Figuring it all out one day at a time
I was not an early adopter of twitter. However, soon I was running multiple accounts as I launched the Chase Your Lion blog. I’ve tried to be very intentional with my social media strategy. A year after joining I posted my thoughts on the 5 groups you see on twitter. The past few months has been about simplifying my online presence by merging my blogs and phasing out some twitter accounts. I’d like to answer the why, how, and [Read more…] about Why and How I Use Twitter
I received a message last night that this blog had sent out upwards of 400 emails to everyone who subscribes to this blog via email. First, let me offer my sincerest apologies for blanketing your inbox with what must have seemed like a spam attack from Uranus. Even Wesleyan pastors make mistakes.
Secondly, I want to explain why this happened and [Read more…] about Even Wesleyan Pastors Make Mistakes
It’s been a great blessing to be a part of the Good Morning Show on 760 AM in Nashville, TN. David Gould and Rachael Sain are the co-hosts and I have known David through the Wesleyan Church for some time. He’s a frequent viewer of The Techology Show and from that “Tech Talk Tuesday” came about. On December 28, 2011 we talked about how church’s can use technology in the coming year. There are lots of challenges rural churches face in the use of technology. I’m a rural pastor who believes technology is a gift to reach the world. Here are a few things we talked about this week:
In the past few weeks, two of my favorite bloggers announced they were starting over with twitter. First Chris Brogan and then Michael Hyatt declared that the recent proliferation of spam had led them to make the decision. Note to self: don’t click on any DM links that says “I laughed when I saw this picture of you.” These guys both had huge followings and it got me to thinking about my twitter strategy. I have had two Chase Your Lion accounts for a while and today made the move to merge the two. What I found is that their follower lists are almost identical. It has taken some time this morning to get Tweet Adder and Hootsuite back up and running properly. I actually had to delete Hootsuite on my iphone and reinstall it. So, now I’m pointing all my followers to http://www.twitter.com/chaseyourlion. It is the former @chaseurlion account and now the old Chase Your Lion is now @chaseyourlion2 until I’ve got everything moved and delete it. I will then keep up with who’s spamming me by running Twitblock once a month and blocking them. Now, the next phase is changing all the old links on my blogs to reflect these changes.
The top 3 reasons for doing all of this:
What are your thoughts? Have you noticed an uptick in the twitter spam you receive? Are these guys crazy to unfollow tens of thousands of people?
Two guys I admire are Michael Hyatt and Tony Morgan. Their blogs are two of the best you will find. I get them delivered to my inbox daily(you can get this blog delivered to your inbox by filling out the subscribe form on the top right). They both have great insights on ministry, leadership, and blogging.
Today, [Read more…] about Great Blogs from Michael Hyatt and Tony Morgan
4. How are you using technology and social media to reach and teach your teens?
It’s a blessing and a curse. A blessing in terms of being able to reach so many so fast. A curse because it can be a temptation to ONLY use social media as a communication point. While Facebook as a tool has been extremely helpful, and it does allow us to reach to where kids and parents are, I wouldn’t say it’s our most valuable tool because it limits mass communication in some ways. Even from a fan page, you can send updates, but it goes to a separate inbox, making it not as visible to students. We can’t do mass wall posts, and if we use it too much, students just end up ignoring our communication. To top that off, not all families are connected to Facebook, and of the ones who are, maybe half of them are addicted to it. So really, if we’re being honest with ourselves, this should only serve as a supplement to our more concrete methods of getting word out.
By more concrete methods, I mean specifically tangible things we can put in the hands of those we’re trying to reach or put in front of them. Repetition is essential. So aside from week to week handouts, billboards we print monthly schedules on and other papers we hand out that students love to throw away (yes I said it), we still haven’t abandoned snail mail. In fact, we probably see more response to advertising and promoting that way than anything else. It may not be as visible as the social avenues, but parents notice it, remember it, put it on the fridge, etc. And if it’s a goal of a youth ministry to work WITH not against parents, this is a good thing.
I’m going to venture out and say that most of us in ministry use social media because we “have to.” Because everyone else is doing it and it’s the right thing to do, we give in to the pressure and use social media for advertising and promotion purposes. Does it work for that? A little, probably. But I’ll take the risk of saying social media is more useful for teaching and instructing than it is for advertising. Think about it, our students are bombarded with screen media every day of their lives. Television ads, internet popup ads, billboards, magazine ads, myspace ads, facebook ads on the sidebar that we can choose whether or not we like them and even those annoying 30 second ads that you see when you are watching a show on Hulu. What are our teens programmed to do? TUNE OUT THE NOISE!
Here’s a valuable question to ask: Is what you’re pushing/promoting using social media just more noise?
My thoughts on teaching stem directly from the final thoughts on reaching out using social media and maybe even serve as an answer to the problems presented. We try to use the above mentioned avenues as a way of continuing a discussion we had in person. Discussions can stem from what the students are learning in our midweek growth groups to what the message was about or even something we know God is challenging one of our students with. Questions are great discussion points not only to get a conversation started, but to see where our students stand on what they know and what they believe. It’s much more effective than a survey or something they’ll begrudgingly fill out. It requires intentionality on our part and a willingness to do work in order to pull answers out of the clutter rather than just expect students to answer direct questions we put in front of them about where they are in their spiritual journey.
The better your ministry is at drawing people in to discussions and teaching they know they’ll be fed by with the help social media, the more receptive they’ll be when you use it for “noise.” Make sense? Not only will our kids pay attention to what we’re posting, if we do a good job and are consistent with it, they could eventually begin to look for it! Not good at consistently handling the online or social media stuff? Hand it to someone who is good at it, who you can trust, and who will consistently stem conversations from what is happening face to face in your ministry to the media sites.
As a ministry we also use Youversion.com to help our students not just with consistent study of the word but with being committed to studying the word, which we feel is more important than using guilt to fuel a teens devotional life. God bless lifechurch.tv for believing it’s more powerful to empower others and give away their resources than becoming rich off it. Ustream.tv has been very helpful with online discussions and Bible studies, allowing the face of the presenter to be in the home of everyone tuning in without actually being there. It has a live chat function that is almost “idiot-proof” where teens can sign in and be a part of the conversation live with the presentation. While we do have a Twitter that posts updates from our youth fan page, no teens use it and literally scoff every time they see the logo or a link to our Twitter page. Let’s be honest, Twitter is primarily used by adults. Kids think it’s silly and foolish in most cases. But if a parent is active on Twitter and chooses to follow us, it’s one more way to touch base, and the way we have it set up is automatic so there’s no extra effort given on our part as using it as another means of connecting.
5. If you were teaching youth ministry to prospective youth pastors what are the top 3 things you would say to them?
Part 1 and Part 2 of the Interview.
Eric Ebbinghaus is the Director of Student Ministries at Greeley Wesleyan Church in Greeley, CO.
He blogs at www.ericebbinghaus.com.
Follow him on Twitter.
Check out the church website.
