AUMC AV Blog

Background:
In the spring of 2009 Argyle United Methodist Church moved from on top of Methodist Hill to a new campus just down the highway forever giving up the old idea of being a small town country church. Now we are a "large church" (by most definitions), our new campus is very modern (see photo in the header above), we have a contemporary service, and our pastor sometimes doesn't wear his pastoral robes (even to our traditional services).

Yet the communications with our congregation and the community are still as if we were in that 75 year old building on top of Methodist Hill. THIS IS NOT GOOD! We are missing ministry opportunities every day by not being active on social media or even keeping our website updated. How we got to this point is a long story not worth retelling at this point, but here is a spotlight on what we are currently doing:

Back when we were in that old building we produced a monthly newsletter that was mailed to each member of our congregation. This process was very time consuming and costly so a few years ago we decided to stop mailing them to every person; instead we mailed them to only select members (people could still get a copy at the church and/or read it online). Eight months ago we published our last copy of the monthly newsletter (much to the relief of the staff member that was in charge of it).

Now instead of having a monthly newsletter to tell everyone about all of our programs we try to fit every piece of relevant information into one weekly all church e-mail. This technically works but is cumbersome and (I would guess) no one actually reads all of the way through it (they have surely fallen asleep by the time they get to the bottom).

We have a Facebook page but haven't used it to its full potential (note that we don't even have a vanity URL). The main problem with our Facebook page is that there has never been a plan as to what to post, how to post it, who posts, etc. It is just there and sometimes people in the office post to it.

We have a Twitter account but it has a grand total of 5 tweets and it hasn't been updated in 18 months (THAT one you can blame one me).

Our website was redesigned a few years ago so it looks great but some pages are horribly out of date. For example every page on our website has a footer that still features a large button with "Newsletter" written across it (even though the last newsletter was published 8 months ago).

So as you can see we haven't done a good job using social media to communicate with our congregation and the community. This will soon change.

Planning
Tomorrow I have a meeting specifically for the purpose of creating a plan for our social media. (Note: I am using "social media" as a very broad term which would include [but is not limited to] Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and our website.)

I have been doing a lot to get prepared for this meeting. The first thing I did was grab all of the breakouts from the 2010 Echo Conference that had to do with social media (thankfully I have the DVD set which includes the audio from all of the breakouts). I listened to as many as I could and I shared the files with the other person that will be in the meeting with me.

I would often listen to these breakouts while taking my roommate's dog on long walks in the evening. The breakouts have a lot of great content that got my brain working, and when my brain got working I would pause the audio so I could think and walk for a while. In this way I was able to flesh out a lot of ideas.

How do I apply someone else's great ideas to our church? How will this work for us? What steps are important to getting this done? I would say that about half of my time devoted to "researching" social media was not actively listening to the breakouts but having my iPhone on pause so that I could process the information. And because my brain is not good at remembering things I would open the Voice Memo app on my iPhone and record short memos to myself about my thoughts. I later transcribed these notes onto a legal pad, and I now have two pages full of ideas, things to talk about, ways to approach subjects, etc.

So tomorrow will be a big day for our church. It won't be marked on any calendars, it won't be celebrated for years to come, and most people won't even know that something happened. However I believe that the planning that we do tomorrow will start an amazing ministry that will touch many lives, not just within our congregation but our community and the rest of the world as well.

Please pray with me that this meeting will be God centered and that we would have wisdom about how to approach this brand new ministry that can touch the lives of people in a way that our church has never been able to.

Tomorrow I will post about how the meeting went and I will expand on our process of thinking through this ministry.

One last note: I fully believe that one of the greatest features of social media is COMMUNITY! I write this post (and the posts to come) not just to help others that may be going through a similar transition as we are but also to get feedback from others that have traveled down similar roads. This in turn blesses the other readers of this post. So please post your thoughts and ideas about Social Media Ministries in the comments below. Has your church figured out social media already, or are you where we are now (fumbling in the dark)? What resources would you suggest for guidance on the Social Media front? What pitfalls should we watch out for, and what goals should we strive for? Share in the comments!

Matthew Kelling
Director of Media Ministry
Argyle United Methodist Church