Home Worship & Creative Leaders Articles for Worship & Creative The 3 Social Media Mistakes Churches Make

The 3 Social Media Mistakes Churches Make

When Jesus said “go and make disciples of all nations,” his followers listened. And we’ve been in the business of making disciples ever since.

But in recent years social media has changed the playing field. The word “go” and the phrase “all nations” are no longer restricted to physical travel and national borders.

With social media, we can now go into all nations and connect with people—sharing the gospel and building relationships from the comfort of our living room while sipping coffee and sporting a robe and fluffy slippers.

And yes, I’m a huge fan of that. Not necessarily the idea of sitting around in a robe (though I’m not opposed to that!), but using social media to reach the nations for God’s Kingdom is a great idea!

Yet, because social media is such an expansive communication technology, we run the risk of abusing the opportunity (or at the very least misusing it).

I’ve seen it time and time again, and I’m going to call out the top social media mistakes:

Mistake #1—The Bullhorn Approach

In the church, we often use social media like a bullhorn—the digital equivalent of a soap box. We plug-in to various social media platforms and we indiscriminately “tweet-out-loud” to anyone and everyone who will hear. And this has proven to be completely ineffective.

Despite the pervasive myth (in some quarters) that social media is anti-social, it most definitely is not. One youth pastor recently told me that he encourages his youth to stay away from social media because it is filled with “faceless people hiding behind pseudonyms.”

That may have been the case 10 or even five years ago. But not any more. Faceless people still hiding behind a pseudonym have been relegated to the corners of the Internet and given the title “troll.” Though they can be loud and visible and divisive at times, they are far outnumbered by normal people.

Your aunt and cousin and brother and nephew: These are the people who make up most of the Internet. And these people are real, genuine and in it for the relationship. For the conversation.

The irony is, when Christians use social media like a bullhorn, we become the troll. We become the anti-social Twitter and Facebook user that agitates everyone else on social media.

Throwing our message “out there” into the digital space without hanging around for the conversation (and maybe even joining conversations that are not our own) makes people want to block us. It’s that simple.