Facebook for Faith: How churches should use Facebook Groups

Last month, Facebook made a splash with the launch of faith.facebook.com, a hub to connect faith leaders with Facebook resources. The site includes getting started information on Groups, Pages, Charitable Giving, Live, and other widely-utilized tools.

Atop the list of Facebook's resources for churches: Facebook Groups.

In 2018, Lifeway Research, an evangelical publishing house, shared survey data indicating that 84% of protestant pastors use a Facebook page to connect with their congregation. Lifeway is sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention and their data over-indexes on media-savvy evangelical congregations. Still, their findings point attest to how widespread Facebook has become as a church communications resource - even before the pandemic.

Many congregations are using Facebook to build online community. Yet most aren't using the Facebook feature specifically designed for community conversation.

That's partly because Facebook has struggled to articulate the differences, and the different value propositions, between Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups. Let me attempt to clarify:

A Facebook Page functions as a digital billboard. It is public by default, so everyone can access all of the page's information. Churches widely use Facebook Pages to communicate important information on service times, meeting locations, and upcoming events. Originally developed as an advertising resource, Facebook Pages are Mark Zuckerberg's equivalent of the Yellow Pages.

A Facebook Group functions more like a digital meeting room. It is a collaborative space for multi-directional conversations. Unlike a Facebook Page, it is private by default. New members request to join, and administrators must approve the request. All who gather within a Facebook Group at least implicitly agree to abide by community rules and standards.

Congregations seeking to cultivate conversation on social media should look to Facebook Groups, not Facebook Pages. But most churches haven't set up a Facebook Group - at least not yet.

It's easy to understand why Facebook Groups should be a priority for churches. They provide a platform for collaborative, multi-directional, and asynchronous conversation. Nona Jones, author of the book "From Social Media to Social Ministry," summarizes her research into how churches use Facebook:

"The research pointed loud and clear to one major finding: people want to spend time on Facebook when they are able to engage with content in a meaningful way. And that content needs to invite conversation, not just consumption."

Setting up a Facebook Group is a relatively simple process:

• Create your group: Add a description of your congregation - and what types of conversations will take place in the group. Include photos from your church's life, and invite members to join.

• Customize the settings: Most importantly, determine the group's public visibility. Most churches will likely make their groups private, but visible in search results. This makes the group findable but restricts the visibility of posts and conversations to group members. You may also create a list of membership questions, to ensure those joining the Facebook Group have a previous connection to the congregation.

• Determine the privacy policy: In other words, determine the rules. Set expectations that direct group members to remind kind, courteous, and to respect the privacy of others.

Each step in the process is thoroughly documented in Facebook's guide "Getting Started with Groups." Examples are plentiful - click here for examples from Facebook's faith and spirituality category.

But cultivating Christian community takes more than software settings. It requires intentionality, answering questions like:

• What is the specific purpose of the group? Active church members spend just 8.3 minutes per day on faith-related activities. The most engaging church Facebook Group will never be a frequent hub of online activity. At most, members might check in on the group a handful of times each week. So give them a specific purpose. Does the group exist to share prayer requests? Does it exist to respond to the week's preaching text or sermon? Perhaps it was established as a replacement to a book study group and invites members to respond to a shared reading, video, or podcast episode. When it comes to church group purpose, less is more. If church leaders can precisely define the reason that the congregation should participate in the group, church leaders will find that individuals are more likely to stick around for real conversation.

• How will participation in the group integrate with the church's broader life together? Facebook Groups ought to be situated within the church's broader movement towards hybrid ministry. The conversation should not happen in abstraction nor in a vacuum but should respond to events in the community's life together. Sharing photos from an event, offering reactions to a sermon or podcast, or inviting reflection on a shared discussion question are ways to connect the digital Facebook Group to the analog aspects of Christian community.

• How can church leaders create a distinctively Christian Facebook Group? As the group gains traction within the community, our task isn't so much to cultivate conversation but to articulate lived experiences of faith. This is the difference between a distinctively Christian Facebook Group versus a group that exists for a non-profit or neighborhood. Eventually, the Group should become a place where ideas are exchanged and where community members share stories of God's work in their lives and world. Getting to this point takes effort, curation, and months if not years of active conversation. God can work through the discussions on a Facebook page, provided the community shows up for the conversation.

Have you curated conversations in your church within a Facebook Group? Share your experience in the comments below!

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@ryanpanzer, the author of "Grace and Gigabytes," accompanies churches on their journey towards more immersive, authentic digital community.

Facebook for Faith is here. Will it forever change church community?

Last Sunday, the New York Times published an article on Facebook's outreach to faith-based organizations. Recently, Facebook's top leadership has spurred the development of new technologies developed for faith communities. The company has also established partnerships with numerous denominations and interfaith organizations. Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operations Officer of Facebook, who has spoken publicly of the importance of her Jewish faith and heritage, is leading the effort, along with Nona Jones, the author of "From Social Media to Social Ministry."

Their work culminated in the launch of faith.facebook.com, a resource portal where faith leaders can learn about and deploy tools for their communities, from Facebook Live to online giving. Atop the resource portal is information on Facebook Groups, which Facebook sees as the future location of web-based religious community. Facebook continues to invest in the development of Groups, a feature and an offering that they see as the antidote to misinformation concerns on their platform.

Facebook's investment in technologies for faith communities is a significant milestone in the ongoing redefinition of church community. Early in the pandemic, faith leaders largely repurposed existing technologies for religious purposes. Now, tech giants have recognized the upside to engaging religious communities on their platforms and have begun developing their technology accordingly.

This development should prompt some ethical reflection, and perhaps even some scrutiny, amongst church leadership. What does it mean that tech giants, who didn't have much interest in faith-based organizations before the pandemic, are suddenly funding partnerships and software development targeted to the religious space?

For starters, it shows that big tech smells a business opportunity. For all of Facebook's rhetoric about communities and togetherness, faith.facebook.com would not have launched were it not a potential revenue stream for the social media giant. The simple, and perhaps ugly reality, is that the more faith communities venture on to Facebook, the more Facebook makes via advertising revenue as adherents and members view and click more advertisements.

Still, the fact that Facebook is a business should not deter churches from cultivating community on its platforms. From insurance providers to stain glassed window makers, congregations partner with businesses for many purposes, and church leaders should not dismiss Facebook simply because it is a publicly-traded corporation. And after all, there are more global Facebook users than there are Christians. Clearly, Facebook represents an important missional opportunity. It's where our communities can be found. Simply dismissing Facebook because of its vast wealth would be nearsighted.

Instead of rejecting Facebook for Faith, church leaders should consider how to establish well-marked boundaries between Facebook's revenue-generating impulses and the mission and vision of congregational life.

These boundaries can be established by decisions church leaders make about how to utilize Facebook for Faith. For example, a congregation might choose to limit their connections to the platform, so as to preserve some independence from the social giant. A church might collect donations from a platform outside of Facebook (Tithe.ly is one option among many). They might choose to deactivate the monetization of video content posted to Facebook, or even to host worship live streaming off of the social media platform, on a site like Vimeo Livestream.

Perhaps most importantly, these developments should also prompt faith leaders to consider boundaries between user data and Facebook's ever-present algorithms. Church councils and boards should be actively reviewing how member privacy will be respected not just on Facebook, but in all digital spaces where the congregation is present. One aspect of this review should concern images and video. Many continue to raise concerns over Facebook's facial recognition technology, which is capable of scanning any photo posted to the social media site. From photos to videos to blog posts and podcasts, congregations should be transparent about what they plan to share about their community's life together.

As an ethical principle, community members should opt-in whenever a church plans to post close-up photos and videos to any social media platform or website. But the conversation on privacy goes beyond photos and videos. Facebook can target ads based on user-generated posts and comments. This necessitates the development of a set of community standards, or rules of engagement, for any church Facebook group. Determine what topics should be kept for offline conversation. Specify how posts that encroach upon the privacy of others or that violate community standards will be handled. Name how community standards will be kept up within the group.

The quality of our partnership depends just as much on our own processes and commitments as it does on the actions of the social media giant. When we use Facebook for church community, Facebook will seek to monetize the connection. There's a reason why they are currently valued at over a trillion dollars. The question is whether this will be a fair exchange. Will Facebook monetize data that is best kept private? Or will a combination of intentionality, purpose, and privacy commitments from a congregation's leadership facilitate a mutually uplifting partnership?

Facebook for Faith is here, a sure sign of religion's sudden advance into digital ecosystems. Now is the time to plan how faith communities will make the most of the connections that Facebook has to offer.

In the next post in this series on Facebook for faith leaders, we'll dive in to some of the core features in Faith for Facebook, including the differences between Facebook Pages (widely used amongst churches) and Facebook Groups (widely promoted by Facebook).

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes," a book that explores what it means to minister alongside a culture shaped by digital technology. Ryan speaks to and consults with church groups seeking to redevelop ministries for a digital age.

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Design Thinking and Church Community: Step One - Empathize!

This post is the second in a six-part series on building Digital Church Community with Design Thinking, a series inspired by the COVID-19 and the challenges of building Christian community in a pandemic. Click here for the intro post!

One does not simply build a church community online. Or at least, a church leader cannot build community online without discerning what a context imagines "community" to be!

The internet is over-saturated with tools that promise to create some semblance of community. From Facebook groups to Slack accounts, Google+ circles (when they actually existed) to Netflix Watch Parties, digital tech companies recognize that we all need community.

In response to this business opportunity, these companies design tools which lure us with the promise of community with just one click. The result is one of the most pervasive myths of digital technology: if we create this page or start this group, if we ask this question or post this poll, surely some semblance of a community will appear!

Indeed, tech companies and the tools they provide implicitly promote the idea that community comes from tactics. They tacitly advertise the idea that the source of all community is the technology itself.

This assumption is part of the reason why it is so challenging to build church community in digital contexts. So many well-intentioned church leaders begin with the Facebook page or the Instagram feed, without completing the necessary groundwork. Too many church leaders click before they connect, and launch before they listen.

To create church community in this time of physical distancing and forced distribution, we ought to use design thinking to craft specific community-building moments that resonate within our context.

And to start that process, we need to empathize.

To quote IDEO’s Human-Centred Design Toolkit, empathizing means developing a “deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people you are designing for."

Before we build any groups, pages, or posts, before we start new accounts or purchase new technologies, we need a clear understanding of the problems and realities within our church context. More specific to community-building, we need a clear understanding of the problems and realities of finding connection during these difficult, distributed times.

"Empathy helps us gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of people's emotional and physical needs, and the way they see, understand, and interact with the world around them."

-Design-Thinking.org, "What is Empathy, Exactly?"

Church leaders have long been adept at empathizing and listening. Of the many organizations I've been part of, churches seem to be the most consistent in offering "listening posts," "sounding boards," and other formal listening structures, particularly during times of leadership transition. With COVID-19 upending all of our routines, we in the church should think of this time as a profound leadership transition, one that requires dedicated investment in listening to our communities.

But we're not listening for the sake of listening, and we're not putting out a proverbial suggestion box for ideas on how to build community. In the context of community building, we're engaging the "empathize" phase of Design Thinking to listen for responses to two questions in particular:

Six months into the pandemic, what are you missing most about your church community?

How can your church community support you as you navigate these uncertain times?

We can design community from the (virtual) ground-up when we listen widely for the answers to these two questions. Whether by survey or by 1:1 on Zoom, whether by socially-distanced conversation or a masked-up meeting, whether by Doodle Poll or Facebook discussion, we ought to be asking these two questions, right here, right now.

Listen to responses to these questions. Empathize with those who provide the responses. Thank them for sharing. Document their thoughts. Then find some more community members to ask, find some more perspectives to engage, find some more voices to include.

After we have intentionally listened and listened some more, we can advance to the next stage of design thinking, the subsequent milestone on our journey to reinvent church community during COVID: that of Defining the Problem. It is to this step that we will turn in the next post within this series.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of Grace and Gigabytes.