By Jeff Brumley
A Pew Research study released last week found that one out of every five Americans share their faith online on a weekly basis.
It seems like a lot more than that to Chris Canary, a minister at First Baptist Church in Norman, Okla.
“Being in the Bible belt, it seems like there’s at least a few times a day that someone puts something about their faith on Facebook,” said Canary, 27, the interim contemporary worship minister at the church.
Typical posts include everything from prayer requests and favorite Bible verses to those “chain letters that say if you don’t post this you’re going to hell.”
Whatever the content, Americans are increasingly finding social media, especially, to be a — if not the — place to tell their friends and the world about their spiritual beliefs, the Pew study found.
It reported that 20 percent of Americans said they shared their faith on social networking websites or apps, including Facebook and Twitter, in the previous week. Nearly 50 percent said they had seen others doing so.
Those figures, Pew reported, nearly rival the numbers of Americans (23 percent) who say they watch religious television programs. However, they still trail the 40 percent who said they shared their faith “offline, in a real-life setting.”
“The survey suggests that religious engagement through TV, radio, music and the Internet generally complements — rather than replaces — traditional kinds of religious participation, such as going to church,” Pew said in its report on the findings. “Americans who said they frequently attend religious services were more likely to engage in these electronic religious activities than those who said they attend religious services less often.”
Experts who track spirituality on the Internet say the Pew study is just another wake up call for more churches to get serious about their online presence.
The nones, Americans who reportedly have no religious affiliation, are likely participating in conversations of faith and spirituality online, said Alan Rudnick, an American Baptist pastor in New York and an author, blogger and speaker on social media trends in the church.
“I think there is a large segment of nones, particularly Millennials, who are using social media and other digital tools to connect to their faith and to learn about it,” Rudnick told Baptist News Global.
Social media and other digital forums “allow you to dip your toe into conversations without setting foot inside a church” and with a “degree of anonymity and inquiry not available 20 to 30 years ago,” he said.
That’s a feature especially important to young people — and that’s why it ought to be especially important to churches, Rudnick said.
“It’s only a matter of time when the nones and the Millennials really begin to discover churches who are doing a better job of online engagement,” he said.
One of the points Rudnick said he hammers home when speaking at workshops and seminars is it doesn’t take a huge budget or a lot of expertise to venture effectively into the digital domain.
“I tell pastors they don’t need a $10,000 website and can stream their services for almost under $100,” he said. “Churches who don’t explore that are missing out on that growing quadrant.”
And most people find churches by searching online, he added. “No one looks in a phonebook any more to find a church.”
But churches, and especially pastors, must be very careful when venturing into the social media world, said Mark Wingfield, associate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas and a commentary writer for BNG.
Wilshire, he said, has a very robust social media presence including daily Facebook updates and regular posts on Twitter during the week. But Wingfield said he keeps that separate from his own social media profile, and he urged pastors to do the same.
“I’m always being careful to separate myself as a person from myself as a representative of the church,” Wingfield said. “It’s a huge mistake when they [pastors] turn personal Facebook or Twitter into church social media.”
Wingfield said his own sharing online tends to be more about family and other parts of his personal life. Religious and spiritual matters are left to the church outlets.
“I see pastors not understanding this and I think they really are setting themselves up for a potentially diffciult time when they do that,” he said.
It’s also a mistake to assume everyone sharing their faith online is young. What’s more, much of what is posted turns off a lot of readers, Canary said.
“I don’t think it’s a viable platform for evangelism … because people are so bombarded with fake stories that it’s hard to take seriously,” he said. “But if you’re posting something that’s a useful resource, and article or something edifying, I think that’s great.”
Canary also doubts that many of those posting about their faith are in the younger generations — at least not based on his Facebook feed.
“Typically, it’s the older crowd,” he said.