Chris,

There's probably nothing to prevent it, but I'm not sure it's the best approach. Basically what you'd be doing is contacting (well, spamming, probably) everyone in thirty contact lists and saying "I don't necessarily know you, but I have your email address, so be my friend." Sorry if I made that sound pretty unappealing, but I'm sure that's how it would be received by many of them. Even more so if you have it contact the people that aren't Facebook users and invite them to join the service to be your friend.

No, a better approach would be to create a Group or a Page (probably a Group, but I'm not sure enough of the differences between the two) and then encourage those 30 volunteers to join it. They can then invite their contacts to also join the group.

A lot of Facebook's success comes from the fact that it facilitates online connections between people who know each other in real life. Yes, I have a few Facebook friends that I don't actually know, or don't know well, but they're the minority.

It seems that once Facebook catches on in a locale, it's pretty viral without being forced. I looked around the sanctuary at a pretty large prayer meeting a couple of weeks ago, and everywhere I looked there were Facebook friends in my field of view. Our youth ministry's Facebook group has 115 members, including staff, volunteers, students and alumni. Yes, people were and are encouraged and invited to join, but it was through personal communication, not mass mailing.

I would start simple. Establish your own contacts by friend-of-a-friend clicking (which can suck up tons of time, but is really fun.) If you start a group and then keep it going by constantly updating content, people will gravitate to it anyway.

That's just my take on the whole thing. I know your question was more technical in nature, but this is just what I've seen so far in social networking. Some people might not agree.

Micah

Just trying to think out of the box. Fortunately this time I am asking questions before implementing. Thanks GeeksandGod.com!!

Our local pregnancy help center has had a lot of success similar to your youth ministry's facebook group. We'll most likely try what you have suggested.

Thanks for the input.

Chris

I question the effectivenes of Facebook groups for churches or anything else for that matter. I created a group for my church months ago. Dozens of members of the church joined the group, but there was virtually no interaction in the group.

Mitch, I looked at your church's youth minsitry Facebook group, and there hasn't been a post to the wall or discussion board in almost 2 months. I just don't see the value in having 115 members if there is no activity in the group. Do you?

The underlying problem with Facebook groups (and Facebook pages) is that they have no interaction with the News Feed, which is the hub of all Facebook commucations. With no updates on the News Feed there is nothing to draw people back to the group.

I've found Facebook to be a great tool for communicating and interacting with people on a personal level, but I have year to hear of an organization that has managed to use it effectively. I anyone has, I would love to hear about it and how they did it.

In my experience, if the Church staff can't get their act together and provide the tools that their department heads need, then the people will improvise and make use of other tools, such as facebook, You Tube, whatever.

I won't reveal the URL, but our Church's current website is so appallingly limited in its capability, that even the Church staff have resorted to creating a facebook group, in an attempt to inform congregation members about what's happening within our church.

Our youth department has set up its own facebook page also.

At least the Facebook experience has opened the eyes of some of our Church staff about what the web could be, and you can now see the lights come on when you talk to them about interactive, dynamic websites...

Going through the same thing now. However as people hear what good can come from technology they will be open to accept it on the Church's front page. I think as a wanna be geek my job right now is not to push technology on the ministry's I work with but rather tell them how technology has helped other ministry's. We all love a good testimony right? This approach is working for me so hopefully it might work for others.

Keep posting the tech testimony's here!!!

Chris

Pete, do you know how effective the Facebook group and Facebook page for your youth department have been?

I mean is there any interaction/community taking place there? Are people getting better connected to one another? Has it been an effective way for people to get information about upcoming events?

- Paul

My experience with community sites is that the "Build it and they will come" approach doesn't work. Off-line if you start a small group study you designate someone who prepares and leads/facilitates the conversation. The same is needed online. I think geeksandgod.com site is a good model. You've got carefully prepared new content (podcast) that is being added every week that results in new discussion. I've also got moderators who help answer questions and facilitate discussion. You've got to "prime the pump".

You might be interested in the following blog post where the benefits and disadvantages of Facebook pages vs. groups for a church to connect with others are commented on. Facebook group or Facebook page for your church?.

Forgive me if I've missed this somewhere in the conversation (I'm shattered just now and brain's not overly functioning the best!), but I'm trying to figure out a way to connect FB and a Joomla site together so that say the latest Wall posts could be put onto the website through a module or something, but I'm struggling to find the appropriate mod that isn't going to either break the site or will pull in so much info it would overload the server. I'm not overly familiar with FB although do have a personal page on it, but rarely bother with it, but the FB linkage is now being considered to try and attract some youth to the website and hopefully then on to the church. So any pointers in the right direction here would be great. :)