5 GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE CHURCH

from Internet Toolbox for Churches comes this great reminder....

 

by dave hakes

What should the church do with social media?

The Catholic Church in Australia has addressed this question with a list of social media protocols for its churches.

But what about your church? Do you have protocols for your social media ministry?

Here are a few good and bad examples of social media protocols for your church.

Start and end with people

The main point to remember in all communication is the person on the other side.

The church holds a high value of every human being and this should be apparent in all of its interaction in social media.

Pastors, church staff and volunteers need to keep this principle in mind. You are not writing your own personal responses with your own viewpoints, but representing the church and its positions…and its goal of reaching people with a message.

Expressing true care for people in your posts and responses makes the church unique and even attractive to the social media world.

Make your church visible

Always associate yourself with your church when posting. Your profile must make this clear.

Social media networks allow you to choose what kind of group you are. Pick the religious organization section and mention the church you represent.

This helps people find your church when they are looking for it and tells people where they can look for more information.

Filter your content

The last thing your church wants is a bad reputation resulting from of a bad social interaction online.

Unfortunately, schools have even had to ban faculty Facebook use because of inappropriate material being posted.

Consider having one or two people monitor all of your public posts on your website or Facebook Page. This isn’t a trust issue. It doesn’t mean you don’t trust your pastor, church staff or volunteers.

Instead, see it as another set of eyes to keep everyone accountable. It is also a way of protecting the pastor, volunteers and the church itself.

Bring people into the picture

Pictures and video are excellent tools for interaction with other people online. But the type of pictures posted should always reflect your church’s message.

Obviously, house party pictures, vacation pictures and cute-things-your-child-did pictures are not likely to help spread a message and thus do not belong on your church’s Facebook page.

Use pictures and videos that draw people into your church’s stories and show what your church is all about. Feature pictures from internal and community events at or sponsored by your church, ideally with lots of smiling faces and people enjoying each other’s company.

Don’t leave relationships digital

The goal of social media is to get people involved face to face with your church.

Twitter campaigns, Facebook stories and blogs are all efficient means of creating relationships. But they can easily become ends instead of means.

Don’t make “getting followers” your goal. That’s social media for social media’s sake.

Instead, get those followers to come to church, to an event or to some other function. Try to reach people with your message.

Use social media for what it is, a tool to reach and engage real people.

Don’t throw out the rules

Social media is a tool any church can use, but using it without rules can be dangerous. Using it with the proper rules can effectively spread your church’s message.

Don’t be afraid of social media, use it to your church’s advantage.

What about your church?

Does your church have guidelines for using social media? Do you have anything to add to these suggestions? Let’s talk about it!

© 2012, Internet Toolbox for Churches. All rights reserved.

THE TOP 5 VOLUNTEER NO-NOs

From Ministry Best Practices comes some great counsel.

Volunteers are the life blood of any church or ministry. Without those who generously give of their time, talents and energy - nothing would be able to be accomplished by the church (humanly speaking of course). Here are some volunteer no-no's and pitfalls to avoid when working and communicating with volunteers.

1. Never ask a volunteer to help “YOU.”

• Ask them to help the church, or help in a classroom. Don’t make it a personal favor to you. Personal favors won't stand up over the test of time.
• The focus shouldn't be about YOU.

2. Never thank a volunteer for helping “YOU.”

• Remind them of your overall vision and purpose when saying Thank You.
• For example, "Thank you for helping us reach all these kids this morning. You’ve been a great help to all of us!” vs. “Thanks for helping me out. I don’t know what I would have done without you!”
• And... the church name should be prominently displayed on any thank you correspondence. Make it about the Church or organization, not me!

3. Don’t ask the same volunteer to do the same thing over and over.

• Don’t abuse the willingness of one person to ALWAYS help when needed. Mix it up! Don't go to the same "well" all the time.
• You want to avoid not giving others in the church the opportunity and privilege to serve.

4. Never show any displeasure with church leadership to Volunteers.

• Teach the Power of Buy-In! Representing our leader’s choices as our very own. This shows our volunteers that we are a strong team, and are working together for a common goal.
• Even if it is someone else’s fault, make it our fault (this is where the power of the Gospel comes in - we can own fault when we know that we are SECURE in Christ). If everyone would do this, then rumors and displeasure with leadership would be stopped early and often!

5. Never ask "How did it go today?"

• “How did it go today, or this morning?” is an unhelpful question. The question is too vague, and you are certain to get merely a one word answer, "fine".
• Ask questions that are directed toward the specific outcomes you and your volunteers are working toward. When you do this, it will give you and your volunteers a real and concrete sense of how they are doing, and it will provoke with them a real discussion of issues or concerns that perhaps need to be addressed.

RETHINK - MAKING A CULTURE SHIFT

 BY STEVE DUNN

The move from being a traditional and inward-focused church to an outward focused one requires a culture shift. As this is played out in the first decades of the 21st century it is done so against the backdrop of the shift in our nation from a churched culture to what some have called a post-Christian one. In particular, within the church you find yourself moving from a membership culture to a discipleship one. In a recent church council training session, I spoke of it in this way:

Rethink

Rethink who you are as a Christ-follower and as a leader

Don’t go to church - BE the Church

DISCIPLES not members

EXPECT something from God

REINVEST in ministry

ACT intergenerationally

ADVOCATE the Vision

GIVE to God first and give more

STOP pleasing people and please God

EMBRACE excellence and reject perfectionism

STOP saying me and proclaim we

(c) 2013 by Stephen L Dunn

From Michael Hyatt comes some excellent advice for those leading outward-focused churches:

The One Thing You Must Do to Achieve Break-Through Results

I often meet people who are stuck in one area of their life or another. They want a break-through, but they can’t seem to get traction.

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/RainervonBrandis

Contrary to what they think, it’s not about having:

• More money;
• More time;
• The right contacts; or
• Better luck.

Instead, it almost always is about overcoming an invisible barrier that exists in their own head.

The barrier isn’t something external. It’s something internal—something they have created in their own mind.

Years ago, I heard a speaker talk about a research project conducted by a marine biologist. It seems he put a barracuda in a large tank. He then released smaller, bait fish into the same tank. As expected, the barracuda attacked and ate the smaller fish.

Then the researcher inserted a piece of glass into the tank, creating two separate chambers. He put the barracuda into one and new bait fish into the second. The barracuda immediately attacked.

This time, however, he hit the glass and bounced off. Undaunted, the barracuda kept repeating this behavior every few minutes. Meanwhile, the bait fish swam unharmed in the second chamber. Eventually, the barracuda gave up.

The biologist repeated this experiment several times over the next few days. Each time, the barracuda got less aggressive, until eventually he got tired of hitting the glass and stopped striking altogether.
Then the researcher removed the glass. The barracuda, now trained to believe a barrier existed between him and the bait fish, didn’t attack. The bait fish swam unassailed, wherever they wished.
Too often, we are like the barracuda. The barrier isn’t “out there.” It only exists inside our heads.
Think how many other barriers have turned out to be only mental obstacles:

• The sound barrier. Pilots didn’t think it was possible to fly faster than 768 miles an hour (the speed of sound at sea level). Then Chuck Yeager officially broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
•  
• The four-minute mile. Runners didn’t think it was possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Then, in 1954, Roger Bannister ran it in 3:59.4.
•  
• The two-hour marathon. Endurance athletes didn’t think it was possible to run a marathon in less than two hours. Now several athletes are on the verge of breaking Geoffrey Mutai’s world-record of 2:03.02.

The reason why most of us don’t accomplish more is because we set our goals inside our mental barriers, where it’s safe. (That’s why it’s called “the comfort zone.”)

But if you want to get unstuck and start getting traction again, you have to set your goals on the other side of the barrier. You don’t have to get crazy, but you do have to stretch yourself and push past the invisible barrier in your head.

This is the secret to achieving break-through results.

WHY AN OUTWARD FOCUS FOR THE CHURCH?

 BY STEVE DUNN

"The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." - Jesus

 
"The experience that a transformation of all human life is given in the fact that "Jesus is there only for others." His "being there for others" is the experience of transcendence. It is only this "being there for others," maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, resurrection)." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Go into all the world and preach the Gospel ..." Jesus
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"The church is the church only when it exists for others...The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling, what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One of the tragedies of the Church in our present age goes directly to its faithfulness and fruitfulness.  That is the tragedy of the Church's inward-focus.  Too many churches organize their life around taking care of one another--but the result is that they give only lip service to the needs of "others."

Too many churches possess a fortress mentality, intentionally creating barriers that keep the world from getting to close for their comfort.  That desire for comfort blunts the call to sacrificial servanthood that is at the heart of Christ's Great Commission.

As a result these churches lose their transcendence as there is no attempt to embody the love of Christ in the midst of a world where God is too often out of sight an out of mind.  There is no costly discipleship by which the church matures and validates the supernatural power of God.  There is no resurrection life because there has never been a death to the old "religious" ways that made them feel like good people, instead of being God's people.

The Church's true impact, authentic identity, and God-honoring purpose can only be found when it becomes a "church for others.":

(C) 2013 by Stephen L Dunn

BILL EASUM AND MIKE BREN ON BEING NEIGHBORHOOD MISSIONARIES

A very good friend of mine, Chuck Frank, emailed me this segment of Bill Easum’s recent blog. It speaks exactly what Bridgebuilders is seeking to implant in churches. – STEVE

 BILL EASUM ON THE LOCAL CHURCH AS MISSIONARIES 

Everyone of who follows my stuff knows I am a great fan of the local church. It is fundamental to the growth of the Kingdom, along with other forms of being the Church. I have no trek with those who say the day of the local church is over.

 I can’t stand what the vast majority of mainline churches and many sideline churches have become. They set back a wait for people to show up like a spider that spins its web waits for an unsuspecting victim. I call this the Jerusalem effect and the build it and they will come effect. Oddly enough, this approach to evangelism worked when I started ministry over 50 years ago. Today, however very few unchurched people come to worship on their own.

 Interestingly enough a friend gave me a url to Mike Breen’s blog . It was right up my alley. I thought I would share a couple of his quotes with you…. “So let us be clear: missionaries are always better than mission projects. Leaders are more necessary then volunteers. And disciples are surely what we’re going for rather than mere converts.”

 I couldn’t agree more. I’ve always told churches that volunteers, missions committees, and programs are not the way to go. In our new book , Effective Staffing for the Vital Church, I talk about “backyard missionaries.” Everyone needs to be trained to be a missionary in their everyday life. Also disciples are needed not volunteers.

Here is another goodie.

 “There is a paradigm shift that needs to happen. We need to move from being a worshipping body that sometimes does mission to a missional body that gathers to celebrate and worship.”

 I have started telling leaders that it is not enough to have small groups that make disciples; now small groups need to the missionary arm of the church. Each small group needs a mission in the community.

 That leads to Breen’s last comment I want to highlight.

 “Missional communities are the training wheels that teach us how to ride the bike of oikos.” 

 Now this is brilliant. He’s talking about 20-30 people acting as an extended family taking the message to their communities. We need to focus on training Mom and Dad, Aunts and Uncles, etc. to help their extended families be those backyard missionaries we talk about.

What is your church doing to make backyard missionaries?

SELFISHNESS UNDERMINES SERVANTHOOD

 by Steve Dunn

People often criticize the church planting initiative of their denominations by saying, :"We have too many churches now that are in trouble and need help.  Why can't we concentrate on helping them grow again instead of investing so much time in creating new congregations?"  Unfortunately, such an attitude is often the front-edge of an inward-focused church more committed on maintaining the comfort of its existing members instead of making new disciples.  It is too often a maintenance or survival attitude instead of missional one.

It is a little bit like the same attitude that is expressed when so much of the church's emphasis, the leadership's time, and the pastoral focus is spent on reaching new people for Christ.  "We need to take care of the people will already have first before we try to get new people."  At heart it is an anti-evangelism attitude.

Both attitudes tend to reinforce an inward focus and a prioritizing of ministry that causes the church to have less and less impact on their community. "As long as we are satisfied that our needs are met" is the measure of faithfulness and fruitfulness.

When this is true--selfishness replaces servanthood as the character of the congregation.

And when that is true, Jesus goes in one direction and the church in another.

If you take the words of Jesus seriously, it is a no-brainer.  "Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." - Luke 17:33

God does not bless a church that forsakes its first love--that makes evangelism/discipleship a competitor for its priorities instead its reason for being.

This means churches let go of what they often sinfully believe they need in order to pursue what God has called them to provide others.  The measure of their fruitfulness is not self-satisfication or preserving your comfort.  It is what they have given up or given away that is what God is looking for.

It means that churches begin to affirm that "lost people matter to God" and begin honestly asking, "what must we be prepared to give up in order to have the time and resources to help people outside the church become reconciled to God.

(C) 2013 by Stephen L. Dunn