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As a church planter, I’m a big fan of social media. I use it to connect with people, make new friends, learn about people’s struggles so that I can pray for them, reestablish relationships with old friends, and just have a lot of fun. I often encourage people who aren’t engaged in social media to give it a try and see the incredible world that is out there.
But social media is a new phenomenon. Just 10 years ago, e-mail or chat rooms were our greatest exposure to connecting with other people on the Internet. Today, for many people, it’s hard to imagine our lives without Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace or a host of others. “Social media” has become one of the fastest-growing phenomena in American culture. Facebook currently boasts over 400 million users logging 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Twitter now has over 100 million users and adds 300,000 new users every day.
As a church planter, social media has become a tool for ministry. I encourage our people to connect with me, each other, and the ministries of the church through our Facebook and Twitter presences. We may be one of the most social media connected churches out there. I’d guess about 99 percent of our attenders have a Facebook account, and approximately 75 percent are on Twitter.
We use these outlets to communicate about upcoming activities in the church, to remind people of the main points of the message during the week, to distribute information specific to our ministries, to do polls about important topics, and to send out invitations to our friends, just to name a few.
Twitter and Facebook are also good ways to “close the back door of the church.” If someone attends our services for the first time and I connect with them through Twitter or Facebook within a week or two, I can almost guarantee they will become an active part of our church.
Because social media is electronic, it may be easy for us to forget that social media really is just another form of speech. The words may be in text and they may be delivered via the Internet, but it is still speech. So, the same biblical instruction related to how we speak should govern our use of social media.
There are two scriptures that speak to our use of social media. Ephesians 4:29 relates to what we post. It says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Before we post, we need to ask, “Is this beneficial to the people who listen?”
I’m certainly not saying that everything you post has to be serious or teaching something life-changing. However, it does mean that the general tone of our posts should be positive, encouraging, and uplifting. Stay away from negative, mean-spirited, cutting tweets.
Colossians 4:6 relates to how we respond to others: “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Ask yourself, “Is my response to this person a demonstration of the grace of Jesus Christ?” I often see people jumping someone else on Twitter. Simply following this scripture should keep us from doing that. Is the way you respond to other people on social media more or less likely to make your pre-Christian followers want to experience the grace of the Christ you profess to follow?
Proverbs 16:28 says, “Gossip separates the best of friends.” Be careful about what you post about other people.
In Proverbs 17:28: “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.” Sometimes the best thing to post is nothing at all. It’s a good habit to read back over a post and pause a moment before you hit send.
Social media is like using a megaphone in a large, crowded room. If your user profile is open, millions of people have access to anything you post. If your profile is locked, all of your friends still have access to everything you post. So, to carry through with the analogy, even if you have your profile locked, you are just in a locked room in a crowded building. Any of your friends are free to leave the room and pass along what you have posted.
Here are a few ethical principles based on this analogy:
Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your mother (or anyone you love) to hear. Once you post, you have no control over what happens to your message in this crowded room. There’s a good chance that your mother is in the room. Or, there are plenty of people in the room who know your mother. Social media is not a private conversation. So, think about the things you say. Are you OK with everyone in your life seeing the language you use, your tweets, the way you treat others?
Don’t expect others to respond to everything you post. Social media is a great way of increasing narcissism. Because hundreds of people follow us, we think that everyone should respond to everything we post. Post because you want to express yourself, but no one is obligated to respond. Remember, it is a very crowded room. and there are hundreds, if not thousands of conversations going on every day among the people you follow. If someone needs to get a particular message, send them a direct message or actually text them. But don’t get upset at people for not responding to your generic post.
Don’t be passive-aggressive. I mean, don’t use social media to attack someone. Even if you don’t mention the person by name, there’s a really good chance that some will know who you are talking about. You may be doing damage to your relationship with others and to your reputation. If you have a problem with someone, don’t get on the megaphone to complain about them. Talk to them, but don’t air it out for all of us to hear, because, quite frankly, we don’t want to hear it.
Don’t have arguments on social media. This one is closely connected to the former one and is often a result of it. Nobody in a big crowded room wants to hear you fighting back and forth with someone else on a megaphone. Move the conversation to DMs or actual real world conversations. Here’s the general rule of thumb for life: Praise publicly, criticize privately. People always respond better to that simple standard. Social media is one of the worst places to have an argument. How in the world can you really get to the heart of an issue when you have 140 characters or less? By having an argument on social media, you are demonstrating that you don’t really care about finding any resolution to this issue. You just want to fire shots at the other person. And that is not a Christlike way to handle problems.
Don’t have lengthy Twitter conversations. My rule of thumb is, if you are having a conversation that just involves you and another person, after about three @replies, it’s time to move the conversation to DMs or text messages. Remember, it is a crowded room, and your conversations should be beneficial or engaging to the other people in the room. If the conversation engages more than one other person, it’s probably OK to take it to about five @replies. And if there are a large number of people engaging, it’s OK to keep it going. If your conversation is of a personal nature or the mundane (Can you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home?), keep it off Twitter.
Don’t whine. It’s fine to very occasionally post about something that frustrates you or an issue that you want to champion. Social media is a great avenue to do that and see if other people experience the same things and maybe even get some answers for how to deal with it. But, don’t be a constant complainer.
Don’t overtweet. This one is a pet peeve of mind, but maybe the rest of you are okay with it. In this big, crowded room, if you are constantly on the megaphone, it get’s old. Tweet stuff that has some interest, impact, or bearing on your followers. It’s oka
