Using Facebook to Connect with Families

One of the problems in the information age is that there are so many ways forreceiveand give information. I find itfrustratingthat you send text messages, make flyers, phone calls, emails, Twitter and Facebook, and you miss 20% of your families.

Often my best ideas were stared from something I have seen or heard somewhere else. I remember having a conversation withJim Widemanabout how he is using Facebook to connect with kids in his youth ministry. it really got me thinking about how to use Facebook in childrens ministry. Here are some ideas:

1. Create a volunteer position whose job is to be the Facebook Evangelist.

2. Create events to connect families to our fan page.

3. Use the fanpage as a source of weekly updates on what their kids are learning as well as to inform parents of events coming up.

4. Try to help connect people who attend our church to the life of our church using Facebook.

FACEBOOK FAMILY FUN NIGHT

I plan ondoing events for the family based around the community of Facebook. The first event that we did was called Facebook Family Fun Night.

What is Facebook Family Fun Night? Well, the origin of my idea came fromKendra and her team at North Point Church. I love the practicality and ministry in the trenchness of Kendras blog and read every post she posts. She is also a great breakout speaker; if you are going to Orange, make sure you go to at least one of her breakoutsyoull thank me later. They did a competition-based event, from what I could gather, that was more through their website. I thought for us that Facebook would be a great way to do something similar to what they did.

Here is the basicdescriptionof what we did:Facebook Family Fun Night was an interactive family night that parents from all of our campuses can sign up to be a part of. The event took place at your home with families from our church; the twist is they did a devotional and thesupplementalactives with their own family but in a race with all the other families who had registered from all of our campuses. The way the progress will be logged is by each family taking pictures and uploading them to our kidmin fanpage.

A few questions as to why we did this?

1. Why Facebook?Loads of our families are on Facebook and know how to work it, so we didnt have to communicate how to use the technology. Plus Facebook is free.

2. What was our goal?

Our goals were:

• Stir ideas forcreativelyteaching your kids the Bible at home.
• Help connect families to each other through a shared onlineexperience.
• Do a family event in the winter that wasnt weather dependent.
• Build Uptowns Facebook brand with our coreaudience.
• Create a shared memory for our families.
• Create an opportunity for parents to lead their own kids to Christ.

3. Why make it a race?I like the race because you dont get bogged down in any one thing; if forces you to keep moving because everyone else is. One of the reasons family devotions are lame is because they get bogged down and dont keep moving and kids lose focus. The race factor keeps the family focused. I like that.

I really liked this event. I dont think virtual community will ever replace face-to-face community, but I do believe it can enhance it. When we have done events in the past, people who didnt attend didnt really feel like they missed out. But based on the viral and social nature of this event, if you missed it, you know you missed it because of the chatter and pictures loaded. Love that. We work so hard at not making people everfeel left out that people rarely feel like they missed something great. I hope everyone who didnt take part in this event feels like they missed outbecause let’s face itthey did!

4. What would we change for next time?

1. Have a better way to judge who was the winner.
2. Perhaps have differentcriteriafor who the winner would be.
3. Maybe do part of it via ustream or the like.