Over at the National Catholic Register, Matt Warner looks at a study of how churches (of all denominations) and their members use social media. A few of the findings:
- 61% of churches use social media.
- 62% of churches post homilies/sermons to a website as text or audio (podcast).
- 28% of church pastors have a blog.
I tend to agree with Warner that most Catholic churches are probably far behind the average in these categories — and that could be a huge drawback, considering the final statistic listed (and Warner’s analysis):
68% of local church members want to connect with their church via social media. This is the crux of the matter. And this statistic is only rapidly getting bigger and bigger. If you’ve been holding out hoping that this whole social media thing is just a passing fad, it’s time to wake up. Regardless of what you think about social media, how much you like using it, or whatever other hesitations you have about it, people want to connect with their parish using it. You can either help them out. Or you can deny them. Those are your choices.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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Church bulletins are handy as fans or reading material during the homily, but as ways to connect and communicate important information — in both directions — they’re sadly lacking. What would you most like to see from your church online: podcasts? Blogs? Twitter feeds? Or simply parish Web sites that look like they’ve been updated since 1997?