Most Churches have added Social Networking sites through some group starting a facebook page. Maybe it was the youth group that came up with that idea, because the youth minister wanted to share pictures from the youth retreat. Or maybe it was the women’s group that wanted to share video clips from a women’s event via instagram. Or maybe it was a men’s group that wanted to coordinate the BBQ cookout via twitter. Whatever the source, the Social Networking sites just sort of sprung up by themselves, with little if any coordination with the Church staff. That’s okay. It’s creative, and it met an immediate need by these groups to communicate.

If you look at how the Church communicates overall with the community of believers, then you might perceive a problem here, though. The Church is stronger when it speaks with one voice to the community. If you have many voices saying different things, then it gets confusing and is less effective. Suppose the women’s event is scheduled on the Church calendar for Friday night at 7:00 PM in Room 300. The Church bulletin announces it for that time and place. However, the organizers discover that they’ve got more people signed up than they anticipated – a great problem to have! So they decide to move the event to the Fellowship Hall at 6:00 PM. They announce the change at the last minute on instagram, which they expect all of the women to see. However, they don’t update the Church calendar. The consequence is that half of the women show up late and at the wrong room. Some are frustrated to find the room empty. Checking the Church calendar online confirms the information that they had in their personal calendar. So they conclude that the event was cancelled and go home. In other words, they miss out!

What is needed is more coordination. What if we started looking at all of those Social Networking sites as Branch Blogs – i.e. extensions to the Church’s web site. Information and updates would flow in both directions – i.e. from the Church Web Site to the Branch Blog, and from the Branch Blog to the Church Web Site. That way, communication is increased and the message of the Church is one voice on each subject. Why not simply assign staff to the task of coordinating with the editors of these various Social Networking sites. The Youth Minister would simply make sure that anything going onto the Youth facebook page also gets updated on the Church Web Site. And anything that the Youth Minister adds to the Church Web site for the youth also gets reported on the facebook page. This is likely already happening if the Youth Minister also edits the facebook page.

In summary, take time to think through the process of how do we coordinate between the various ministry groups and their related Social Networking sites. Identify the staff member or volunteer that needs to coordinate between the Church Web Site and the group. Make sure they also know who publishes the Social Networking site. Or, better yet, get them access to the Social Networking site so they can publish the information themselves. Social Networking is then another channel through which the Church spreads the Gospel Message. It will be more accurate, and more timely, if it is coordinated with the Church Web Site.