Over the course of the last few months I have been asked this question from a number of people.
The quick answer is ... aye why not? Millions of people are communicating in Facebook so why not have a local church presence.
The longer answer is ... yes but be careful.
A few questions about this
What info are you putting on? Who are you going to allow to access it ... Fully Public ... friends only? ... who is going to administrate it? Are you going to update it regularly?
The other thing is youth (i.e. Under 18's) on facebook ... This is a whole area of problems as there needs to be safeguards and parish policies as to electronic communication. It needs well researched and have completely transparent procedures in regard to emails and facebook messages.
As far as I am concerned I will never add an under 18 as a friend to my personal facebook friend group. All emails that I send out to our youth group are all sent out on the parish email account which the Child Protection Panel(CPP) in the parish have access to. Our parish facebook account similarly has been set up so that the CPP have access to the username and password allowing them access to all communication methods.
Having said all of this ... if people are using facebook why not use it to communicate with the church. Just ensure that everything that you do has safeguards in place
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