personal ministry or for your church or other religious organization, will not of course be exactly like any of those we share. We offer them, however, as an illustration of the kinds of reflection that go into developing a social media strategy and the results this reflection can provide.
“Approach social media as you would anything else in the church. If you have someone in your congregation who has gifts for it, try to make use of those gifts.”
—Emily Scott, Pastoral Minister
St. Lydia’s Church, New York
CONCLUSION: DIGITAL INCARNATION
When we started this project, we talked a lot about what the word “save” in the title meant to us. It’s a tricky word for mainline Christians, who have had—at least since the end of overt colonialism—less evangelically oriented, less proselytizing traditions. We tend, that is, not to announce our faith too loudly lest doing so impinge on the beliefs of others. We don’t generally call out the personal sinfulness of others and offer absolution within our churches. We don’t make a point to articulate, often even privately, the distinctiveness of our denominational traditions.
Elizabeth tells the story of her grandmother, who, as the family passed the churches of other denominations in her small town on the way to “the true church,” would sigh and say, “I don’t know why those people even bother to get up early on a Sunday. They’re all going to damnation anyway. May as well sleep in.” (She said that in the car, of course, not on the sidewalk.) The fact that mainline Christians seldom even think such things anymore, focusing more on our commonality as Christians than theological differences across denominations, is surely all to the good.
But it also seems to be the case that our understandable embarrassment over the demeaning and divisive dismissal of other faiths that was tolerable in earlier times has turned into a stultifying silence about who we really are as mainline Christians and how our faith allows us to live with others in the world in remarkable, loving, and healing ways. This has only been exacerbated by what many see as a co-optation of the word “Christian” itself by more fundamentalist believers, whose often condemning approach to sharing the faith has sowed disdain and outright hostility toward all Christians. As a result, many people who believe in God and in fact participate in Christian communities prefer to identify as agnostic, as “spiritual but not religious,” or as having “no religious belief in particular.”3
Our perspective is that new social networking platforms enable us to extend the love of God to others in ways that make our mainline Christian traditions more authentically present in the world. This may not “save” other believers and seekers in the sense of converting them to our particular denominations, and it may not “save” our churches in terms of numerical and associated financial stability. But, as you’ll see in the Conclusion, we think our participation in the new media landscape has a profoundly salvific effect nonetheless, saving God’s church from a marginalization and irrelevance that prevents us from doing the work of love, compassion, and justice to which we are all called.
We began this chapter by noting that this book itself began in digital conversation. It might almost go without saying that this conversational mode continued as Keith and Elizabeth worked on the book, the ideas in each chapter being shaped through email, Facebook posts, tweets, documents swapped on Dropbox, and Google+ video chats. However, in order to manage the work and avoid creating a schizophrenic tone, we divided the chapters between us, and shared comments after each draft. This process has allowed us to produce a book that is very much a collaborative product, drawing upon something of a single authorial direction in each chapter, but nonetheless expressing a shared vision and voice.
Still, because we each also bring unique perspectives to our shared project, from time to time you’ll see call-out boxes with short comments from one of us. Likewise, you’ll find notes on terminology that might be new, and tips on practices and resources that can make your digital ministry easier. And, you’ll find profiles of digital ministers we interviewed during the course of writing this book. What can we say? Keith is a digital native, and Elizabeth is pretty fully naturalized. Like more and more of the people you encounter in church and other ministries, we roll through the Digital Reformation with a lot of other voices and information in tow. We hope it’ll make for lively reading that supports your developing digital ministry while modeling the modes of communication current in the digital domain.
ENOUGH ABOUT US: ABOUT YOU, GENERALLY IN PARTICULAR
Writers typically write for a more or less imagined, composite reader—a “you” made up of a variety of backgrounds, characteristics, and experiences drawn from very different people. This is certainly true for Click 2 Save, which we address to the broad category of “leaders in ministry” that includes clergy and laypeople in both formal and informal ministry roles. We take a kind of “priesthood of all believers” understanding of readers of this book, assuming that each of us in the church is called to witness to and welcome others into the faith regardless of our title or role. In that sense, we’re all leaders in ministry, our everyday lives enacting the relationship with God in Jesus Christ that is at the center of our faith. So, in the end, we see Click 2 Save as a book for disciples in general.
Click 2 Save also speaks to the very particular experiences, stories, and questions we both have encountered in our respective pastoral and educational ministries. It is drawn from conversations not just with the people we interviewed for the book, many of whom will be profiled in the pages ahead, but from ongoing conversations with colleagues, church members, and a rich blend of friends whom we regularly encounter in face-to-face and social media settings. Their questions about social media participation as it might help to address the challenges facing their various communities are very particular, very much located in the realities of sustaining small or large church communities; growing or declining service, community, and social justice programs; and tending established and emerging spiritual friendship networks.
One of the things we’ve learned as we’ve studied social media practice in religious contexts, talked with a wide range of practitioners, and mucked around in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so on ourselves is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will address the particular needs of each community or individual. But, of course, the beauty of new media is that it is endlessly adaptable, and this is exactly what we invite you to do with this book. In effect, we invite you to write Click 2 Save with us, using the information we share in light of your particular needs to develop a social media strategy for your specific ministry. At the end of each chapter you’ll find space for this customizing of the ideas and approaches we share. We hope, too, that you’ll visit the Click 2 Save Facebook page or Twitter feed to share your experience as you adapt and apply the ideas in the chapters ahead in your particular context.
As you get ready to develop a social media strategy for your church or religious organization, we will invite you to step back a bit and consider what motivates your social media participation and what you hope to accomplish by deepening your practice. The puzzle piece icon that appears throughout the book marks the spot for strategic reflection on the material covered in each chapter. If you’re working with a group on social media strategy for your community—a practice we certainly encourage—you may want to copy the strategy page for participants.
You’ll see other icons throughout the book that mark our comments on each other’s ideas, profiles of digital ministers across the denominational spectrum in a variety of settings, social media tools that may be helpful in your digital ministry, definitions of social media terminology we use in the book, and quick tips for social media practice. Here are the icons you’ll see in the pages ahead:
PIRATE THIS BOOK
Back in the day, political activist Abbie Hoffman wrote an ironic bestseller called Steal This