New Study Cites Social Media Vital to Pastors and Congregations

I ran across and article entitled "New study shows forces driving church growth & loss" over at the ReadtheSpirit website. 

It is a great little article that I hope you'll check out. There was a section that referred to our latest series called "Getting your Church Wired." 

Cynthia Woolever, one of the authors of the study, states that ."..every savvy pastor must adapt to new social media and worship technology … The explosion of innovative communication technologies strains the budgets and the imaginations of many congregations and their leaders. It also raises new boundary and ethical issues for leaders to navigate.”

She goes onto state:

Yes, the mastering of current technology is a part of the required skillset for pastors—and they’re fooling themselves, now, if they think it isn’t. That’s one reason younger clergy have a huge advantage. Younger pastors use Twitter, they email, they text, they use Facebook.
When I was doing interviews with pastors, I would have to contact them to set up these interviews. I quickly discovered that anyone under 45 would reply to me within 10 minutes and we’d get the interview set up right away. Older pastors—they might not even have an email account. We would have to call the church office where a secretary would screen calls. I might not be able to reach the pastor for days. That’s a problem for people in the congregation if they can’t reach their pastor in the ways they communicate with everyone else.
But things are changing. I remember back in 2001, we would beg churches to get a website. We would say: “If you don’t have a website, anyone under 45 doesn’t think you exist.” Now we don’t have to make that argument anymore. Most churches at least have static communication like a website—but most churches still haven’t gone into more interactive technology. Churches need to explore what’s possible today and what their worshipers are using all the time. After all, the people in the pew expect these things as they communicate with each other. And, the people in the pew are a highly educated group of people.

I hope that appeal reaches you and helps you jump onto a more interactive site!