From Social Media to Social Ministry Review

Randomly, in a conversation this lunchtime, I was given some encouragement about the book reviews I put on here and so these are now going to be the focus of this blog. Today I'm focusing on From Social Media to Social Ministry: A Guide to Digital Discipleship by Nona Jones.

I first came across Nona's work on a Citizen's UK training call a few months ago, when she was on there as the Facebook Faith liaison person and was talking about some of the stuff in this book. The fact that she has a Facebook role is relevant to this book, it's why she talks about how to use their platforms, primarily. The first part of the book goes through "The Why" including "Why Facebook?" in chapter four and makes a compelling argument for using the platform. 

Within the first part of the book the message is clear, if you think of your digital congregation and participants as an audience in the traditional sense then you're missing the purpose of fellowship and building disciples. Churches need to not only put out content but more importantly engage relationship. This is why a clear tip of the book is it will be useful to have a social media pastor to head up this sort of work. 

The second and third part of the book go through how you move from Social Media to Social Ministry talking through the way a Facebook Campus works, (it is an American book) and then how you launch, lead and grow your Facebook Campus.

Now I have to say that I found it a good book, and the best on this type of subject I have come across. Yet, and this is the important part I'm not sure how many churches in the UK, who are currently having to think about how they keep things going on the reduced resources they're facing can go for this in the way outlined.

What I think they can do is perhaps use the principles to grow small groups and new missional communities. 

To do this there are a few things which come from the book which they will need to think about seriously:

1) Our churches have traditionally been formed around geographic areas, do we want to stay wedded to that model? If the answer is yes then this is not the road to go down.

2) Do we have the resources to put into doing this properly and are we ready to invest over the long term ? If the answer is no then this is not the road to go down.

3) Will we see this the poor relation to the main church building work? If the answer is yes then this is not the road to go down.

4) Do we want to build relationship or improve our communications strategy? If the answer is the latter then this is not the road to go down, it does not preclude the first approach but it will be separate from it.

5) Are we ready to build buy in around this and treat them as a community within our wider community but one which is also separate? If the answer is no then this is not the road to go down.

So where does that leave us? Well, I think it leaves us in an interesting place where we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions for the future as we come out of lockdown:

1) Do we expect people to attend a local church in person? Or at least go to one which they can travel to physically? - The answer may be yes, but in reality I think many of us have gotten comfortable with digital worship and may choose to stay with that as our main form of relationship with church. It might be that we still go to Sunday mornings but we've found how much easier it is not to have to travel to meetings, how we can engage with people from a wider range of locations on line and so on. I think the reality is we are going to have to develop a real hybrid approach.

2) Can we expect every church to provide this type of hybrid approach - the simple answer is no. Many were on the brink before lockdown and may find themselves over the edge now. Hybrid by one church, connected to a group of local churches who can only resource physical could be the way forward. Alternatively, a range of churches across the country with similar styles of worship might want to work together.

3) Are our denominations ready for this change? No, thinking about the way in Methodism the circuit, district and Connexion are set up. They are based on geographic boundaries and ways of being. Ironically, the Connexional relationship is a network based one and so may provide us with the best hope of moving forward. The Connexional model may now see more single congregations or groups of congregation which take a different form, acknowledging that they have members and congregants outside the immediate geographical area. This already happens in some places but we need to develop a way that people can work beyond geographical areas to access training and so on. This is something through Webinars, etc the Learning Network is starting to address.

So is the book worth reading? Most definitely, if only to think about why this approach sounds great but may not work for us now. It is a book which highlights how we need to change and adapt to the increasingly networked society we find ourselves in.