An Ethic of Social Media - Part 1

I'm a big fan of social media. I use it to connect with people, make new friends, learn about people's struggles so that I can encourage them and pray for them, reestablish relationships with old friends, communicate with people in my community, and just have a lot of fun. I often encourage people who aren't engaged in social media to give it a try and see the incredible world that is out there.

But social media is an incredibly new phenomenon. Think about it, just ten years ago, email or possibly chatrooms were our greatest exposure to personally connecting with other people on the internet. Today, for many people, it's hard to imagine our lives without Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace or a host of others. "Social media" has become one of the fastest-growing phenomena in American culture. Facebook currently boasts over 400 million users logging 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Twitter, the fastest growing social media site, now has over 100 million users and adds 300,000 new users every day.

As a church planter, social media has become an incredible tool for ministry. I strongly encourage all of our people to connect with me, each other, and the ministries of the church through our Facebook and Twitter presences. We may be one of the most social media connected churches out there (I know, that sentence sounds funny, but social media is so new that there aren't even adjectives to describe it yet.). Over ninety percent of our attenders (I'd guess about 99%) have a Facebook account, and approximately 75% of our people are on Twitter.

We use these outlets to communicate about upcoming stuff in the church, to promote our Sunday services, to remind people of the main points of the message during the week, to distribute information specific to our ministries, to do polls about important topics, and to send out invitations to our friends, just to name a few. Twitter and Facebook are a great way to get information out rapidly to a large percentage of our church members in an incredibly rapid manner. Need to change a meeting time? I can do it in a matter of seconds. Someone facing a crisis? People can find out about it and begin praying quickly. Have a need for a particular ministry? Put it out there for all the Twitter and Facebook world to see.

Twitter and Facebook are also incredible ways to "close the back door of the church." If someone attends our services for the first time and I can connect with them through Twitter or Facebook within a week or two, I can almost guarantee they are going to get plugged in and become an active part of our church.

So, I'm a really big fan.

However, like so often in the past, our use of new technology has outpaced our thinking about that technology, particularly the development of an ethic of social media. How should we relate to others on social media? What should we post or not post on social media? Are there dangers we should be aware of related to social media?

I certainly haven't developed a full ethic of social media, but I've developed a few principles for social media with my use of it fairly extensively over the last three years. I'll share those principles in the next few posts.

Why Social Media Matters

If you are still wondering about the importance and value of social media, here's a rundown of my day and how my networks allowed some really cool opportunities.

I started the day having breakfast with a Facebook, pastor friend. We talked about different ways of connecting with people in our congregations. By the time breakfast was over, I had convinced him that he really needed to give Twitter a try. I hope to be able to connect with him there soon.

Next, I spent some time on Facebook connecting with some old friends from high school and college. One of them contacted me within an hour of my connecting with him to share some pretty heavy stuff. I was able to offer some encouragement and prayer and share some of the struggles from my own life. I really hope I am able to continue to redevelop this friendship with a really cool guy who has faced some tough times.

Then, I sent out a couple of tweets based on Sunday's message that were picked up by a couple of other guys in the Twittersphere and passed along to their network. Pastors, if you aren't using social networking for getting one more touch with people during the week and to reinforce what you taught on Sunday, you are missing out. It's neat to see the message you poured your heart and soul into the week before having more of an impact than just a few minutes on Sunday morning.

I also added a new app for Facebook called Seesmic that sends feed from your friends' Facebook status updates to your desktop. Very cool and makes staying connected with people faster and easier.

After lunch, I had to go to Jo-Ann's Fabrics to pick up some Spandex to use as a screen for our projector in worship. I tweeted about this, which sparked an ongoing conversation between friends and church members (one of them hundreds of miles away) on both Twitter and Facebook, very cool.

Then, a DJ from a local classic rock station contacted me via Twitter to ask if he could get an invitation to come visit our church sometime. That is so cool that it almost made me burst, that a guy out of the blue just contacts me via Twitter because he has been following me and heard about our church and wants to know if he can come. If you don't see the value of social networking, THERE IT IS! Don't know if this guy knows Christ, but he may get to know him BECAUSE OF TWITTER, PEOPLE! Oh, yeah, and I told the guy we'd love for him to come check us out.

Finally, on Facebook I got reconnected with one of my cousins who I haven't seen in a couple of years.

Totally awesome day on social networking.