Every Wednesday afternoon at 3:00, Justin Wise, Immersion director and online church guru at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, signs onto iChat, Skype, and UStream.tv for his virtual office hours. His goal is to reach out to young people in Des Moines and around the world. It’s just one example of how he and other church leaders across the country are using social media to connect with the digital generation. 

Wise’s virtual office hours only last an hour, but he says it’s one way he can make himself available to people who wouldn’t set up an appointment and drive out to the church to talk about things that may be bothering them. “It helps me to keep in touch with people,” he says. 

Online conversations do have limitations, Wise says. When someone brings up heavy issues online, Wise encourages them to come in and talk to him in person. “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t,” he says. But he’s not discouraged. Wise will continue using social media as a ministry tool. “It’s made me a lot more open and available to connect with people that I wouldn’t otherwise,” he says.
 

Immersion, a weekly young-adult church service, is using the web to reach out to the community with live webcasts of their services. “There are no barriers anymore to getting people to hear God’s word,” Wise says. “Anyone with a web browser can experience and hear God’s word. That’s the whole point.”

The use of online media by churches raises the question of community and the quality of community that can be generated online. Brad Abare, founder of the Center for Church Communication, stresses the need for building face-to-face relationships. “I think there is an element of communication that can happen online because the next generation is more comfortable with community and communicating online, but I don’t know how much real community happens online,” he says. 

While churches shouldn’t ignore social media, Abare says there’s more to building community than having a conversation with someone online. He says churches need to ask themselves, “How can online social media be a supplement, not a substitute, for community?”

Wise agrees. “The end game with social media should always be face-to-face—when possible.” 

Despite the benefits of social media, Wise recognizes its downfalls. “Social media can also turn in on itself where you can live in the same city as someone and connect with them on social media and never see them,” he says. “That to me falls short of what social media could be.”

Some go so far as to say the church should ignore social media altogether. “They say it creates artificial community, not real community,” Wise says. However, that’s where church leaders can come in and start building genuine relationships that happen to start online. 

If churches want to reach the current generation, they have to accept the fact that they live in a world of tweets, instant messages, and wall posts, Wise says. “This is where our society is headed,” he says. “Can you imagine where the church would be if we had said we’re not going to use the printing press? [The Internet has] changed the way we communicate with each other. People aren’t just going to give that up. The church needs to say, 'OK, how can we leverage this to share the reality of Christ with people?'”  

Wise compares this generation’s current technology shift to online media to the 16th Century when Martin Luther used the printing press to put Bibles in the hands of Christians. “What if we leverage technology to activate God’s word?” Wise asks. “What would that do?”

Abare acknowledges that communication occurs online, but he warns that it’s not the same as communicating face-to-face. “We lose a lot when we transfer to solely online communication,” he says. The best examples of using the web to build relationships Abare says are when it’s used to create off-line community. “It’s about using the medium appropriately,” he says. “We need to look first to what we’re trying to accomplish, not how we’re trying to accomplish it. At the end of the day, it’s about relationship.”

Whether you love it or hate it, social media is here to stay, according to Wise. That means it’s time for churches to pay attention and see how they can use it to further God’s kingdom on earth. “The end goal in ministry is always relationship,” Wise says. “The form of communication in social media is different, but the content is the same.”

Hear more from Justin Wise at www.bedeviant.com

Find Brad Abare at www.churchmarketingsucks.com