Saturday, Jul. 18, 2009

Religious groups signing on to trendy social media

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word has moved to Facebook.

True of congregations in other parts of the country, many in the Columbus area are experimenting with social media. Want to set up a fan page for your pastor? Get out prayer requests to thousands at the push of a button? Announce a funeral? You can alert the masses, instantly.

Some have only recently discovered Facebook and other social media. Others have utilized them a long time, and have discovered their limitations.

The Rev. Dick Game, curate of Trinity Episcopal Church, just recently signed on to Facebook, a medium that allows you to post updates on your life, make commentary, post photos and link to articles.

“I love it. I’d been missing out on a lot of things. But I admit — I’m a neophyte,” Game said.

In a recent church newsletter in which he reflected on the craze, Game wrote: “Where is God in all of this? It seems to me that these Internet social networks mirror our baptismal connectedness with each other. Through baptism, we are all received ‘into the household of God’ and united with Christ in his body, the church. And that means that we are connected with all other believers, even those we have not met and will not meet face-to-face in this life.

“And so, one virtue of the Internet, from a theological perspective, is that it reveals how it is possible that we can be connected with each other, through each other, even without seeing each other.”

To him, there’s also a downside. “Virtual connections are no substitute for face-to-face ones. God became human in Jesus so that we might get to know God – in the flesh. We remain in relationship with God by being connected in person with others in whom Christ lives, in his body,” Game wrote.

Time to ‘tweet’

True of evangelical Christians generally, the Rev. Ricky Smith, minister to students at Calvary Baptist Church, is a longtime user of social media and social networking. Not only for himself but to connect with students and their parents. He has about 80 active young people in his youth group.

On a recent mission trip to Costa Rica, Smith, 33, kept up a blog that was automatically updated through a Twitter account. But parents back home didn’t necessarily need to be on the blog to receive the updates. If they followed Smith on Twitter, they got between 10-15 “tweets” a day, including prayer requests.

“Parents loved it because they could stay connected by the hour. Thirty days ahead of time, we developed a prayer strategy and we could Tweet out that prayer reminder while we were there,” he said.

A Twitter message, or “tweet,” is limited to 140 characters and simply lets people know what you’re up to. In a religious context, it might be a word of encouragement or scripture verse.

In youth ministry for more than a dozen years, Smith first employed MySpace to connect with students. Then it was Facebook. While Facebook is still popular among teens, he sees the needle moving more toward text-messaging and Twitter. (What’s knocked Facebook down in trendiness in recent years is adult encroachment, many say. Once restricted to college students, Facebook is now open to people of all ages.)