Thirty-Two Percent of Influential Churches in the U.S. are on Facebook

Orginally published on Thursday, April 09, 2009 at 7:13 AM
by Todd Rhoades

For a contrarian view, see today's post on Flickering Pixels... According to a recent survey conducted by Sojo, Inc. (Sojo), 32% of the country’s most influential churches surveyed are using Facebook. Companies and brands are not the only ones noticing the creativity and interaction benefits that the mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace offer. Many organizations, especially religious affiliations like churches, have begun to experiment with Web 2.0 technologies.

Why have churches been slower to embrace these cost-effective marketing initiatives? For one, social networking sites were often seen to challenge the traditional church, temple or synagogue’s culture. The adoption of these sites is seen as grassroots and is usually introduced to the churches from the bottom up, rather from the top down – in other words, the church’s youth membership introduces it. And second, social media can be unpredictable. It encourages interaction, thus brands and organizations may fear or be intimidated by this uncontrolled environment.

However, there are specific social networks available for some industries. Tangle (originally GodTube.com), the world’s largest faith and family-based social network, has 550,000 registered users. Of the churches Sojo surveyed, 13% currently have a profile on Tangle for their church itself or for some of their church’s ministries.

One example of a church embracing mainstream social networking sites is Pastor Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International (WCCI) in College Park, Georgia. Her early adoption to MySpace with her ministry, Prestige, has proven to be successful. She recognized that many individuals of her target audience were already on MySpace. Prestige’s MySpace Page is reaching out to women in the sex industry, the basis to her ministry, to empower them and help build their self-esteem and self-worth. WCCI partnered with Sojo to create these social networking sites.
There are other religious organizations doing the same throughout the nation and making a big difference. They are connecting with their audience where they go instead of waiting around for them to reach them.

Buckhead Church, a campus of North Point Ministries in Alpharetta, Georgia, is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. The Buckhead campus is also the campus that uses more mainstream social networking sites than any other of the North Point campuses.

Second Baptist in Houston, Texas says that they are on Facebook to stay “relevant” and that it’s not necessarily their first method of choice in connecting with the youth (they prefer face-to-face interactions), but that it is effective because the youth are already on it.

Read more here from their press release...

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.

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