New Media and Outreach
A question for the Presbymergent cognoscienti:
How and to what extent does your congregation utilize new media as an implement for evangelism?
I know that we blog, and that we’re open to integrating media into new forms of worship. This is good. But that we have connectivity within our respective fellowships doesn’t speak to how deeply we utilize internet media as a tool for bringing those outside our churches/faith communities into relationship with us.
I’ve been encouraging my little church to view our suite of web-based materials as a support for relational and affinity-based outreach. Between our website, a Google groups, a YouTube channel, and my own compulsive text and video bloggery, there’s a tremendous level of congregational and pastoral transparency.
The issue, as I see it, is moving those essentially passive media into a more engaged and active mode. The potential seems great, but I’m not sure what to do other than working to teach and empower my flesh-and-blood congregation to view our blogging and vlogging as a vital resource for our outreach efforts.
For those of you who’ve been actively using new media as part of your congregational life…how have you seen this played out? Are there any good best-practices resources in this area?
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As a side note, as I reviewed the Categories to tag this post, I noticed that neither “Evangelism” nor “Outreach”…nor any other variant of those concepts…seems to be present. Hmmm.
Comment by Drew Ludwig on 3 December 2007:
Our use of new media is growing with new worshipers. The established community–not so much.
Comment by matt johnson on 3 December 2007:
Drew,
I appreciate your desire to move toward more active relationship through media versus passive. That is (one of) my biggest hesitations with bringing new media into the worship service itself–it tends to increase a passive/entertainment dynamic instead of an engaged/participatory dynamic.
I wish I could help you with best practices suggestions…the web component of my church community (a redevelopment project that I arrived at 7 months ago) is very minimal. However, one of my elders had an idea for the future that we make a podcast of my sermon, but instead of just giving the whole sermon, it could be a few key snippets with a couple of people commenting, inserting their own questions or life stories. So listening the podcast would be be a quite different experience and have a different purpose than the original sermon. Perhaps these podcast dialogs could then be used as a basis for midweek small groups? Who knows, it’s all hypothetical, but maybe it gives you another avenue for brainstorming.
Matt
Comment by Bruce Reyes-Chow on 3 December 2007:
There are a variety of ways that we have used new media for all kinds of things: group blogs, facebook groups, videocasts, podcasts, etc. the best outreach tool we have had has been via the reviews we received on Yelp.com. Our church is the #1 rated religious community in San Francisco. While it is a small but mighty demographic this is one of the primary ways young urban hipster types find their resources. Yelp combined with our google juice and my blog, I would say about 95% of the visitor we get have made a connection with us even before stepping through our doors. You can see the Yelp stuff at: http://www.yelp.com/c/sf/religiousorgs
Comment by Tara Eastman on 4 December 2007:
In the last six months I’ve tried to encourage and introduce several aspects of “new media” to the Westminster community in Lakewood NY as well as in our outreach events outside of the worship location. We’ve opened our website (www.wpccomunity.org), we’ve added ppt and some video elements to our casual service, Facebook has become a point of communication and contact for our people. While it is important to understand that there are some members in our churches that don’t have email or aren’t comfortable bouncing around in blogs and websites ( and to be sure we keep contact and conversation in less “tech’ ways for them) it is a leadership responsibility to encourage contact via the new media methods as well. In most cases, after a few attempts to encourage people to give online communication a try, they do and in most cases really enjoy it.
As for specifically using new media as a tool for evangelism, I would say it is a great method of increasing visitation, conversation and invitation to events geared to those people that are not yet involved in a church community. Our church recently began a once a month Artists Share at our local Arts Council Studio where local artists and community members are invited to come and share their creative projects. Most of the invitation to this event occurs via Facebook. Both members of our fellowship and new faces are showing up at this event on a monthly basis and we’re getting to know each other - face to face.
It’s a long mission process, but new media can be a very handy tool in the outreach to current and potential community members.
Tara