The above very funny, two-and-a-half-minute police-recruitment video (with real police, not actors) reached 14 million people with its message of needing more police and especially from diverse backgrounds. It is working.
So where are the churches’ versions? Encouraging people to consider church as a job/career/vocation? Encouraging people to join church? The videos about women in ordained ministry on the 40th anniversary?
Here’s The Edge’s parody:
What do you need? A bit of creativity, and, as for the technology, most people are carrying that in their pocket – most cell phones are able to produce what you want. Are those instructions too complicated for you? Get some young people to make the video for you. Young people love doing this, love to be appreciated, and thrive on such creative tasks. Last Sunday, at a church which barely ever sees many young people let alone children, the service was packed with children, their parents and grandparents – the children had a creative task: a simple Christmas play. Don’t know how to get young people for making this video? Put up a request on your community’s facebook page? Don’t have a facebook page and don’t know how to set one up? Get your congregants to ask their grandchildren to come to a social-media creating event in your church hall on Friday night with pizza and soft drinks.
Ely Cathedral stands out in my feeds at the moment:
They have a campaign they call #aChristmasMiracle. Here is their facebook page.
For Holy Week, the Diocese of Ely and Ely Cathedral teamed up to run a joint social media campaign that ended up reaching over 1 million people in the space of a week. As a result of this, for Advent we have once again joined forces for another campaign – this time telling the Christmas story.
What do you think? What are your ideas? Where have you seen social media working positively?
Ps. And if you don’t think I know what I’m talking about – my furthest reach for one post has been 7 million people…
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