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Your Mappa Mundi
Using a large sheet of flipchart or butcher paper, draw a map of the world from the perspective of your ministry or those of your faith community. The key below offers some icons that will help you to mark out the territory in which you minister, but be sure to develop your own images to fill out your view of the world.
PART 2: YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILE
Before you begin to explore social media platforms that might become sites for digital ministry, take some time to assess yourself as a social media participant.
Your Typical Church or Religious Organization Member
Now, you should assess the social media profile of your ministry. The Community Social Media Ministry Survey on the next page will help; consider sharing it with people in your ministry.
COMMUNITY SOCIAL MEDIA MINISTRY SURVEY
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become incredibly popular among almost every age group and demographic cluster. And, religion and spirituality are among the hottest topics in social networking communities. As we begin to consider how our ministry might engage this new terrain, we’d like to know about your experience with social media.
Once you’ve got a reasonable portrait of your community and yourself, place yourself on your world map in relation to typical Facebook and Twitter users. Where will you need to build bridges to connect more fully with people in your own community and to invite those outside into conversation with you? In the chapters that follow, we’ll look at very specific practices that will help you to do this, but it’s important to know early on where the opportunities and challenges lie. Looking in from the outside, how would typical social media users see you and your community of faith?
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THE REAL PRESENCE
Developing a Unique, Authentic Voice for Digital Ministry
 | There are two essential elements to successful personal digital ministry: presence and voice. Our presence as digital ministers should be compassionate, engaged, inspiring, accessible, and informative, but above all it must be real. It must be an authentic representation of ourselves as real human beings and as ministers. The cultivation of a distinct voice helps to distinguish us among the cacophony of voices in social media communities. In this chapter, we will describe what this “real presence” looks like and share examples of ministry leaders and congregations that are bringing a well-defined presence and distinctive voice to bear in their ministry. |
KEITH RECEIVED SOME SAGE ADVICE before beginning parish ministry. That wisdom applies to digital ministry:
I had just been ordained as a pastor and called to my first congregation. The responsibility of that office was weighing heavily on me, and I wondered whether I was up for the job. One evening, I shared my worry with my good friend, Knute, who gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received about being a pastor, before or since: “Keith, people just want a pastor who’s down to earth, that they know cares about them.”
Of course, I knew that. I had heard and experienced that truth in countless ways throughout my preparation for ministry. However, in my anxiety about being responsible for a parish full of souls, I was overwhelmed with all that I had to do and be to fulfill the pastoral office. Not surprisingly, I had completely overcomplicated the matter. Knute’s advice called me back to a simple truth about ministry: hokey as it may sound, we are most effective when we are down-to-earth, real people—when we are ourselves. In the midst of my anxiety, I could hold on to that. I could do that.
Many people feel anxious about embarking on the journey into digital ministry. Doing ministry in the digital media landscape described in the previous chapter feels to many like a new kind of call in a strange new land— one with different patterns of behavior, relationships, etiquette, and modes of communication that require us to develop new skill sets. It can be both exhilarating and disorienting.
With all the tools now available to us, and with the responsibility of being a minister in a new unfamiliar digital space—one in which many parishioners or community members are more advanced than we are—we worry about whether we can manage it all. In our anxiety—before we even jump in—we may debate the proper boundaries about friending people from our church, how many pro files we should have, how much time to spend (all of which we will discuss later in this chapter). Most of the time, we focus on the terms of engagement rather than actually engaging with members, friends, and our community.
Knute’s advice is salient here: “People just want a pastor who’s down to earth, that they know cares about them.” In whichever way you choose to participate in digital media, and with however much time you commit, this has to be at the center of your digital ministry.
“FRIENDING”
“Friending” is the practice of inviting people into your network on Facebook. The noun became a verb as people accepted requests and asked others to be Facebook friends.
“Friending” has joined the common lectionary beyond Facebook, especially among teens and young adults, who now often “friend” one another face-to-face as folk from “the days of yore” would speak of “making friends.”
See Chapter 3 for more on using Facebook in digital ministry.
“Keeping it real” in this way is both good pastoral practice and the most effective way to engage people in digital social media locales.
KEEPING IT REAL
The word most often used—and perhaps overused—to describe this kind of real presence in social media is “authenticity.” It’s been argued that authenticity is a term that is impossible to define. Like “beauty” or “truth,” we tend to know it when we see it.
In The Gifts of Imperfection, researcher, storyteller, and social media practitioner Brené Brown describes authenticity in this helpful way:
Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen. There are people who consciously practice being authentic, there are people who don’t, and there are the rest of us who are authentic on some days and not so authentic on other days.1
According to Brown, authenticity is about showing up with our whole selves. The work of ministry continually calls us to “consciously practice being authentic.” Life experiences, passions, strengths, and weaknesses are all brought to bear and shape pastoral presence, regardless of whether we are serving as clergy or laypeople. Being true to these—and trusting that God is at work in them—is what makes each ministry unique and effective. It enables us to empathize with people in their suffering, bring the Word of God home in preaching and teaching, and share faith through the stories of our lived experience.
The same goes for life and ministry enacted through digital media.