social media Archives - Page 9 of 13

Starting a New Chapter #Missions #Church

Unlike other jobs, I give notice to Solid Rock Christian Fellowship after almost 11 years with a heart heavy with so many emotions. I know that where I am going is where God wants me to be in the interim before I launch as a Social Media person with WorldVenture. Other doors closed this week, too. Not that I can go into any detail, but an old life is fading and a new life is beginning.

Change is something a person can count on. It’s a constant. I’ve experienced so much change the last couple of years. It leaves me breathless. Even as I watch winter fade into spring, I am excited for the future. When I sing songs in church, I hear them differently now. It begs the question: Are you really living on faith? I mean, really?

Do you give until it hurts?
Do you step through open doors in your life not knowing why, but doing it anyway because God opened that door? You risk awkward silences and disaster stepping through; OR you risk blessing yourself and others in the process.
Do you go without to make something God wants happen? Or are you only willing to serve within your comfort zone?

Lastly, are you really impassioned about sharing your faith? I mean, really? I ask this because when I mention the online world and how people can funnel that passion through this tool to share the Gospel, I get one common response: “I don’t like change.” This usually follows after, “I hate Facebook.”

“I hate change,” is a barrier I come up against time and time again. It’s not just a barrier to what I do, but it is a barrier that keeps people from learning how to use the online world as a tool to build relationships and share their faith. Social media is simply a conversation. It’s like meeting someone in the hallway and asking, “How are you?” And instead of walking away after a short answer, staying to listen.

The church isn’t dying. The church has a communication problem. This problem is keeping the church in a building and causing people who are online to sound like angry Americans because the church isn’t learning how to train their people how to use the online world in appropriate ways or teaching how to contextualize responses to another person’s culture.

I would love to hear how your church is training your congregation to serve online. If you aren’t training them, why not?

4 Myths About #SocialMedia

Every month I send emails out to gather support. Not everyone will see the vision I have and embrace it as eagerly as my current partners and friends. It’s an art to write authentic emails that wrap my vision around the vision God has placed on a church I am contacting. Social media affects every church and ministry and every person whether they want it to or not. With 3.2 billion people on the internet out of the 7 billion worldwide, the church should jump at the thought of using a tool that is free for online evangelism, missions, and discipleship. This is not always the case for whatever reason.

Let me go over four myths:

Only Church Leadership Should Do Marketing Ministry: A medium church has a staff of 5 people. Your church has 350 attendants. Typically, unless you are a mega-church, your administrator or pastor doubles as social media marketer. How many people in your congregation make up the 1.57 billion people on Facebook? Why aren’t you training them? What do you train them on? How do you create a team of missions/evangelism-focused individuals who can be mentored by experienced past or present pastors or missionaries? Merely posting announcements is not good enough. You must engage the people on your page. You must use social media to talk to people and teach your congregation to talk to people.
“I Only Support (Insert Your Favorite Denomination Here).” While I do not agree with denominational prejudice, you should look for someone in the field of social media and technology to support or consider pioneering the use of technology and social media who is in your denomination whom you can support. Consider your neighborhood? Does your church have a strong presence in it? Or is it dwarfed by other belief systems? Implement a social media strategy. Consider this part of planting churches, running ministry, and doing church.
“I Hate Smart Phones. No One Has Conversations Anymore.” The church is great at publishing stories that scare people away from using social media. We are experts at why we shouldn’t use social media, but most who talk against it are barely using it (if at all). The conversations are happening. They don’t look like the conversations you have; different isn’t necessarily evil. Granted, balance does need to come back into the online and face-to-face world. Who will show an example of that balance if you are not going where the conversations are happening?
“I Don’t Need a Missions Course; I’m Not Going Overseas.” Social Media is global. Unfortunately, some of the missions courses aren’t packaging their courses to be applied domestically and internationally. Americans can offend another culture online and be blocked if they don’t learn about that culture first like missionaries do. Who are the people groups in your area? Have you searched that information online, taken a long drive or a walk in your community, or taken a course at a university or college to understand how many of the students come from other countries?

Support is secondary as to why I want to talk to your church. Your church’s hopes, dreams, and vision are mine, too. What I do is as important to you as it is to what God has me doing. Let me talk to you even if support is not available. Church isn’t about self-service. It isn’t about your programs. It isn’t about the music. Our passion for those things should be less than the passion to reach the lost with the truth and love of the Gospel.

The creative possibilities are endless with how a church can use social media to put into practice the vision that God has placed there. What are the barriers and how can they be overcome? What is stopping you from being more strategic online?

Use Different Words About The Online World

When I read devotions, it’s always talking about using different words; find a new narrative in your head; because using different words will change how you think and feel. People, especially older adults, think of the online world as self-serving instead of serving.

If the narrative in your head is “self-serving,” you will spend less time on it, not use it strategically, and make that face you make when someone mentions social media. It’s not about becoming relevant as a church, but getting involved in people’s lives. You can keep your involvement simple or learn marketing to cast a broader net. I’ve found that God will direct you to certain social media apps if your heart is willing to serve.

What does serving online look like?

When someone posts a status that you feel the need to pray for, your timely comment, email, text, or private message is meaningful rather than just lurking. Your acknowledgment of love to that person will encourage them.
If someone needs help financially or with a food box, you can personally connect them with a Christian ministry in their area. Send them a private message, email, or text and start that conversation. Be their online friend while that Christian ministry becomes their face-to-face friend, walking with them in their struggles.
If someone becomes a believer, you can connect them with a pastor, deacon, or elder who can disciple and baptize them and ensure the “ball isn’t dropped.”
Encourage someone online in their goals.
Be an accountability partner with someone.
Be louder than the voice in their own heads so their identity can be aligned with Christ rather than whatever label the world pastes on them.

Communication is a big problem. People under use the tool or spend all their time marketing. Any tool can be negative, but it’s up to the church to use this tool to bring the people online into a fellowship of faith. If you don’t use this tool, someone else will.

Social Media is Not “Playing”

Before becoming appointed with WorldVenture, I unsuccessfully tried to bring attention to the importance of social media to the churches as an individual and a struggling writer. After the appointment, attitudes changed towards me. I seldom heard the words, “playing” in association with using social media.

At WorldVenture’s annual Renewal Conference in Denver, Colorado, I realized that God will use me for much more than my original plan. In talking to different missionaries and answering their questions, I saw their eyes open and understanding occur when they realized how social media could be used to grow church plants in their country. Even “retired” missionaries can use the online world to continue sharing God’s love through discipleship.

With the advantage missionaries have of understanding the culture, they won’t have the same communication issues we in the United States may have when using social media to talk to someone from another culture or country. We, on the other hand, must learn the culture through experience, books, and classes like Kairos or Perspectives. Another problem exists even if one does know the culture.

A language barrier is between those of us who do social media and those who do not, and the cure is education and the willingness to serve online; to change and adapt according to the needs in the field (i.e. your community, your church, your church plant, your country).

Social media is about connection. People are aching, even needing to connect. They want conversation. They want to belong. This is why I have started free Facebook classes: To educate people on the point of social media and to mobilize the church body to reach the unreached, the unloved, and the unchurched online (I have one caveat though–that people who attend pick up extra brochures to hand out to their friends and church leaders).

For my partnership with WorldVenture to be successful, I need to build up financial support. God is developing this ministry into much more than I previously thought and fruit is already bearing even at part time. This would not have happened without WorldVenture’s guidance. Working with a team is amazing!

How can you help me?

Ask me for brochures that you can hand out to your friends and church leaders.
Host a party and invite your friends so I can do a presentation.
Meet with me to learn more, even if you can “only” pray for these efforts. It’s important to know what to pray for.
Talk to your church leaders about me. I am willing to meet with them.
Let me speak to your ministry or small group.
Do you own a business? Consider partnering with me financially. I can make a presentation to your board or partners.
Encourage people to attend my Living Room Sessions (Email me to learn more).
Partner through a monthly gift of $25, $50, or whatever God puts on your heart.

Be part of what God is doing in technology. Help me help the church and grow my partnership with WorldVenture for God’s limitless possibilities!

5 Ways to Start Conversations Post Election

Philippians 4:8-9 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

The last seven years, especially these last two years, politics has become far less important to me than the relationships I want to foster. People on my newsfeed have expressed weariness over the anger, the riots, the hate, and all politics in general. Politics has its place, but we need to recall why we are on social media and how to start a meaningful conversation.

Here are some helpful conversation starters:

“How are you?”
Meaningfully comment on someone’s status and pursue that thread of conversation.
Share posts that edify and help someone be a better believer.
Follow up on a prayer request in text, private message, email, or on social media.
Think about some of your political posts. Are you demonizing an entire people group without understanding the dynamics of that group? Would those posts hinder other Christians from compassionately reaching that group because of that group’s impression of us from your public post? Ask a missionary about the people groups he or she serves. Post accordingly and with discernment.

The more I grow as a Christian, the more I understand that I don’t have a full understanding of situations, right and left political “news” have agendas, and situations are complex. Life doesn’t fit in neat boxes, and I must be a believer first and an American last. Listen first and speak last must be my new way of life.

Can I encourage you to think about what you post?

• Is it necessary?
• Is it true?
• Does it help us?
• Does it divide unnecessarily?
• Lastly, as a Christian, are you acting in the best interest of your audience?

Finding Courage

Meeting churches, picking up new clients, and telling people about what I do doesn’t come without a fair amount of anxiety as I seek out courage. When this new life becomes overwhelming, I think, “I could be a person with a regular job, not working ministry, not serving, with more time to read or bake or something.”

Yet, that person wasn’t happy.

I am happy following God’s will in my life. I didn’t see how far He would take me when He asked me to join a church’s prayer team, then lead it. I thought stepping beyond being the wallflower was the limit of His calling. I didn’t see that He would bring me this far.

As I write, I am sitting in the lobby of the Doubletree Denver Tech Hotel among so many great people–people who have experienced things I haven’t yet. People who have sacrificed whole lives to be uprooted and live somewhere else. The common question people ask me is, “Where are you going?”

“Online,” is too simple of an answer.

The width of ministry while working full time makes my own head whirl.

I fear failure, but I face it with faith.
I fear rejection, but my skin is thick enough to take it.
I fear being quieted by those who who fear change, but I speak up because I can’t be quiet.

The typical length of any of my co-workers raising funds has been two to three years. I am a year and a half into this journey, having just been released in March, 2016 to raise support.

I’m looking for people who want to see the church empowered and united to share the Gospel online and who are willing to support me, even with just a small amount per month. I’m looking for partners. I’m looking for people who are tired of the status quo with how the church is acting online and want someone to get involved and train them.

Today, I picked up a new client. I will be helping him get his ministry online. It is all a part of the vision of getting the church involved in the new mission field called, the internet. It is time-consuming to train churches and people on social media, much less do it for free.

Are you with me?

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