Pastors and Facebook

Hi dumplings!

A colleague asked me for my opinion about using Facebook in ministry, what guidelines I might recommend for friending parishioners and that sort of thing.

Social media is a brand-new phenomenon, so we’re all figuring this out together. The best advice I can give is to keep thinking and talking about it amongst ourselves and our communities and start to assemble some common wisdom and best practices. If, along the way, we hear some nightmare stories, so much the better! No one wants to be a cautionary tale but major bloopers are inevitable when we’re dealing with new relational technologies.

So, a few of my own thoughts on the matter:

1. Facebook is a public space. No matter how many filters any of us set up, it’s possible that the photo taken of us skinny-dipping with a beer in our hand at a friend’s pool party might be seen by the whole world. Do you care? Would that ruin your life? If so, stay off Facebook. Facebook, like all social media, should enhance your well-being and serve the goodness in your life. If it seems scary and causes you a case of bad nerves, avoid it, or only use it in a carefully monitored professional capacity. Open a FB account that works as an extension of your ministry and use it only in that way.

Of course, it makes me sad if any of you feel you can’t be “caught” being authentically yourselves by those who know you as a minister, but that’s an issue of persona that I consider more historical than personal. It is also regional and denominational.

2. I am of the opinion that my parishioners get to hear plenty from me in the form of sermons, visits, conversations, meetings, newsletter columns and parking lot confabs. They certainly don’t need to follow my personal life ruminations on the movie I saw last night or how well or badly I slept, or see the silly beagle videos I tend to share. So I keep one private Facebook account that is for pals and family who don’t need to feel obligated to “Like” or respond to my little bitty stupid stuff, and one for parish connections. If I was a new minister I would include all my colleagues in the ministerial Facebook account, but many of my clergy friends are like siblings by now. We have been on retreat together, we’ve seen each other in our jammies, we have a degree of trust and comfort with each other that allows us to gab about baseball games, sick aunts, bad blind dates, and flatulence without suffering any loss of mutual respect. I treasure the interplay of professional and personal that we share on Facebook. Plus: cute grandchildren pics!

3. I appreciate Facebook’s filters, but I don’t trust them. Neither should you. I use filters in my “big” account to differentiate between the various worlds I inhabit (mostly between the eras of my life, and Theatre People vs Religious Community People. There’s some overlap). This is mostly to spare people some measure of boredom. All 400 of my Facebook friends aren’t interested in my multiple postings on dress rehearsal for the show I’m in, for instance. I appreciate that my Facebook friends can also filter me out, can change their settings so that they only see occasional posts of mine, and hide me entirely if they so choose. I sometimes share big news or deep thoughts with only a portion of my friends, relying on filters to create a separate virtual “room,” but I am aware that the filters could fail at any time.

4. Facebook messaging has gotten a lot better in terms of interfacing with my other mobile devices, so I don’t find it as irritating as I used to. Today’s reality is such that most of us have to check multiple devices and accounts to see if there are messages for us. We may miss a few here and there. I am pretty sure that just yesterday I accidentally deleted a voice mail, but I can’t be sure. We all have to be forgiving and hope that we will be forgiven if we drop a message by accident. Communicate this frequently in your ministry settings.

5. Thou shalt not: “vague-book” (post vague, attention-seeking updates that are obviously designed to elicit sympathetic inquiries about your well-being. You’re not in 8th grade); “thread-jack” (interrupt a conversation on a friend’s page to derail the conversation, soap box or attack your friend’s friends), or use Facebook co-dependently (e.g., interfering between two people in the midst of an on-line disagreement). If Facebook makes you feel insecure, paranoid or awkward, don’t use it! Don’t go on the ride if you don’t enjoy it.

6. If you inadvertently commit a social faux pas on Facebook, join the rest of us! Pick up the phone or write an e-mail and apologize. It’s probably not the end of the world. I once posted a church photo on the church Facebook page that I genuinely thought I remembered taking myself and took credit for it. I was horrified when the actual photographer nicely and with humor reminded me that I had not. The worst thing about that blooper was that my memory had so completely failed me! We’re human. Technologies are no more perfect than we are. We have to use them the best we can.

7. After participating on a panel on social media at our General Assembly a few summers ago, a woman approached me with tears in her eyes to tell me that her minister had given a sermon against Facebook, and in that sermon had claimed that the friendships and relationships formed on-line through that medium were not “real.” I was sorry to hear it, and told the woman that I had made many very real friendships through Facebook, and that I was sorry she had been so hurt by my colleague’s words. So this is just to say, maybe Facebook isn’t your thing and you can’t see how it connects people in a meaningful way. That’s fine. But please do not assume that this is the case for everyone. I have at least three close friends (one of whom I have not yet met, although we have on-camera conversations) that I met through Facebook. Welcome to the new reality! They may not be able to come over for tea, but they’re real, I’m real, and our trust, affection and sense of emotional kinship is real. How is that not a “real” friendship? As I have said at conferences, Christians really need to think about the implications for denying that on-line ministries and relationships are “real.” After all, what is our relationship with Jesus and the original community of disciples of not virtual? Right? Holy Spirit, people! She is a-working over the interwebs! *Doug Henning magic hands*

8. It is up to all of us to consider the ways we might expand and enhance our ministry field through the use of social media. I think Facebook is an amazing gift to the church. In mere minutes you can post a church Facebook page, broadcast sermons, videos, announcements, information, reflections and mission to the wider community. This new technology may intimidate you, but it is not even new anymore by today’s lightning-fast technological shifts and innovations. Facebook is actually the staid old lady of social media! Don’t worry too much about using it in the perfect way – something else just as game-changing will come along soon.