Today I spoke at the e3 Ministry Summit in Holland Michigan. I helped a hundred pastors understand how influence spreads through human social networks and how it connected to Jesus' words about Christians being salt and light in society.
I presented the theory, but there wasn't time for the practical application so I promised to post it online. Here are some of the ideas I had. I encourage readers to post their own ideas in the comments section.
Get Out of Your Shaker (Fly in Multiple Flocks)
• Join Facebook Groups that align with your interests and participate by leaving comments that add value to the discussion while revealing your faith.
• Survey your congregation about each person’s interests and hobbies. Tabulate the results. Identify the most common interests. Connect people with matching passions and encourage them to start local meetup groups (www.meetup.com) so others from the community can join them for knitting or bowling, etc.
• Search Meetup for existing groups and encourage people from your church to join them and shine their light. It’s most powerful if multiple people from your church can join together.
• Ask every member of your church to join Facebook, Twitter and Ping.fm.
• Create a Facebook Fan Page for your church and ask every member to “Like” it.
• Announce the things your church is doing on your fan page and ask members to share it on their wall.
• Take video (Flip Cam) of every church function or community activity and post it to YouTube and your Facebook page. Ask your members to repost them to their Facebook walls.
• Have a “Textable Quote” in every worship service and ask members to send it to one person in their life who they think needs to hear it and also to Ping it.
• Ask your members to turn their cell phones ON at the start of each worship service and to use them throughout to share the days message over their social media.
• Suggest your members create new profile pictures wearing a Christian t-shirt, holding a sign with Scripture, or other ideas that make their faith visible.
• Announce every baptism or Christian conversion through social media. “I accepted Christ today…” “My sister was baptized.”
