had just been ordained as a pastor and called to my first congregation. The responsibility of that office was weighing heavily on me, and I wondered whether I was up for the job. One evening, I shared my worry with my good friend, Knute, who gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received about being a pastor, before or since: “Keith, people just want a pastor who’s down to earth, that they know cares about them.”
Of course, I knew that. I had heard and experienced that truth in countless ways throughout my preparation for ministry. However, in my anxiety about being responsible for a parish full of souls, I was overwhelmed with all that I had to do and be to fulfill the pastoral office. Not surprisingly, I had completely overcomplicated the matter. Knute’s advice called me back to a simple truth about ministry: hokey as it may sound, we are most effective when we are down-to-earth, real people—when we are ourselves. In the midst of my anxiety, I could hold on to that. I could do that.
Many people feel anxious about embarking on the journey into digital ministry. Doing ministry in the digital media landscape described in the previous chapter feels to many like a new kind of call in a strange new land— one with different patterns of behavior, relationships, etiquette, and modes of communication that require us to develop new skill sets. It can be both exhilarating and disorienting.
With all the tools now available to us, and with the responsibility of being a minister in a new unfamiliar digital space—one in which many parishioners or community members are more advanced than we are—we worry about whether we can manage it all. In our anxiety—before we even jump in—we may debate the proper boundaries about friending people from our church, how many pro files we should have, how much time to spend (all of which we will discuss later in this chapter). Most of the time, we focus on the terms of engagement rather than actually engaging with members, friends, and our community.
Knute’s advice is salient here: “People just want a pastor who’s down to earth, that they know cares about them.” In whichever way you choose to participate in digital media, and with however much time you commit, this has to be at the center of your digital ministry.
“FRIENDING”
“Friending” is the practice of inviting people into your network on Facebook. The noun became a verb as people accepted requests and asked others to be Facebook friends.
“Friending” has joined the common lectionary beyond Facebook, especially among teens and young adults, who now often “friend” one another face-to-face as folk from “the days of yore” would speak of “making friends.”
See Chapter 3 for more on using Facebook in digital ministry.
“Keeping it real” in this way is both good pastoral practice and the most effective way to engage people in digital social media locales.
KEEPING IT REAL
The word most often used—and perhaps overused—to describe this kind of real presence in social media is “authenticity.” It’s been argued that authenticity is a term that is impossible to define. Like “beauty” or “truth,” we tend to know it when we see it.
In The Gifts of Imperfection, researcher, storyteller, and social media practitioner Brené Brown describes authenticity in this helpful way:
Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen. There are people who consciously practice being authentic, there are people who don’t, and there are the rest of us who are authentic on some days and not so authentic on other days.1
According to Brown, authenticity is about showing up with our whole selves. The work of ministry continually calls us to “consciously practice being authentic.” Life experiences, passions, strengths, and weaknesses are all brought to bear and shape pastoral presence, regardless of whether we are serving as clergy or laypeople. Being true to these—and trusting that God is at work in them—is what makes each ministry unique and effective. It enables us to empathize with people in their suffering, bring the Word of God home in preaching and teaching, and share faith through the stories of our lived experience.
The same goes for life and ministry enacted through digital media. Our real presence is essential. By bringing the fullness of our lives to bear through ministry in social media communities, we bear witness to the fullness of life in God. After all, the really Real Presence here is God’s, and it is through our real and authentic presence in social media that we most clearly and effectively point to God. As we know from face-to-face ministry, this is often how faith is transmitted and God is made manifest: through the stories of the real lives of real people.
Let’s take a closer look at what real presence looks like in the context of social networking.
IT’S SOCIAL, NOT BROADCAST, MEDIA
In the five hundred or so years between the inventions of the printing press and the Internet, we have lived in a broadcast media environment of books, radio, newspapers, and television. These media served as highly effective platforms for sending a single, well-crafted, attention-getting message out to as many people as possible. But broadcast media afforded little opportunity for feedback, except, perhaps, for letters to the editor. In the church, we have used this one-to-many broadcast communication model in sermons, printed newsletters, letters from the pastor, and broadcasting worship services on the radio or local television community access channels.
TAGS AND HASHTAGS
A tag is a word or very short phrase that describes people or content of interest to online users. It helps to make information online searchable by people with similar interests.
Individual blog posts will tend to have set of tags—keywords—that describe the contents of the post. For example, the tags church, ministry, social media, Facebook, Keith Anderson might mark a post about a workshop Keith’s done on digital ministry.
In addition to helping others to find content and understand its main themes, tagging can be an expression of identity—a sort of digital tattoo— that names what’s important to a particular social media participant.
On Twitter, tags are marked with the # symbol, so you will find people who end each tweet with a denominational tag like #ELCA (for Lutherans) or #TEC (the Episcopal church) to signal the spiritual identity of the tweeter regardless of content. This is called a hashtag. posting on your organization’s Facebook wall.
Social media represents a profound shift in this model. Today, almost anyone can publish a blog, have a YouTube channel, and host their own internet radio station. Anyone can comment on, extend, qualify, discuss, and share your sermons. As we will discuss in the next chapter, now even small congregations can have a robust media platform.
Rather than waiting for your monthly newsletter, now people can and want to follow you on Twitter. They can “like” your organization’s Facebook page and follow your church ministries in real time. They can “friend” and “follow” other members. They can chat, message, mention, and “tag” you. They can help generate content and conversation by posting on your organization’s Facebook wall.
These dramatic
