and
top news stories in the center. As I get into blogging I’m also
beginning to setup a list of favorite blogs and youtube channels. You
see, I don’t have to sift through 12 pages of newsprint with information
of no interest in order to find the things that are important to me. I
can type words into a search engine or have dynamic content streamed
right into my browser.
If the church is interested in
communicating effectively we need to look carefully at how people
already communicate outside of the church. How they calendar; what
their texting and facebooking habits are; and how they ‘surf the web.’
What we will find is that church websites that are generally static,
have proprietary calendars and are information driven are already
antiquated. So what would be effective?
The most memorable and effective
communication we do is face-to-face communication. Whether it is a
sermon, a story or a simple greeting in the hallway we are communicating
information, sure. But we are, more importantly, communicating relationally. We are sharing stories and it is not just one-way. This is
what Communicating Christ, when done effectively, will look like. Our
websites should have dynamic content streaming in from parishioner's
blogs and youtube channels. We would tell stories and express testimony
as our primary goal on the website of the church with concise and clear
information with those stories. We will utilize mainstream
communication avenues to provide content so that those interested in our
programs can pipe our blogs, calendars, and videos into their existing
programs and websites and do away with the need for people to sift
through long articles and complicated websites for the information that
pertains to them.
It
is time for our churches to rethink communication and not in emulation
of other churches, but we must look at our own communities and ascertain
how they already communicate, clarify what conversations our church
community should be engaging, and find creative ways for these
conversations to take place in ways and through forums which is
accessible for our community.
