LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Assignment Title: How Church Members Use Social Media
Course: CHMN 699 - Internship
Student: Kristine Sage
Date: January 29, 2022
Professor: Dr. Joel Breidenbaugh
How Church Members Use Social Media
1. Communicating with members and to encourage others in their church.
2. To point others to interesting articles related to Christianity and church life.
3. To share the gospel.
4. To share prayer requests.
5. To share activities and ministries in the church.
6. Growing membership
7. Fundraising (Rainer, 2015)
Some church leaders are noticing the opportunity social media creates to change their relationship with
members (Lewis, 2016).
Impact and Effectiveness of the Media
Buzz Plant is a Christian-based digital advertising agency that conducted a survey in 250 churches.
Less than half of the churches surveyed reported that they think that social media is the most effective
method of communication, and 25% preferred the more traditional methods. The reason behind these
findings may be the lack of knowledge of the effectiveness of social media in the church. There is a clear
divide in a generation that fully understand social media, and one that speaks an entirely different digital
language (Pittman, 2012).
The relationship between the churches and the media is one of uneasiness, fear and suspicion. The
current church leaders did not grow up in the information society. The media has given man the idea
that they are powerful and thus led them to believe that they no longer need to look to God and the
churches to supply for his powerlessness (Comiskey, 1985). In contrast to the conventional top-down
model of preaching Christianity via trained priests, digital media is enabling many ordinary Christians to
have one-to-one conversations about their faith with non-believers (Lewis, 2016).
Churches have moved from relying heavily on audience participation in their services over the last
few hundred years, to a passive model where the congregation receives a presentation. Many people in
the church have bought into the idea that what happens online is virtual, rather than an embedded part
of our everyday lives (Lewis, 2016).
