15 REASONS: WHY DO WE NEED ONLINE AND SOCIAL MEDIA MINISTRY?

Every day we see people tweeting, posting, and snapping around us. And we do that also. The more I work online, the more I am convinced of how important this online media is for the body of Christ.

Our online ministry is not to replace the way of reaching people in live presence but to add possibilities and to be there where the people are.

1. Online and Social media can help us to be where our audience is. Today statistics show that out of the 7.91 billion people in the World, 4.62 billion are active social media users. That is 58.4% of the world’s population. If you and I, as ministers are not present on this platform, how can we serve and minister to the billions of people who congregate on social media?

2. Online and Social media can help us influence and IMPACT the World. As custodians of God’s word, we are called to influence the world. We are the salt and light of the world. We are the yeast that is destined to influence the dough. We are the vessels that carry solutions to the world’s biggest problems. And social media is where people are asking questions, looking for answers, and spending time researching. Studies show that an average person spends close to 6 hours and 58 min a day on the internet, 3 hours and 20 min. time spent watching television (broadcast and streaming), 2 hours and 27 min a day they spent using social media, 2 hours for reading online and printed media, 1 hour and 33 min for listening to music, 1 hour they are using to for listening broadcast radio. If our ministry or church is not present on social media, how can we influence the people who are crowding around this space for hours?

3. Online and Social media can help us to educate. The Field is big. The need for love, knowledge, and understanding is bigger than the need for food.

4. Social media can help in discipleship. If we structure for discipleship program around social media (where people spend time anyways) we have a higher chance of being effective.

5. Online and Social Media can help in building community. God’s plan for His Church is to operate as a community. And social media networks are designed to facilitate community building. Most social media networks come with those features already built-in – members-only content, group events, group calendar, privacy settings, instant messaging facility, notifications, etc.

6. Online and Social media can help us with ministry announcements. Social media channels are mostly accessed by people using their mobile devices (5.31 billion people are using mobile devices and 4.95 billion are internet users). This means any communication going through social media can be instantly delivered to the recipient.

7. Online and Social media can help us sell our ministry products using social media channels for eCommerce.

8. Online and Social media can help us receive donations.

9. Online and Social media can help us, minister to people when they travel. If you use social media to LIVE stream or make available recorded content of your ministry this will help them have continuity of learning.

10. Online and Social media can help us, minister to people who cannot travel. Some people may not be able to come in person to your church or ministry events due to various reasons. For example, health reasons or family challenges, or some religious constraints. In those cases, social media can be a great way for people to stay in touch with our ministry and access all the resources that they need through social media.

11. Online and Social media can help us strengthen internal team communication.
12. Online and Social media can help us reduce our promotional expenses. ‘Dollar a Day’ strategy where we can maximize our reach for as low as a dollar a day. Such strategies were never possible before social media. The return on investment on social media ads might surprise us (if we execute the campaigns right).

13. Online and Social media can help us get feedback. Collecting feedback can be crucial to the growth of a ministry. Knowing what people want, how they feel, l and what they think can make all the difference to our planning. Social media is an easy convenient and powerful tool to collect such information. We can make use of tools like Facebook Polls and Twitter Polls. The additional benefit of such tools is, that every time you use these tools, the overall engagement in each of these channels increases. An increase in engagement means a better ranking in the channel’s algorithm.

14. Online and Social media can help us convey our ministry vision. If God has given us a vision that can aim the society and build His kingdom, it is good for us to share it with as many people in as many ways as possible. Online and Social media is designed to take a message and spread it among a specific group of people. So if we can take our vision and strategically communicate it to our audience on social media, then people may want to help us accomplish that vision. Using social media we can communicate our vision visually and interactively, making it more engaging and interesting.

15. Online and Social media can help us improve our ministry event attendance. Promoting ministry events will not be a challenge if we spend time laying the foundation for our social media ministry. Simply because once we consistently provide good content, people follow us. When they follow us and share our content regularly, our social media reach starts to grow. With a good reach, whenever we promote our events on social media, the right audience will get to know about it and sign up. We can also use social media to make the event experience better for our audience. Using social media we can help them connect with other participants, connect with the speakers, access teaching resources, ask questions, etc.