Digital Ministry and Why it Matters: An Interview with the Rev. Phil Lund, PART 2

Rev. Phil Lund, Director of Faith Development
and Congregational Growth for the
Prairie Star District 

Yesterday, I shared the first part of my interview with the Rev. Phil Lund and today I'm posting the second part. If this sparks thoughts or ideas for you, please comment - there's a lot of you "virtual people" stopping by and I'd love to know what you're thinking!


Phil, don't we spend enough time online already? What's the point of digital ministry? How do you ensure face to face/real life connections?

We may or may not spend enough time online already. The point is that this is technology that’s going to be with us from now on, and unless we learn to use it to help us get our message out, fewer and fewer and fewer people are going to find us. Because finding churches via the internet is mostly how it’s done these days. And the competition’s pretty stiff. In fact, I ran across this quote earlier in the year: “Liberal religion is always one generation away from extinction.” That wouldn’t have worried me five or ten years ago. But I can see it happening if we don’t learn how to use this technology well. As far as face-to-face connections go, that’s one of the things I love about the Faith Formation 2020 initiative. Yes, we provide folks with the opportunity to interact with us on a completely digital level. But we need to constantly be offering invitations to come join us in real life. And we’ve got to hang on to the one thing we can offer that people can’t get anywhere else in our society: a genuinely multigenerational community. If we lose sight of that, we’re just as likely to go extinct as if we ignore the need to use digital technology well.

Do you have suggestions/best practices for religious liberals just starting to use Twitter, or wanting to start a blog?

I’ve just finished a month long experiment as a social media lab rat, and I’ve found a lot of good resources which I’ll post on my blog soon (you can find Phil’s blog here.) In the meantime, I’ll say that congregations need a social media strategy, which the minister (if they have a minister) needs to be involved with. The strategy will probably require the use of some sort of team, which means using the pro version of something like HootSuite, which allows a team to track multiple social media streams, schedule posts, assign individuals to respond to particular tweets, etc. There are a lot of good posts that give newbies some good rules for the road. I feel blessed to have been mentored in this by the Rev.Naomi King (@revnaomi), who is a substantial presence in the Twitterverse, the blogosphere, and Facebook.

How can churches effectively use social media?

There’s only one way to effectively use social media. To broadcast your congregation’s mission, vision, and values. Sure you can use Twitter to tell folks what room the Social Justice Committee is meeting in tonight, but that’s just augmenting 19th and 20th century technology. Unless the congregation has something really significant to offer the community it’s in, you can blog three times a week, post on Facebook once a day, and send out tweets from morning till night, and it will all be, to quote Saint Paul, “as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” However, if your mission, vision, and values are clear, then why the heck would you want to miss the opportunity to tell folks who you are, what you believe, and what you’re doing. Social media may be the most effective way the church has ever had to get its message out.

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So, dear readers - what is the message you're trying to get out in your churches? What is your mission, vision, and values, and how are you using social media to share them? What innovative, creative things are you doing? What challenges have you faced? What resources do you recommend? What insights do you want to add to this conversation? Jump in, leave a comment!

Digital Ministry and Why it Matters: An Interview with the Rev. Phil Lund, PART 1

Rev. Phil Lund

I’m introducing a new feature to this blog – the interview! Every few months, I’ll post a short interview with someone who is inspiring me with their ministry, or who I’m deeply thankful for, or who has shaped my life in some way.

Regular readers will recall that in my first blog post, I mentioned that "The Well" was inspired, in part, by the Rev. Phil Lund, and the “social media ministry” he’s been involved in. Because of this work and his willingness to share what he's learned, Phil has become something of a mentor to me. 

I had the chance to chat with Phil recently, and he was generous enough to answer a bunch of my questions. Here’s the first part of our conversation:  

“Phil, I've heard you and others use the term 'digital ministry.' What does that mean and why is it important?"  

Actually, it’s a term that I’ve recently started using. For me, it’s sort of expanding on the Faith Formation 2020 initiative  notion of using digital media and web technology as part of a lifelong faith formation network. The idea is that a congregation needs to be doing two things: providing opportunity for people who are already part of your community to deepen their faith through digital media and web technology, and offer people who an not involved with our community the chance to do some spiritual seeking online, with multiple invitations to come in for face-to-face interactions. So you’re using the internet two ways: to augment the faith formation of friends and members, and to give newcomers a taste of what your congregation can do for them spiritually. Digital ministry expands that to include the entire ministry of the church. So it’s more than faith formation.It’s worship and social justice as well. Of course, as a faith formation leader, I consider everything we do in our congregations to be faith formation.

“Just a quick sidetrack here: What is 'Faith Formation 2020' and why is it important, as it relates to ministry and digital ministry?”

Faith Formation 2020 is an initiative of Lifelong Faith Associations (a Catholic group, by the way) that sought to answer these three questions:

1) How can faith formation flourish in Christian churches over the next ten years?
2) How can churches address the diverse spiritual and religious needs of people today?
3) What are the promising innovations that can guide faith formation in this decade?

Through a long process, they came up with 16 strategies “for designing the future of faith formation.” At the top of the list was this: Faith Formation using Digital Media and Web Technologies. Whether we’re talking about faith formation specifically or the ministry of the church in general, it’s clear that we can’t address the forces that are affecting religious institutions in the United States without digital media and web technologies. In other words, digital ministry is a must.

"What are some of the key things you've learned in the past year, as it relates to digital ministry?"

The number one thing I’ve learned is that most of our congregations are favoring 20th and even 19th century technology and media. That means we’re way behind here. There are congregations out there (mainline congregations, by the way, not just evangelical) that have full-fledged digital ministries that are far beyond anything UU congregations are doing. I’m thinking Darkwood Brew here. Just spend a few minutes checking out their website. It’s a ministry of an actual UCC church that meets in real life. This is their digital ministry. It is truly amazing. Having said all that, though, another thing I’ve learned is that you don’t need to do it all. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube—they may or may not be what a particular congregation needs. And when I say “what a congregation needs,” I mean, what a congregation needs to spread the word about their mission, vision, and values.

(Readers – stop by tomorrow for Part 2 of this interview. In the meantime, you can find Phil on Twitter @psdlund, or “Friend” him on Facebook.)

What "The Well" is all about...

First and foremost - "The Well" is about gratitude. 
It's about creating a space to name and notice the people, ideas, books, and nourishing sources that feed and inspire my life and ministry.  Currently, I'm feeling inspired, fed, and grateful for Phil Lund, the outstanding Sunday worship at General Assembly this year, by my family, and so much more. I'm also going to begin posting regularly on Twitter - to lift up things/people/sources that I noticed and felt thankful for during the day. Noticing - and giving thanks - really does impact my spiritual life. 


Second, "The Well" is an experiment in digital ministry. I've had a Facebook page for a while, have just started using Twitter more frequently, and now, with the launch of this blog, plan to post regularly during the upcoming year. I hope to bring my ministry into the virtual world in a more meaningful way.  People like revnaomi and Meg Riley  (Senior Minister of Church of the Larger Fellowship) are just a tiny sampling of digital ministry people and spaces that intrigue, challenge, and inspire me. (BTW: Church of the Larger Fellowship recently came out with a mobile phone app. You can learn more here.) 


Third, "The Well" will be a place to explore the intersection of Unitarian Universalist faith, fatherhood, family, church life, large church ministry, technology, UU evangelism, and joy. I'll share ideas for sermons that are percolating, thoughts about church health and growth, social justice issues that are important to me, and share how my faith - and spiritual practices - are shaping my life.


PS - "The Well" is also the title of our current summer worship series at First Universalist, running through Sept 11, 2011. If you're in the area, stop by on Sundays at 10am or check us out on podcast.