Social Missionaries

The past few weeks have brought about something that has not occurred in quite some time: people are seeking to return to church or maybe try church for the first time on their own initiative. And the way they are trying to find a church to go to is by asking on community social forums. See a few here from the Bonney Lake Community Group on Facebook. 

While the pastors could troll these sites and make sure to comment that Open Life is a great church that they should consider, it is so much more powerful for a person who attends to share their story and an invitation. And the more people from the church who comment on a post the more likely someone will add Open Life to their list of churches to check out. In fact, this past Sunday a new family made their way to Open Life because of a social post and those who recommended they come to Open Life. So proud of the handful of people who have already been commenting on these posts. 

What we have found is that the best invitations are those which are personal and make it easy for the person to explore the church you are inviting them to. Social media makes that second part pretty easy, but there are some tips and tricks of the trade that may give someone that much less of an obstacle to find their way on a Sunday.

MAKE IT PERSONAL
First, share why you personally feel Open Life fits the church they described. Some of you have said something like, "When I first came to Open Life I had some of the same concerns you expressed, but found that they were welcoming and genuinely cared for me just as I was. My kids loved their experience and my husband even has connected with others beyond my anticipation..." then here is where the power comes in, "...feel free to DM me, I would love to answer any other questions you might have about the church. Praying for you to find the best fit for you."

CONNECT YOUR CONTENT TO THEIR INQUIRY
This one was a hot button post recently. In fact, on Facebook, they eventually turned the comments off because the person had put a church's name and people were pretty divisive in their replies. Which is sad when you consider people were squabbling about churches and politics, and this person was just looking for a church as their "faith is hanging by a thread."  Again, some of you from Open Life jumped in and commented. "You will never hear worship for Jesus and worship for the empire from the same platform from one of our pastors. We are peacemakers at Open Life and are not gathering to lift the name of anyone other than Jesus."  

While we don't bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening in culture, we also keep our focus on Jesus and the scriptures vs. attempting to join the cultural noise and make our faith about aligning with political parties and current events, furthering the divide and polarization of our culture.

So again, sharing a reply based on the person's question is the best approach to referring the church to those who are hanging on a thread or whose faith is in the balance. 

The final touch, beyond making it personal and connecting to their inquiry, is tagging Open Life in your content in a way that makes it easy for the person to explore this church you are mentioning.

TAGGING
On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you simply type the '@' symbol and begin typing OpenLifeChurch and the tag will pop up for you to select. This will add an easy hyperlink for the person to click on to explore Open Life's Facebook page. We are currently making a video to pin to the top of the Facebook page for this very purpose, so that someone can click the tag and instantly see some of what they might experience on a Sunday at Open Life. So, smile for the cameras in the coming Sundays ?.

What that looks like in a comment is this:

PASTING A URL
The final way to finish out your post and make it super easy for someone to explore the church is to paste the church's URL in the conclusion of your post. You simply go over to Open Life's website and copy the URL in the search bar and paste it to your post. It will look like this: https://openlife.church/

What this does is insert a graphic below your comment. I made this post for someone asking about kids and if they would feel welcome at the church, but again, from a pastor, it isn't as powerful and sounds kinda like an advertisement, when from a family attending would be amplified through personal experience. But none the less you can see how it might appear when you paste a url and allow Facebook to insert a graphic from the website. In this instance, I pasted the Visit page from our website as you can see highlighted in blue.

This is truly something that everyone can do. Find the social groups that are a part of your community, neighborhood groups, city groups and the like and look for the word church in posts (you can actually use the search function to help you find the post with church in them) and begin telling your story and inviting people to a conversation and to church.

There are people seeking, holding on by a thread and there are so many of you who are already engaged and many who could lean into this space and make an instant impact.

Excited to read and like your posts in the groups we have in common. God is up to something here and you and I get to be a part of it.