I recently finished reading the book AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay (see my review & get a free copy here).
“The idea of the AND is that every church can find a balance of both scattering people out for mission while maintaining a biblically meaningful reason to gather together.”
One of the things that struck me about the book is how relevant it is to churches’ online efforts. Not only is it important that churches both gather and scatter offline, but it’s also important that churches gather and scatter online.
Churches should be attractional online. They can do this by having a good website, optimized for search engines, that people in the church and community are drawn to and can find. They can do this by having forums or online groups where people can hang out and discuss things.
Churches should also be missional online. They can do this using social media. They can do this by making their content easy for their people to share on Facebook and Twitter. They can do this by advertising on Facebook and Google AdWords.
Is your church’s online presence more attractional or missional? What if anything can it do to strengthen the area where it’s weaker?
6 Comments
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"Churches should also be missional online" yeahhhhhh!!
but – and I speak from the experience of trying to convince my own church –
Churches (being general here) tend to leave it up to the individuals; to share on facebook and twitter.
That is random and unstrategic.
and I am blue in the face trying to win my church peeps over to an organized – small team – focused targeting of local social media channels.
So I reakon our approach is more attractive than missional – if missional means strategic
That stinks. Yeah, I'd say a church has to be strategic and intentional to be missional both offline and online.
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Just the information I was looking for my research project. Excellent. Thanks!
http://kellythespy.blogspot.com/2010/12/spy-text-messages.html Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time 🙂