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Being Social At Church AND Online
By Martin Spriggs:Bio on October 9, 2008
In a recent WELSTech Podcast, Sallie Draper and I discussed the value of online social networks within the church. In my experience I’ve found that churches that have strong participation in fellowship activities have an easier time being “friendly” to visitors, an easier time filling leadership positions or finding volunteers for work days. The act of gathering together outside of the 1 hour on Sunday morning strengthens churches. Whether that be for purely social reasons or a mix of spiritual and social. The best kind of course is where both are mixed seamlessly together.
The question then is can churches take advantage of the revolution going on right now on the internet of social networks? You know the kind, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn to name a few. While some of these have bad reputations, the technology itself has some potential for bringing like-minded people together online. That is what a church is right? Spiritually like-minded people? Same purpose in life. Similar values. And in some respects similar interests.
The value of social networks within the context of the church is for geographically dispersed members to “meet” more often than time and distance could otherwise afford. While I think it is doubtful that in most of our churches, at least today, these groups would form by themselves online. I do think they could be extensions of groupings that already exist at church. Here’s an example. I could envision (and I even know that some of these exist) an online group that meets to continue discussions about the Sunday morning Bible class. The pastor is involved with proposing “seed” discussion topics and perhaps online resources to answer some of those questions. The WELS.net Q&A is an excellent source for some of that. Two or three times a week the member logs in, shares a thought, asks a question, or simply reads. The pastor then uses the first part of the next weeks class to review online activity, thus promoting it’s use to others. I think that’s cool. Perhaps even using resources like the YouVersion online Bible for note taking, etc.
These don’t need to be always about purely spiritual issues either. Mom’s could get together and talk about parenting. Even geeks could gather to talk about their passions. There are many possibilities. Try one and let me know how it goes. God’s people getting together at church and at a virtual meeting room are places the Holy Spirit will work.
If you are a FinalWeb user some simple tools exist there to do this. For those who want to really dive in, products like www.ctsmemberconnect.com or www.unifyer.com might do the trick.
Topics: SYNOD LEADERS, Technology
Tags: bible study, online, social networks
October 10th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Martin,
I know this is a slightly off subject… but what about a WELS BIBLE WIKI? There are several open source wikis out there. I am playing with an ASP.NET open-source wiki right now offline for a possible upcoming project. A wiki can gives members a chance to spread the Gospel and support Bible classes.
>>Even geeks could gather to talk about their passions.<<
Are there that many geeks in the WELS?
John
October 13th, 2008 at 8:03 am
John, there are probably just as many geeks in WELS as any other organization. Nothing would suggest we are “geek deprived.” What we probably don’t do a very good job of is finding them within our churches and putting their talents to work. I think geeks are by nature introverted, so they may be lurking (geek term) among us without being seen.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:04 am
John, regarding your suggestion for a WIKI. Can you be a little more specific? Would it be a YouVersion type concept. How do you envision people using it?