Fear Not: Facebook, Information and Extensions of Local Church Ministry

Abstract

There are many concerns that the use of social media disconnects people from one another. Conventional wisdom holds that the use of social media causes people to disregard or value less their interpersonal relationships. As a result many groups-and in particular the local churchhave tended to shy away from social media as a way to impart information and build relationships within their community. This paper is a survey of current research that provides clarity about how and why people use social media. There are several important findings in this survey that have salience for the local church and how it connects with people in their community and how information spreads. The findings indicate that instead of competing with and diminishing interpersonal relationships, the use of social media among youth and adults amplifies those relationships. Of special note is the finding that the use of social media may open up information and interaction to those who are introverted or in some way reticent in asserting themselves in face-to-face interactions. and Religion 197 FEAR NOT (Hilliker, 2003), and from the Robertsons during the era when television was taking root in homes (Boerl & Perkins, 2011). So to what can we credit this ambivalence by segments of the church in standing apart from social media, which Leslie Ciesielski (2009) calls our new universal medium of communication? The reason seems to be the so-called conventional wisdom about social media and the acceptance of an anecdotal understanding about how people are actually using social media at this point in its development. The purpose of this study is to examine the conventional wisdom, particularly worries that the online communication paradigm may not be in the best interest of the church because of its tendency toward individualism instead of communalism. This concern will be compared with recent research that shows how people appear to actually use online communication tools, and how disseminating information online can extend the reach of the local church. Conventional Wisdom and the Unconventional Reality Over the last several years, the literature in the area of online communication and social networking has grown immensely. The picture that is beginning to appear challenges a number of the widely accepted opinions about life within the social media sphere, including the foundational belief that online communication is creating a fragmentation or disregard for interpersonal relationships. Mark Bauerlein (2009) and Nicholas Carr (2010) are among the more trenchant thinkers in this area, and what they say appears to connect with common sense. It seems correct that a medium that forces one to send a message or post an idea to his or her friends must come at the expense of building and maintaining face-to-face relationships. It makes sense that this sort of Advances in the Study of Information and Religion 199 FEAR NOT communication (read: "communication" with the scare quotes) might tend to be shallow and self-centered. But this, according to recent rese...

Effective Ways of Using Social Media: An Investigation of Christian Churches in South Australia

“…This implied that posting on public Facebook pages for the purpose of informing people is effective. Underation (2012) disagreed, arguing that this way of using social media only emphasizes one-way communication, and the full two-way communication potential of social media has not been utilized. The emergence of social media in the 21st century has opened up communication opportunities that greatly differ from that of all other communication tools throughout history.…”