Faith and Victory
Church is about loving God and loving His people. We are a medium sized
church that wants to spread the gospel in Auburn Washington but also spread the
gospel all across the world. We do this by harnessing the power of social
media to preach/write about/video blog/ and proclaim His truth. This is
the beauty of social media, you no longer have to be a mega church to reach the
world. In this blog post, I'll explain some of the ways we are doing
that.
My name is Pastor
Todd and I'm one part pastor, one part admin, and one part social media
ninja. I first got into social media about 5 years ago as we were redoing
our church website. I wanted way for more potential visitors to find our
website. The thought being once they saw our website they would visit us
on a Sunday. Social media seemed like the best way to do that.
It was a simple yet so powerful idea that has changed the way our church
functions. At the time our services were running about 200 people, today
we are running over 400 people per service and our Easter service had about 550
people in it. That's more than doubling the size of our church in 5
years. Now social media can't take all the credit for this growth but it
has played a major part in the reason why we continue to grow.
Social media meshes
really well with what the church is trying to accomplish. Social media is
platform to tell your message to your friends (pretty much the definition of
sharing the gospel), social media is a platform to share interesting content
(recorded sermons and devotionals), and social media is a place to show (not
tell) your friends about what your doing (taking pictures and checking in to
church) in a way that doesn't put pressure on the person checking your church
out (visiting a church in person is so pressure packed).
Our social media
presence starts with Facebook. Facebook is the largest and most
influential social media platform. Our church page has about 1650
facebook page likes which is over 4 times the size of our church. So we
reach over 400 people per Sunday and then we have the opportunity to
reach an additional 1200+ people from Facebook. Not only that, but
because we update our Facebook page frequently all those 1200+ people and
potentially all their friends have the opportunity to check out our church
without actually having to attend. THIS IS INVALUABLE EXPOSURE that only
costs time and not money.
One of the things we
do to increase our Facebook presence is take lots of pictures during our
services. It started out just being me that took pictures. I'd take
pictures of smiling couples, babies, the preacher, and the worship team.
I would tag each picture and make sure to have the location show as our church
(so people could click on our church page to check us out) As time has
moved along, I've convinced others in the congregation to join me to the point
where now on a Sunday morning to the point of where now there are
tons of pictures happening on Facebook from all kinds of different
people. It has an amazing effect. At least once a month, I greet a
first time visitor who says something like this "I saw my friends picture
at church and it looked like a lot of fun, so I had to check it
out". The old saying goes "a picture says a thousand
words" and I agree.
Another social media
platform we use is Twitter. Twitter is my personal favorite.
Facebook is more about personal relationships, but twitter is about
broadcasting your message to the world. By using an app called crowdfire
(free to try), the church twitter account (@FVChurchAuburn) has been able to
get almost 120,000 twitter followers. Most of them Christians or at least
having an interest in Christian topics. The Church twitter reaches about
5 million other twitter accounts per month. That's massive. No other
social media lets you easily reach that amount of people so easily. We
use twitter to get visitors to our website. This is important because
Google ranks your page in searches depending on how much traffic visits your
site. The more traffic that visits your site the higher you'll be when
someone does a search looking for a church to attend.
Last but not least we
use youtube to live stream and record our sermons. Live
streaming/recording your sermons gives people that are sick and also those
traveling an opportunity to "not be left out". It also gives an
opportunity to give potential visitors the chance to preview your
sermons. Your visitors want to know that you aren't preaching something
weird, that your preaching is compelling and interesting, and that you are preaching
the word of God. Live streaming and recording your sermons gives them
that opportunity without the "risk" of attending your service.
Time and time again I've talked to first time visitors that watched our live
stream for weeks before working up the courage to visit us in person.
Hopefully I've given
you a few ideas to help grow your own church through social media.
Sharing the gospel through social media is my passion. I'd love to
connect with you there and also answer any questions you may have for you, your
ministry, or your own church. Send me an email, message, picture or tweet
on any of the social media platforms below.
God Bless
Pastor Todd Sommer
Church Webpage - faithandvictory.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/todd.sommer.5
Church Facebook
- https://www.facebook.com/AuburnChurchWa
Twitter - https://twitter.com/FVChurchAuburn
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/fvcauburnwa
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/fvchurchauburn/
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