30 churches on Facebook (and four observations)

May 6, 2010 in Social Media

I’ve been doing some thinking on how to maximise my church’s presence on Facebook. I’ve been researching how other churches are using Facebook, and put together a list of some examples of churches using Facebook well (or at least frequently!):

  1. Hillsong Church
  2. Mars Hill Church (Seattle)
  3. Willow Creek Community Church
  4. Petersham Evening Church
  5. Village Church (Texas)
  6. Village Church (Sydney)
  7. Dubbo Presbyterian Church
  8. NewSpring Church
  9. Northside Baptist Church
  10. Granger Community Church
  11. The Adundant Life Church
  12. Hunter Bible Church
  13. Park Community Church (by far the most innovative landing page)
  14. 24 Church
  15. Woodlands Church
  16. Saddleback Church
  17. College Park Church
  18. Pinelake Church
  19. Seacoast Church
  20. Hope Church
  21. Liquid Church (the best landing page for a church I’ve seen)
  22. Fellowship Church
  23. 12Stone Church
  24. Northway Church
  25. Substance Church
  26. Cottonwood Church
  27. Bayside Church
  28. C3 Church
  29. Sovereign Grace Baptist Church (Brisbane)
  30. Brooklake Church

Three observations

  1. Before you start a Facebook page for your church, check for duplicates. In my search for churches on Facebook, I saw several churches with more than one page. Obviously this is confusing for people searching for a church/your church. Equally obviously, this is quite easily fixed!
  2. Some churches didn’t display any information about what they believe, or the mission of their church. For example, what on earth is Skull Church, and what does it believe?! You can always check out their website (listed in the ‘Info’ tab), but it doesn’t hurt to provide this information up front.
  3. Some mission statements are very short and simple (e.g. ‘Connect and Grow’) others more interesting (e.g. ‘We’re here so that you can waste time on Facebook. Oh, and also stay in the loop of all that’s going on. ;) . I liked this introduction for its potential to engage with newcomers who are unfamiliar with church – ‘We don’t care how you dress or who you voted for. Join us for one of 3 services. No church experience required!’
  4. Facebook’s search mechanism is confusing. I know there are churches on Facebook with ‘church’ in their title, but when I searched for pages using the term ‘church’, they didn’t appear. There also doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the order churches appear in the search results. Each time I attempted a search different results would appear in a different order!

If your church is on Facebook, let us know about it, and share the link below!

  • http://youth.stmatts.org.au CJ

    Hey Steve,

    Thanks for the links. Really interesting to look through the different ways that churches are using their Facebook pages. I was wondering if you could provide some info on creating a ‘landing tab’ (like Liquid Church has).

    How do you actually go about creating such a customised tab on Facebook?

    Cheers,
    CJ

  • Cam

    @cj Check out this, Static FBML tab: http://www.snipe.net/2009/06/fb-fanpages-fbml-box/

    Linking to a custom tab in Facebook is not always the best thing, your viewer may not like your custom layout and may want to see the familiar “Wall” or “Info” tab.

  • Cam
  • http://www.blogoneanother.com/ Jon Reid

    My church (The Journey in San Jose, California) had two places for online interaction: A set of forums on the church site that no one really used, and an unofficial Facebook group with an obscure name. I pressed for the importance of setting up a Facebook page. It happened to coincide with our starting a new series on Acts, so we have been encouraging people to read a chapter a day and post their thoughts.

    I have set the landing page to our Boxes tab with some FBML.
    To encourage discussion, I have set the Wall to show everyone’s posts.
    My goal has been to get people posting on this page. So far, so good, in a short time!

    http://www.facebook.com/thejourneysj

  • http://mediaoutreach.com/2010/05/interesting-blog-posts/ Interesting Blog Posts | Media Outreach

    [...] 4.     A List of 30 Churches on Facebook and some observations [...]

  • http://www.johnalchin.info John Alchin

    I am the creator of the Facebook page for West Ryde Anglican Church and a separate page for our evening service ‘community’ The Living Room.

    Please check out http://www.facebook.com/westryde & http://www.facebook.com/livingroomcommunity and send me any feedback you may like to offer.

    Cheers,
    John

  • http://blogs.wels.net/welstech/2010/06/02/134-doing-our-research/ WELSTech » Blog Archive » 134 – Doing Our Research

    [...] 30 churches on Facebook (and four observations) from Communicate [...]

  • http://www.facebook.com/shirelive jason
  • Watson_545
  • http://www.mountzion-umc.org Mount Zion UMC

    We’ve been on facebook for a while, trying to offer something a little eclectic as a church page.  http://www.facebook.com/MountZionUMC
    We are looking at developing a Google+ page that offers a different personae/ and not a mirror image of our facebook page.  An interesting challenge since both share administrators.