social media Archives - Page 2 of 13

God-Sized Dreams

“Mordecai’s trust was in the faithfulness of God, not in the faithfulness of Esther. He knows that God will not let His people down, even if individuals let God down.” – Study Guide on Esther 4

What if Esther hadn’t listened to Mordicai to step into her calling to save the Jewish people? Mordecai trusted God to have a plan B. The courage of Esther is what we all need when we step into God’s role in our lives. Granted, most of us aren’t facing death in the King’s court for coming unsummoned into his presence, and we aren’t physically saving a Jewish people from annihilation.

What we face, though, is…

What if we fail?
What will people think of us or our dreams?
The negative voices in our heads or insecurity.
Family separation or division.
Being judged.

Like I said at The Outpour at Loving Life, we want to be liked as Christians. Following Jesus means we won’t always be liked. That’s never more apparent than when you serve on social media. As I told one Georgia church member, “Don’t let the negativity discourage you. Not everyone will like what you post. That’s okay.”

God was very patient with me, teaching me to trust Him in small steps along the way, to risk more, and to stand when my instinct was to run. I failed enough in my life that, upon surrendering to Jesus, I wanted His way because my way wasn’t working and definitely wasn’t as satisfying as His way. Risk takes on a new meaning when you align with God’s will. In taking that first step, you are acknowledging complete trust that He is all-powerful and bigger than what is in the way.

Embrace those God-sized dreams but be patient. His timing isn’t always our timing. Trust Him to show up.

When You’re Enduring A Drought

Do we see the stones or notice the drought first? To be honest, I see the lack of water before I notice the stones. This is rarely helpful to me. To face challenges, I need to see the stones first then work to find solutions to the drought. When I talk about stones, I am referring to Joshua 4. Scripture like Joshua 4 and Acts 18 have become a recent focus in my personal devotional time.

The Challenges of The Promised Land

The Israelites were crossing the Jordan to get to the Promised Land. They set up stones in the dry Jordan River. The stones were a reminder for future generations to focus on what God had done. The stones would not be seen when the Jordan flowed over its banks. During a drought, the stones would be visible. Crossing the Jordan wasn’t going to a land of rest.

“The challenges only got bigger as the Israelites entered the Promised Land, but the task to trust God was prominent even amidst the challenges.” (David Guzik)

The Promised Land wasn’t a place of rest but of battle. When I posted on WorldVenture about the cost of following Jesus, a couple of responses disappointed me. We forget the cost of following Him, even gloss over it or choose not to serve Jesus but ourselves. We look for the Hallmark version of faith instead of the real gritty stuff most of us experience.

Ministry is all about risk, and WorldVenture is about risking all. The most important thing to remember is how God never sends His people to Risk All without sending reinforcements.

The Gift of Deep Friendships

In Acts 18:9-11, God tells Paul in a dream He has “… many people in the city.” Because of God’s encouragement and provision, Paul stayed a year and a half in the city. Paul continued working in his role despite perhaps fear, even doubt. Corinth was a rough city to serve in. The commentary described church planting in Corinth as “… none but the tough survive.” What I love most about this chapter is how God took the time to speak to Paul, assuring him of friends in the city. In this chapter, it focuses on some of those friends:

Priscilla and Aquila were Paul’s deeper friendships. In reading the commentary on this chapter, Priscilla was mentioned first which is said to be unusual. It shows how much God values women, not just men. Priscilla and Aquila were true friends and true partners in life, too.
Apollos was enthusiastic about Jesus but knew little about Him. Instead of doing what so many of our churchy people do these days, yelling at him or nitpicking at him for not having it right, Aquila and Priscilla discipled him – a demonstration of patience in ministry and with people and of great love for each other.

God has many people in the city still. Loyal, hard-working, strong friends who, daily or weekly, inspire me to keep going even when I am at my lowest or even at my most fearful and insecure. Maybe the solution to our fears is simply obeying God like Paul and exercising faith like a muscle.

I cherish the people God has sent my way. In different seasons of life, those friends have kept me putting one foot in front of the other. These friends also help me see the stones when I only notice the drought or help me see solutions to the drought when all I want to see are the stones.

Words Matter

Words matter online. If we genuinely care about the lost and our community, we will make every effort, as Romans 12:18 says, to “…live at peace with everyone,” as far as it depends on us. We can’t control what others put out, but we can control how we respond to people and what we post.

The illusion we face is that social media gives us this layer of anonymity, and we are usually braver behind social media than in person. Often, you don’t know who is reading or watching what you post. Knowing your audience is critical to online ministry.

An example of care put into social media ministry comes from Toccoa, Georgia. The Outpour Church manages a Facebook page and group. Trudy posts for the church in local Facebook groups as part of her bigger strategy. Recently, she shared, “During an unanticipated emergency hospitalization, a care technician asked where I go to church and said she had seen my posts in the local group. She went home and talked to her husband. Their plan was to have bologna sandwiches and listen to Sunday’s sermon for lunch!”

Whether or not you recognize social media as a ministry, if you are online, you are in ministry. Your words, pictures, and videos reflect your heart. And sharing the Gospel in person or online takes effort, intentionality, and sensitivity sometimes. Technology gives us the tools to reach the ends of the earth if we only learn how to communicate so people will hear.

How do you build relationships online? It’s no different than your in-person relationships. Here are some basics:

Post non-religious stuff and build something in common with others. Do you like to fish? Do you like horses? What do your friends like? What interests do you share together that you can post to attract more conversation?
Post about your faith for real. What does it mean to you? What are you reading in the Bible? Be teachable. Learn together.
What is praiseworthy?
What are you struggling with? Let people pray for you. It’s okay. Share with discernment.
Privately invite people to church. Sit with them, or watch it with them online.
Use the online world to meet someone for coffee.
Friend or follow new people you meet at church on their social media platforms.
Don’t be too busy for people.

How To Effectively Communicate

Content Marketing Institute published 15 Digital Content Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Brand. I work with missionaries and churches in online communication. I picked a few items from Content Marketing’s list to connect ministry and secular marketing. While we do marketing, we must always consider it ministry to establish a genuine relationship with people.

First, you are the brand. Whether it’s a church or missionary, or a Christian non-profit. It is who you are. For ministry purposes, that’s how we define our own brands. It is how we differentiate ourselves from others.

“To instantly leave a memorable impression on your target audience, so they slowly but surely become familiar with your company and ultimately buy from you.” (coschedule.com on Brands)

Promotional Content

“The 80/20 rule has been cited as the effective social media content ratio. Focus 80% of your posts on informing and entertaining your followers, while just 20% should be about your business. Similarly, the five-three-two rule says for every 10 posts published, five should be curated from others’ content, three should be original to your brand, and two should be personal and fun to humanize your brand.”

Simply put…

Informing and entertaining can be about your ministry, Scripture, fun photos, cultural immersion, etc. Give value back to your audience. How can you minister to them? How can you minister to your community online? Be generous with your time. Teach and inspire!
20% a call to action to give or about events.
Share or screenshot and share and tag other content related to your brand, your area of ministry, or something valuable to your audience. Paraphrase and sum up another person’s post, tag, or share a link. Subscribe to news events in the area of your service to paraphrase mostly positive updates to your newsfeed.
Three original posts about your brand. This is content you create from scratch.
Two fun things that are personal. To build friendships in person, you find something in common. Do the same online.

Ultimately, the rule is not solid, Content Marketing says. Don’t feel you need to stick fast to this rule, but it’s a good guide, especially if you need to be more creative. Study your data online to know what your audience wants to see from you. Never listen to an expert if your data says to do something different. Do what works for your audience! Do what works to grow a new audience, too.

Emailing

Following along the lines of knowing your audience, typically once a month for churches and once a week to once a month for individuals, is a good guide for email communication with your audience. Larger organizations will have different schedules.

Even if you still need to go to the field, you must keep your name in front of people. Draw on your creativity to decide what to send out to foster solid friendships, or enroll in similar newsletters to see what they write and how they frame their stories. Below is what is true of communications between missionaries and their partners:

76% expect consistent interaction with a brand. Even though this is a secular market, I have found this to be true with missionary and partner relations.

Stay Away From Controversial Subjects

If you don’t wish to get boycotted, get an angry email, or want to keep relationships with people, be aware of trigger points with your audience. Content Marketing says to bring up highly polarizing and emotional topics only if it has something to do with your brand. And when you do, make sure you have researched the subject and keep a steadfast, calm, and loving tone online.

Once something becomes a debate, you’ve lost. Even if you win the battle, you’ve lost the war. You’ll get farther respecting the person as an image-bearer of God than with your self-defensiveness and anger. What is the most important thing your audience can take away from you? Is it because you care about them or your cause?

The Battle To Be Heard

My email accounts have hundreds to thousands of emails in them. The subject line is the most essential part of your email. It’s what will stand out from all your Best Buy, Hobby Lobby, and Hotel emails. It’s also an art form. Don’t be discouraged if it takes a few times to get the subject line right and to see your open rates increase.

The commercial open rate is about 30%. It reaches a different audience than your social media, website, and direct mail. In Church Communication, we always say to use everything to get your information in front of people. Be the email they want to open!

Youtube: Gen Z Report

Hey, church, missionaries, and church communicators!

Youtube has released their 2022 Gen Z report. Why is this important?

Because we want content for them, too! In any social media platform, engagement is important. Let’s build community together and inspire people to pray, serve, give, and go with our posts.

Gen Z is 18-24 year olds. If you are a mission org, this is a good age to begin to see how God wants them to serve others. Can you use the ideas (or come up with your own) to help move them to pray, serve, give, or go on Youtube?

This interpretation of the report comes from both a mission org and church communicator perspective.

“65% of Gen Z agree that content that’s personally relevant to them is more important than the content that lots of other people talk about.” Can we create content in our contexts that are relevant to the questions being asked or searched for by Gen Z? For a church, this is a great jumping off point. You can engage them in the questions that are important to them.
Youtube communities are groups that actively participate in a shared identity or interest online.
- Example was “Flightspotting”. When disaster happens in an area of the world, perhaps we can show videos of people helping with the recovery? Maybe inspire them with personal stories? Short ones?
- According to a marketing article, National Geographic shows video of beautiful scenery in stories to stop the quick consummation of online content. It causes people to pause and watch. In the Youtube report, Gen Z is looking for videos that help them relax.
Is your church a “Superfan” of something? Gen Z videos that follow someone or something and gives a narrative of it is also popular. Watch some of the videos on Youtube to get some ideas of how you, as a church, can get into good discussion with Gen Z on movies, television shows, characters, books, etc.
- “Growing fan formats include videos about how to start your own K-pop fan channel, while fancam videos — fan edits focusing on individual band members — have billions of views. K-pop labels have even started releasing these videos as official content.”
In a church conference I attended in Georgia, they talked about meming the sermon, but how about doing this via video? “63% of Gen Z followed one or more meme accounts in the past 12-months.”
Short is better…most of the time, right? How about produce a quick 1 minute or less “complete” soundbite that people can preview and have in the YouTube description the link to the whole version or longer version? People are watching the Sunday services in pieces anyway. What about a several part Bible study? Or a topic that covers one of Gen Z’s questions? “59% of Gen Z agree that they use short-form video apps to discover things that they then watch longer versions of.” Maybe a missionary could produce a Bible Study and have a short form video to give a preview of the study with a link in the YouTube description to the longer version?
“People are expressing themselves through metaverse content. In the Middle East and North Africa, gamers live streaming during Ramadan carry their fasts over to their digital avatars.” Missionaries, are you into gaming? Churches, do you have gamers in your midst that can reach out to people through gaming?
“90% of Gen Z have watched a video that helped them feel like they were in a different place.” Mission orgs! Are you doing digital prayer walks or ministry tours? Are you sharing video that help them feel like they are there in that place?
“69% of Gen Z agree that they often find themselves returning to creators or content that feels comforting to them.” Nostalgia, comfort media, and highly aesthetic “vibe” content. The example YouTube used was a Puerto Rican artist who used 360-video to enable the viewer to “vibe out with him and his friends on a tropical beach.” Church creators can do this with Bible teachings, Sunday School, prayer walks, women’s events, camps, men’s events, etc. Mission org creators can use this to get content from missionaries overseas who are willing to share videos that help transport someone to an area. Maybe a “hang out with a missionary” day or hang out with someone who lives and is native to the area that day to learn about a people group?

Many thanks to MII for having “The Connected Church News” each week which is helpful to both the church communicator and mission org communicator. To read week one of July where this report first came to my attention, click here.

(Pictured: Last week, I was visiting Nutrioso Bible Church in Nutrioso, AZ – 19-minutes from Eager, AZ. I am currently training Grace Church in Chino Valley, AZ, The Outpour in Toccoa, GA, and now Nutrioso Bible Church in digital disciple-making tools and practices).

How to Visually Share Your Story

We process information with our emotions. While an artist’s tools are paint brushes, paint, and a canvas or a camera, social media gives us video, photos, and words to help people feel a part of our story. We can learn much from artists when using social media. Social media is a visual space, and often we only use it as a platform to opinionate or as a place to reframe our life in a way that doesn’t reflect our reality. What can we do differently online?

James Coleman says, “When someone sees one of my paintings, I want them to really feel the place that I’m depicting. And so my desire is that they’re going to want to travel into that painting and become part of it. …” Note the words, “I want them to really feel the place I’m depicting” and “they’re going to want to travel into that painting and become a part of it”.

Rory Feek wrote, “What’s important to you? Don’t answer that…show us instead.” In writing, we say show us and not tell us what is happening in a scene. In social media show us without ego what’s important to you, like the artist with his paint brush or the writer with his words.

On social media, like in person, we all have different gifts. If you like helping people, you can use social media to connect with people you can disciple, share the Gospel with, or empower them to seek better choices and find practical help. If you like photography, you can use your gift to help people focus on positive things or help them see the needs in the community. If you are a writer, you can use your words and visuals to tell a story that may help clarify your friends’ or followers’ thoughts. If you are an artist, it’s more than a platform to share your work, but a place to invite people into your paintings and photography. Most importantly, as a Christian, it’s a place to ask good questions that let other people do the talking.

Ephesians 4:29 (ESV) says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Rather than reframe our lives to reflect something we are not or to opinionate, instead think of how you can show what’s important to your life. How can I connect with you at church or at the market without having something in common? To find some common ground, we need to ask good questions, post good stories, and be visual.

Suggestions to engage with others online:

Show how prayer is important to your life.
Show why church fellowship is important.
Show why you love the things you love.
Show vulnerability.
Show what you are learning at church, in your Bible Study, or small group.
Ask questions and listen. Show you are a good listener online.
Use your photography, painting, drawings, graphic design, quilting, sewing projects, writing, etc to invite people into your life on a deeper level.

And while these suggestions might be helpful, remember that people judge us by our actions. What we post online reflects our heart because that is an action, much like our in-person behavior, and it also reflects on our church, our jobs, and our Christ.

Have fun and be discerning!

(If you like this photo, make a donation to Gospel Impact Publishing and send me the receipt. I can email you the high-resolution photo for you to print and frame at home).

Upcoming Social Media Workshop!

A friend shared Proverbs 25:21-22 with me, and it helped me better understand it in light of the whole Bible. It reads, “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”

RedeemingGod.org said, “Proverbs 25:22 instructs us to give our enemy so many burning coals they have to carry them the way burdens are carried in the Middle East: in a container on the head. Then they can go back and immediately bake their bread without having to wait for the wood to become suitable coals for cooking. burning coals. This is quite different than setting someone’s head on fire.”

“When a person’s fire went out,” one commentary says in the article, “he needed to borrow some live coals to restart his fire.”

We should use social media to “restart the fires” of those whose coals are cold, even if they are our enemies. This is not an easy task, and the effort has a cost.

Ephesians 6:12 says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” This verse makes it easier to view others as image-bearers of God instead of an enemy or someone that offends us mightily. The cost is in the effort of self-control and choosing our words and battles wisely, and investing our time in others. This means learning about the people we follow on social media, their needs, and how to love and pray them to heart transformation. It also means being patient.

Baptism is just the start of a journey. We forget all the interactions that lead up to that baptism. We also forget the journey that follows to surrendering ourselves to the Lord.

On January 15, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., I am hosting a workshop on “Five Habits to Change on Your Social Media to Transform Your Heart and Community.”

Registration is required. If you want to learn how to restart the fires of those whose fires have gone out, join me that day to learn more. Maybe it will help restart your own fire?

WorldVenture is about engaging the world for Gospel impact through multiple disciples compelled by the love of God and willing to risk all so that people are transformed by God, impacting their families, communities, and the world.

And, God has given us the technology to make meaningful connections with people from all over the world. What’s stopping you from getting more involved in what God is doing?

(This is a WorldVenture event. Click here to register.)