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You don’t need a Facebook page to be a growing successful church.  It’s true.  You also don’t need the biggest, awesomely feature-filled website either.  And you know what you really don’t need?  Twitter.

Those are probably the oddest few sentences I’ve written here at Church Juice especially when you consider how much time we dedicate to talking about using social media well or designing a great website.  But just having these tools won’t make you successful.  And guess what?  There are churches that are growing and having an impact in their community without being uber-tech savvy.

The point is this: You need to be intentional in knowing your congregation and surrounding community and recognizing what’s the best tool to use to communicate with them.  Facebook may not be the best for a small rural church.  Likewise a large, feature-filled website may not make sense either.  Maybe taking part in community events or opening your fellowship hall for free tutoring are the best ways to reach your neighbors.  And a printed worship folder might be the right tool to share information with members. 

Equally as import as deciding which communications tool you’re using is also asking why you’re not using something else.  Are you intentionally not using Facebook because it’s not the best tool for you? Or are you just unfamiliar with it and don’t want to learn more about it? Same thing with creating a website and Twitter.  You want to know a not-so-silent secret of mine?  I don’t like Twitter.  I’ve started, and subsequently quit, using my personal account a half dozen times.  But I do use Twitter a lot professionally for Church Juice.  It’s a great tool for sharing our content and also connecting with new people.  Our community is in the Twittersphere and we need to be a part of it.  If we weren’t on Twitter, our absence would send a message.  In a world where everything communicates something, a church communications blog that wasn’t on Twitter or didn’t talk about Twitter would lose some of its relevancy.  It’s comparable to your church choosing to not have a Facebook page even though a lot of the people in your church are on the social network.  You’re saying you know people in your church would like it if they could get the latest news through Facebook, but you’re intentionally not giving them that easy access.

 Our goal here is to never say you have to use a certain communications tool. (Although we’ve made arguments for Facebook and websites many times in the past.)  We want to be an educational tool for those of you who are using particular things to reach your members and neighbors.  Don’t get discouraged if you’ve not doing it all.  Don’t get overwhelmed with trying to use every type of communication tool.  Learn all you can about the tools that make sense for your church setting.  And whatever you do, make sure you’re doing it to the best of your ability.  And if that means your church isn’t on Facebook because it doesn’t make sense in your community, we won’t judge you.