Tomorrow night I’ll be doing an encore presentation of a webinar called Digital/Spiritual Literacy. (There’s still some room left, by the way. Click here
if you’re interested.) As part of the preparation of the webinar I’ve scoured theweb looking for resources. Thing is, just when I think I’ve found the just the right online articles and blog posts to make my point, something new comes along. That’s pretty much the way the web is working these days—the amount of new content is appearing so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up. Actually, make that just plain impossible. But that’s okay. The great thing about the web is that if you plug into the right network (the network that’s right for you, that is) you have the opportunity to learn and grow with others who share you interests.
So that’s what the post I’m sharing with you today is about: learning and growing together. It’s by Elizabeth Evans Hagan, senior pastor at Washington Plaza Baptist Church in Reston, Va. Pastor Hagan, who blogs at Preacher on the Plaza, offered a terrific opinion piece on the Associated Baptist Press website called “What Twitter can teach the church.” It’s a quick summary of her experience with Twitter, from skeptic to believer. What I like most about the post are her thoughts on what congregations can learn from Twitter. She says, “Beyond its effectiveness for outreach, I think the church has a lot to learn from Twitter as a newly minted word in our vocabulary.”
- First, say what we need to say and stop. The days of long typed memos addressed with a stamp on a letter in the mail are over.
- Second, if we want to reach more people with our churches, then we must “follow” people outside our normal social circles.
- Third, it’s a necessity to stay connected to those on our membership rolls. Relationships, like Twitter followers, take time and effort to keep going.
I like the idea of Twitter offering important lessons for congregations to learn. And congregations should be all about learning. As Hagan says in the closing words of her piece: “the church, like any good means of technology, is never something to be mastered to use perfectly all at once but rather to grow into as we learn and practice it together.”
Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie 
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 24, 2011 at 9:09 am
Robin Edgar (@RobinEdgar)
Good post Phil.
:First, say what we need to say and stop. The days of long typed memos addressed with a stamp on a letter in the mail are over.
Disciplining oneself to keep what one has to say “short but sweet” ( or “less than sweet” for that matter. . .) can be a very good thing for effective communication, however Twitter’s 140 character limit is perhaps a bit *too* limiting to be able to “say what we need to say and stop”. It *might* take a few Tweets to say what one need to say. Of course one can always write a “long memo” or long-winded rant 😉 in a blog post or other form of web page and link to that from one single Tweet.
:Second, if we want to reach more people with our churches, then we must “follow” people outside our normal social circles.
The more people one follows, the more “incoming” Tweets one has in one’s Twitter “timeline” gleaning the proverbial “wheat” from Twitter “chaff” can quickly become overwhelming and unnecessarily time consuming. I expect that Twitter can become a gigantic “time sink” if one does not responsibly manage & limit one’s time devoted to Tweeting and reading received Tweets.
:Third, it’s a necessity to stay connected to those on our membership rolls. Relationships, like Twitter followers, take time and effort to keep going.
As per my previous point, just staying connected to church members *alone* can probably become a large “time sink” if one is the minister of a large congregation which has many Twitter users. Of course, staying connected to those on UU membership rolls should not be a big problem for those numerous “already dead” corpse-cold Unitarian churches that have fewer than 80 members. 😉
I think that Twitter can offer quite a few more important lessons for UU congregations to learn, perhaps especially if UUs choose the fate of “following” The Emerson Avenger on Twitter. 🙂
Allah prochaine,
Robin Edgar aka The Emerson Avenger’s good twin brother
October 24, 2011 at 9:35 am
Phil on the Prairie
Good points, Robin. I think a lot of congregational leaders are hesitant to use Twitter exactly because it can become a time sink. Using it well takes learning some new skills. Still, it’s important that congregations give it a try. Thanks for the comment!
October 24, 2011 at 10:33 am
Martin Davis
Regarding the concern about sorting the wheat from the chaff on Twitter, I recommend using a tool such as HootSuite or TweetDek. Both tools allow you to identify particular streams that you wish to follow and receive information related to those. TweetBig is another excellent tool, which allows you to add people with a greater liklihood of being useful to you–all without you doing a thing.
There is much concern–rightly–over social media “time sink.” But time sink occurs in all aspects of our lives (I had a friend in grad school who wasted hour upon hour on his DayTimer system). It’s how one maximizes the potential and minimizes the downside. At Twitter, it’s easily done.
Best,
Martin Davis
Director, COngregational Resource Guide
October 24, 2011 at 10:49 am
Phil on the Prairie
Thanks for the recommendations, Martin. HootSuite and TweetDeck are excellent tools, and they can definitely help a congregation manage its social media presence without it becoming a “time sink.” Maximizing potential and minimizing the downside…always a good thing to keep in mind!