Jeremy Hoover

This is a follow-up to a post from last week where I wrote about how we used Twitter and Facebook in our church. That post detailed the basics. This post will detail the specifics of our follow-up.

1. I began the day by posting two tweets from our church Twitter account. The first tweet encouraged tweeting church members to provide thoughts, commentary, and questions during the sermon. The second tweet contained a theme sentence for the sermon as well as links to my sermon outline and slides.

2. Just like last week, I had someone in the office tweet the main points of my sermon while I preached. These points were tweeted in real time.

3. We used the Twitter hashtag #hrcc to organize the sermon tweets as well as any responses.

4. In the afternoon, I went back to Twitter, searched the hashtag, and responded to the tweets that came in during the sermon. For example, one member noted a similarity between the Joseph story and a movie, and I responded, asking for more information on that connection. Another member commented that goals help us persevere and I replied by asking if that part of the sermon was unclear and stating what I thought the goal should be.

5. As the week goes on, I plan to follow up both with questions to help church members apply the biblical teaching from Sunday as well as questions to help me focus my sermon for the upcoming Sunday.

6. I did pretty much the same thing on Facebook. On our Horton Road Church of Christ ministry page, I requested that church members leave a comment detailing their reflections on the sermon. To facilitate this, I had earlier messaged several church members to ask them for their participation.

7. I went back to Facebook in the afternoon and added my own comment to the thread. On Monday, I posted a follow-up question to help church members apply the sermon. I also posted a thread to generate discussion ahead of my sermon coming up this Sunday.

I plan to keep refining this system, and if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions, please leave them in comments!

Yesterday we tried a social media experiment. We've been using our Facebook fan page and Twitter account mainly for distributing information. For Sunday worship, we tried to create a backchannel for discussing the sermon, both live and after the worship event. This is how we did it:

1. I sent out a message on Facebook to church members, asking them to access our Fan Page after worship and leave a comment, question, or insight about our worship.

2. On Twitter, I asked our tweeting church members to live-tweet the sermon, and to use a church-centered hashtag (#hrcc) at the end of their tweets. This means that as they had an insight, question, or response to the sermon, they posted it to their Twitter account as the sermon was being preached.

3. In connection with this, I sent out two introductory tweets from the church account. The first was a summary sentence for the sermon and a link to my sermon outline online. The second tweet was a link to the study notes I provided online.

4. During the sermon, one church member tweeted the main points of my sermon along with a link to the online outline and the church's hashtag (#hrcc).

5. After the sermon, I went back to Twitter, searched the #hrcc hashtag, and responded to the tweets so we could continue our dialogue. (You can read these tweets for yourself by going to Twitter Search and entering #hrcc.)

6. On Facebook, I read some replies that came through the messaging system as well as the comments that were placed on our Fan Page. I responded to these, again in an effort to keep the dialogue going.

We don't have a high percentage of members on Facebook, and even less are on Twitter. I'm still happy with our experiment and I plan to keep it up. I think it helped people engage the material better and it will facilitate community outside the weekly worship as we create a backchannel through which we can continue talking and tweeting with each other about God's word and its impact in our lives.

For those who were involved, what was your opinion? What feedback do you have? If you're just reading this, what questions do you have?

Connection has always been an important part of any church, but particularly of Churches of Christ. It's one of the reasons owe have multiple bible studies during the week. It was a heavy influence motivating the beginning of Sunday evening worship services.

The idea was, the more times you could get together, the stronger you would be as a group.

Certainly, there is much to argue with this. Generations of loose acquaintanceships, masquerading as friendships, demonstrate that simply gathering together, even frequently, does not build real relationships. But there is still something about connecting with each other that makes us feel better and feel closer to each other.

Some churches meet this need through the offer of different fellowship activities. Other churches use small groups. The idea behind these is to offer varied points of connection, assuming that if we offer a large enough variety of ways to connect with others, people will find an avenue that fits them and become involved.

But in today's world, many people don't have the time to spend attending multiple classes, services, and activities at the church building. Some live far enough away from where the church they attend that it's impractical to meet more than once each week. Others have work schedules or family obligations that often conflict with meeting times.

But these people still yearn for some kind of connection outside of weekly Sunday worship services. And this is where the power of the internet comes in. Just as previous generations would stay connected to each other during the week by phone, today's generation stays connected by email, text message, or online communication.

These networks provide means of communication and connection by the ways they link people together. Other than email, a couple of the bigger networks online are Facebook and Twitter. Many people use these services to build a profile about themselves, who they are, what they like, and so on, and to stay in touch with other friends.

I personally vouch for both these services. I have accounts at both, and have stayed in touch with old friends and church members through both. Facebook generally keeps accounts private, but you may check out my Twitter account at this link. (Twitter accounts are public by default, though you can set your account to be private, if you want.) If you have a Facebook account, you can connect with me by clicking here.

These services can also be used evangelistically, for fellowship, and for Christian communication. In addition to sharing thoughts and messages with others, I also use these services to share links to my sermons, to good articles I found online, and to other resources that can be used devotionally.

At the Horton Road Church of Christ, we're slowly building our online infrastructure, piece by piece. We desire to deepen our communication with each other. We have set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account and we encourage those who have accounts to use them both to connect with each other and to spread the word about our church by posting a brief update about your church experience on Sunday or after some other activity.

An example of how this all might work is this: A church member is inspired by the Sunday worship service. She goes home and posts about her excitement on her Facebook account. She then contacts another church member through Facebook, asking what she thought about the sermon. This church member responds later in the night, thereby creating a positive flow of communication about the church that can be seen by others who may not even be members of the church! Meanwhile, a friend who doesn't attend church reads this member's Facebook update and responds, opening the door to information being shared about the church.

Another church member hears something during the sermon that really sparks his interest. He pulls out his phone and sends a post to his Twitter account. This post is broadcast to all who are following him. Information about the church and the church's teaching goes out, live, to anyone who is following this church member's updates. Later, when he checks in at night, he sees a couple comments and questions from friends about what he posted. This opens a dialogue about the church and what we believe.

These examples may seem far-fetched, but they are in the realm of possibility. I encourage you to investigate these services and consider signing up, or if you already have accounts, use them for God's glory by communicating with other church members and posting thoughts about our worship services and activities. You never know how someone might be reached. It's up to us to use the tools we can to take the gospel into our world.

This is my first stab at an audio book review. It's a little long, around 12 minutes. I tackle Jesse's book and some of thoughts about his material. The book may not be what you think it would be about.