Is creating a Facebook page for our parish a good idea?

joshrp · #1 May 15, '12, 2:40 am

Hi,

I was talking with a good friend of mine on my parish council, who is trying to think of ways to reach out to non active or Catholic to see if there is anything we can do to help them come back. I just dropped the suggestion of possibly making a parish Facebook page, and he brought the idea to the parish council, and now they want me to look into how this could be done and what would be involved. First of all, I ask for prayers to the Holy Ghost on whether, and if so, how this should be done. But also, I came here to ask if anyone's parish has a Facebook page in order to advertise parish events, announcements, etc. and if so, how did you start it out, and how is it managed. One of the big reasons I suggested this is to get to the youth, kind of using something that a lot of people spend too much time on instead of focusing on prayer or Jesus more, and using it to invite them to spend more time with Jesus. Our parish has Perpetual Adoration, and Facebook just might be one more avenue for introducing youth to adoration, particularly perpetual adoration in parishes. But there are some people who think that Facebook is useless, especially some elderly people, who I think are afraid that the younger generation might actually start coming to our Church and start taking leadership roles. There are barely any young people in leadership roles at out Parish, and it is sad, since we are only one of 4 parishes in our archdiocese that has Perpetual Adoration. If we were reaching out to youth, they would be flocking to Jesus at our Adoration Chapel at all hours of the day. But I think there are some control freaks who do not want anyone to come in and change the way anything is run, and that is why there aren't many youth coming around to adoration. But please pray for youth, ask for Blessed John Paul II's prayers for guidance on how to do outreach to nonactive Catholics and perhaps not so fervent ones. I usually pray to John Paul II for Internet related intentions because he was the first Pope to have an email address LOL.

But I have some work to do in order to help my friend put together a proposal for what would be involved in a parish Facebook page and how to do it, and of course, whether to do it. If you know any parishes that have Facebook pages which have been a real help in theri outreach and mission and other efforts, please let me know, because one of the things I was asked to do was look for other parishes and see how they organize and use their pages. Also, I need to look into issues of privacy and liability, so if you have any information on that, or can say a prayer that I find the information I need, please offer that for me too.

Also, please say prayers to St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis de Sales for all of the people in our parish to preach the Gospel in word, deed, and truth.

God bless you all!
Joshua

Dymphna82 · #2 May 15, '12, 2:57 am

As someone who used to do advertising for an alternative religion, I will say that this is the age of social networking. It's good to make your parish more visible, when people tend to be "out of sight, out of mind," with these things.

I am subscribed on Facebook to a few pages for churches in my area.

https://www.facebook.com/stfrancisnyc
https://www.facebook.com/StPatricksCathedralNYC

Agape Thom · #3 May 15, '12, 3:58 am

Our church has a Facebook page. It is used mostly by church members to keep folks up to date on what's happening.https://www.facebook.com/groups/pumchurch/

We also have a church web site. This is more of an outreach tool.http://pumchurch.org/

Chorister1980 · #4 May 15, '12, 7:28 am

My parish has a facebook page you can find it here

www.facebook.com/stpatricksparishdumbarton

Its been a relatively new endeavour and is still a work in progress.

Each morning the Parish Priest posts a thought for the day, which is a reflection on a passage from the bible. We also advertise upcoming events (Corpus Christi is the 10th of June and we are having a procession followed by a garden party so we will make sure that is spoken about on the page) and we use it as a social tool. I am the administrator of the page (along with the PP) and we are trying hard to make the page work for us.

At the moment we only have 137 likes, and our parish numbers almost 3000 so we are only scratching the surface.

I think in this day and age we need to use all the resources available to us to enable people to connect with the church, our facebook page is just one tool we use in our communications.

I am a member of the Parish Pastoral Council, and at 31 am the youngest by far! It was my suggestion to create the page and was met with a mixed response, especially by those who dont understand facebook, but it is now being seen as a positive tool.

Joannm · #5 May 15, '12, 3:07 pm

Our parish has a facebook page but we do not allow comments. We don't have people to monitor it all the time. It is basically to get the news out fast.

muckman68 · #6 May 15, '12, 3:22 pm

It's great to have a facebook page but it doesn't matter if it doesn't get updated frequently. Make sure there are people to post events and things regularly.

Don't just limit it to facebook though. Twitter is almost as large and things like foursquare (iphone app) and other social networking things are also very popular.

Also, odds are your parish website is bad since the vast majority of Church Websites are. I would look into updating your website and making sure that you get a digital version of your bulletin as well, which is something you can post on things like facebook and twitter.

KarenElissa · #7 May 15, '12, 4:01 pm

Yes, having a facebook page can be a good thing, however, first I would make sure your parish website is good. By good, I mean nice looking without being obnoxious, up to date, and informative. It should be easy for someone to find mass times, confession times, info about how to become Catholic, return to the Church, sign their kids up for religious ed, all that kind of stuff. And it should all be up to date ALL of the time. (Sorry, that is my soapbox. I'm moving so have been looking at a lot of parish websites as I've looked at apartments and MOST aren't good.)

That said, facebook can also be a great tool for reaching out to the community. Having a calendar with upcoming events and interesting thoughts can be great. The key here is the same as the website though, it has to stay up to date. So before you start something like this you need a plan covering who up dates it, how often, with what, and what happens when that person moves away.

DhuAlQarnayn · #8 May 15, '12, 4:54 pm

I agree with the above that a good parish webpage is more useful than a Facebook page. If your website needs work, or your parish doesn't yet have its own website, direct your energies there for now. If you do have a good website, a Facebook page is a useful accompaniment, and if you know what you're doing it's easy to keep up-to-date with just 30 minutes of work a week or so.

Regardless of what the old guard thinks, attracting younger people to leadership roles should be a primary goal of every parish, and this will never happen without an internet presence (among other things, of course).