How can I build community on my church fan page?

I’ve already established that church’s need to use Facebook to bridge the community gap between the Sundays. However, the question still remains: What do I post to build community? While every church community is different, I think there are six broad categories that will help your church use Facebook to take “community” to the next level. You can build community by  sharing the Sunday morning experience, start conversations, announce local news and events, publicize church events, reinforce church values and structure, and celebrate success.

Today, we’re going to talk about sharing the Sunday morning experience on Facebook.

Share the Sunday morning experience.

This one is obvious and is a mainstay in any great church social media strategy. You want to extend and share the Sunday morning experience with those who were in attendance and those that couldn’t make it. You want a person, whether they attended on Sunday or not, to be able to participate and engage in the Sunday morning experience. This keeps everyone on the same page.

(1) Share the sermon. If your church captures the sermon on video, upload it to Vimeo or Youtube and share it. Likewise, if you capture the sermon on audio, be sure to upload the file to your site and share the link. For those of you out there who don’t capture the sermon, try posting a PDF or image file of an outline that hits the highlights. If you use PowerPoint during your sermon, you can upload the whole thing to Slide Share and then post on Facebook.

(2) Prep and follow up on the sermon. It’s also a good idea to prep your church for what is coming on Sunday and follow up on Monday. You can prep your church for the sermon by sharing key sermon scriptures, external resources (like videos, photos, or blog posts). The goal though for prep is to get them thinking about the topic, if only for a few seconds. They’ll then have some context for the message. Likewise, you want to follow up on the sermon with a quote, question, action item, or supplementary resource to help extend the meaning and impact of your sermon.

(3) Make a big deal of the sermon series. If your church typically does sermons around central topics or themes, be sure to prep the church for what is coming.

Example: 

Let’s say your church is about to start a series on Prayer. To prep, I’d do the following:

1. Change fan page cover photo to the “Prayer” series graphic.
2. A few days before the series starts: “We are about to start a series on Prayer! Like this post if you’ve had a prayer answered recently.”
3. The following day: “Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17″
4. Let’s assume our first message is about what prayer does: “‘Prayer does not change the purpose of God.  But prayer does change the action of God.’ – Chuck Smith Do you believe this is true?”
5. Post sermon video, audio, slide deck, or image
6. Follow up: “Prayer is the first step to changing yourself and the world. What will you change today?”
7. Rinse and repeat