Should Churches have facebook pages??

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

The Church and Information Communication Technologies

The church has been at the cutting edge of technologies as they have developed. The printing press etc etc. Whilst at University I was involved in discussions & training with Bible Translators in the use of new technology to standardise bible production in new & established languages.

As the world wide web becomes more and more mobile - through the use of mobile devices, as individuals get together on-line, as more and more of education becomes e-learning the possibilities for ministry & building community beyond the bounds of parish become possible.

The community inside & outside the church is internet savvy, people can speak the lingo of facebook, rss, twitter ... the list is infinite.

How we do communicate is so important. None of this of course overthrows face to face pastoral contact but we do need to speak into culture & that culture is one of connectedness & networks.

Yes we do have parish websites which are improving all the time ... but one wonders if there are people who are looking into where communication could go in the future of the church and if there are examples of good/best practice when it comes to communicating online with parishioners/ young people?

So for anyone reading this ... are there examples?, anyone want to share? any problems?

From somebody who is computer literate but would like to develop things further.