There’s not many places or industries that have not been touched by social media. Twitter has been an especially high-traffic place for people to get their message to the masses. Professors tweet homework assignments to their students. Health gurus give food, diet and exercise tips to their followers. Local bands tweet their next gig to their fans to make sure the everyone knows where they are playing next. Another major trend that is taking over Twitter is of the religious nature: Pastors and church leaders tweeting to their congregants.

While these pastors, speakers, and authors may not have as many followers as Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber, their followers and fans are much more responsive to the content that is tweeted. Take this example from a recent article from the New York Times on the subject:

“Consider this post in April from Bishop T. D. Jakes: “Your words will tell others what you think. Your actions will tell them what you believe.”

His message was forwarded 2,490 times — just shy of the 2,491 retweets that the pop singer Katy Perry generated the same month with this message to her fans: “Sometimes jet lag makes me feel like a cross eyed crack head #muststayawake.”

Both messages performed remarkably well. But there was a key difference: Bishop Jakes has 450,000 followers, while Ms. Perry has 20 million.”

While Bishop Jakes has a larger following than the average church pastor, even small local churches are seeing positive feedback from their social media efforts. Churches are taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter in a major way. Both platforms reach their congregation in places where they are already hanging out. If most of your congregation is on Facebook at some point throughout the day, wouldn’t you want to be there too?

Facebook is a fantastic way to communicate events and church happenings to your church members. If you’re a pastor and have a great “food for thought” on a Wednesday that you’d like to share and would rather not wait till Sunday’s sermon, there’s no greater place than Twitter to send it out.

Church doesn’t only take place on Sunday mornings. Your ministry lasts all week long. Communicate with your flock throughout the week in places where they already are.

If you’re looking for help with all the twittering and the hashtags and the Facebook timeline and the Google+ and you’re feeling overwhelmed by the world wide web of options, FEAR NOT! We have a team of people who are really, really good at helping you get to the basics of all that social media has to offer. Better yet, they’ll just do it for you. Contact us. We love our churches!