Four reasons social media should matter to ministry leaders

J.D. Walt, Vice President for Community Life, Dean of the Chapel, Asbury alumnus (1997)

1. It is the biggest worldwide phenomenon of the century so far.

• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users.

• Television took 13 years to reach 50 million users.

• It took four years for the Internet to reach 50 million users.

• In three years, the iPod reached 50 million users.

• Facebook added 100 million users in less than nine months!

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth-largest. 

• One in eight couples who married last year met online.

• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles. 78% of them are non-English.¹

If for no other reason, we should care because most everyone else does.

2. Think of social media like you think of a foreign language.

Any missionary worth their salt learns the language of the people they serve. Social media is quickly becoming the vernacular of the people, a type of lingua franca across the planet. The borders of this language are not marked by cultural barriers but birth certificates. Social media is the native language of most everyone under the age of 20. Thirty-year olds speak it fluently. Forty-year olds can pick it up quickly. Fifty-year olds struggle to distinguish “dig” from “del.icio.us.” Interestingly, 60-somethings tend to get it. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 55-65 year-old women.²

No matter where you find yourself in life and ministry, get involved with social media. It can be a disorienting, arduous process, but Love learns the language. Enlist a high school student as your tutor and watch what happens. If you lead a congregation, invite your youth minister to be your online mentor.

3. You lead others.

As people foray into the world of social media, they need pastoral guidance and wise discernment. It is tempting for people to construct false online identities which distort relationships. Does blogging further connect or isolate us? Does Twitter enhance human relationships? Do superficial interactions with my 500 so-called “friends” on Facebook prevent me from loving the ones I am with? Is the ubiquity of smart phones changing human community? Are we spending more time looking at our iPhones than we are looking into one another’s faces?

Parents desperately want to know how to deal with the reality of teenagers who text more than they talk. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “Generation M2: Media in the lives of eight to 18-year-olds” found they spend an average of seven hours and 38 minutes a day with various media formats. Google it, and while you are at it, do a search on “continuous partial attention,” a term coined by Linda Stone to describe the phenomenon plaguing us all in the vortex of our multi-tasking lives.

It is time to cease our luddite tendency to lob cynical grenades from the outside and engage in healthy conversations on the inside of the social media world.

4. It says to younger generations, “I see you.”

96% of Generation Y has joined a social network. Students’ interest in Asbury’s President, Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, spiked when they learned that he Twitters. Social media connects us to others in everyday ordinary ways. It provides an opportunity to model appropriate online vulnerability. Certainly, you cannot keep up with everyone—nor should you. You are not obligated to read every blog post and tweet of everyone you follow. The great seduction of social media (and technology in general) tells us we have no limitations, that we can have unlimited relationships and an endless capacity to get things done. The temptation, “Turn these stones to bread,” constantly reincarnates itself no matter the medium.

Go ahead. Explore the medium. Learn the language. Think theologically. Create a blog.³ Join Facebook. Try Twittering. And delve into one of the most interesting movements of our time.

Follow JD Walt on Twitter 
at www.twitter.com/jdwalt

Read his blog at www.jdwalt.com

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1 For a stunning youtube demonstration of these statistics and more like them, Google “social media revolution.”

2 To read more on this, consider “Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business” by Erik Qualman. Also consider “Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is changing your World,” by Don Tapscott.

3 For an ongoing series of thoughts about why pastors should blog check out This Week at Asbury (Kentucky), our blog at blogs.asburyseminary.edu/this-week-at-asbury-kentucky