Case Study: Using Facebook for Ministry

Case Study: Using Facebook for Ministry

The following is a small case study worth reading from Brian Tol at Bible Gateway. The study discusses how to use Facebook as a tool to grow your ministry.

This was originally posted to the Gospelcom Members List.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

Subject:  [members] BibleGateway.com Facebook Group (A mini case study)
Date:     December 26, 2007 

Back in November we started a "group" on Facebook.com for users of the Bible Gateway. Here's a short write up of our experience. Hopefully it will provide some food for thought about your own online ministry.

What is Facebook?

If you're not familiar with Facebook, here's now they describe themselves:

Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.

• upload photos or publish notes
• get the latest news from your friends
• post videos on your profile
• tag your friends
• use privacy settings to control who sees your info
• join a network to see people who live, study, or work around you

Basically, Facebook is a "social networking" site. There are a number of Gospel.com community members on facebook, so if you have questions about it, I'm sure there are people on this list who can answer your questions. I personally like it because it give me lots of control over who can access my information.

What is a Facebook Group?

A "Group" on facebook is a collection of tools to enable users to connect with other users around a shared interest. In our case, we provide users with:

• Links to BibleGateway.com and Gospel.com.
• An open discussion board.
• A "Wall," which is sort of like the guestbooks circa 1994, only cooler. :-)

Why we started a BibleGateway.com group on Facebook

We started the group for a couple reasons:

• We wanted a method of connecting with our younger visitors. Most facebook users are 30 or younger. And we wanted to go where the people were, instead of starting from scratch.
• We wanted to see if Facebook would be a good tool for ministry.

Success To-Date

Membership growth is going well. We have 4,088 members, with roughly 800 joining a week.

Most interesting to us is the usage of the discussion boards. People are really grateful for the opportunity to connect with other believers in this sort of venue, and we just hit 100 topics. Here are some of the things people are discussing:

• What can we do to solve the problems of the world?
• What is your favorite scripture about baptism?
• Old earth creationism and young earth creationism.
• What to do when you are going through spiritual anorexia?

We've been mostly hands off, stepping in only to remove content clearly out of bounds.

So far we haven't seen too many trolls, which is amazing given the numbers we're seeing. We're currently evaluating methods of staying on top of this as the group grows.

Take Aways

Here are some things I've taken away from this process:

1. Going where people are "works". Instead of starting from the ground floor, Facebook gave us access to tools and a group of passionate people. And instead of the typical 40 - 50 year old online Evangelical, we're connecting with a younger group of believers.
2. Trust your users. I'm rather cynical about online discussion boards at this point in my career. The Bible Gateway facebook group has reminded me that sometimes you need to get over yourself and trust your users. Sure, I don't agree with every particular theological position posted, but we haven't seen anything off base, either.
3. "Online ministry" can be happy in lots of places, and not just own your own web site. In this case we were able to extend the Bible Gateway brand into another website with success.
4. Like any tool, you need to be discerning with where and how you apply Facebook to your own ministry.

Thanks!
Brian

If you have other creative uses for Facebook or other social media, send it our way and it might get posted on the 5Q Blog! 

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