There is a new mission field waiting for the church. No long flights necessary, and the destination doesn’t require learning how to sleep in a mosquito-repelling hammock. As the title suggests, this isn’t a reference to the traditional mission field, but the digital one, accessible from your home computer. The new mission field is the internet. 
 
Thus far in 2017, the World Wide Web saw roughly 3.8 billion users. Of that amount, 2 billion are reportedly on Facebook. This social media platform which was established in 2004 now represents the largest country in the world, and because of it, churches have never had easier access to the multitude.
 
When members share their faith with their personal network on social media, their witness does not fall on deaf ears. According to Digital Strategist Jason Caston, “90 percent of customers trust a peer recommendation on social media.”

Apply this to how you talk about Jesus on the internet. Ninety percent of the people who will see the post will trust what you say. The gravity of this is enormous. When members use their sphere of online influence to share their faith, they influence a listening audience. That audience won’t act upon just one post, however. In the marketing world, there is an old adage about “The Rule of Seven.” A person typically needs to see a message seven times before they take action.
 
Consider that adage next time your church plans an event. Be thoughtful about how many times your message is getting shared, and via how many different channels. Churches who consistently update their social media provide content that members can share, giving the community yet another opportunity to hear that message, and ultimately, act on it. 
 
Unfortunately, church Facebook pages have long been used to post information to their internal audience: church members. Jamie Schneider Domm, digital strategist for the North American Division, is challenging that, and encouraging churches to use their social media to reach beyond their own members and build relationships with the rest of the online community. One solution she suggests is Facebook ads.
 
“I don’t think people realize how powerful Facebook Ads can be for churches,” says Domm. “The ability to reach very specific individuals in your town is unprecedented. We must begin to wield this tool to connect with people that need to learn about Jesus.”

By doing something as simple as live streaming weekly sermons on Facebook, churches can share the gospel with the online world.  “We can use social media to share the gospel, inform the community of events, get our members involved, and build relationships,” Domm says.

Platforms such as Facebook are an incredible tool for sharing the Good News, but that message needs to be spread with the help of church members. Ellen White once wrote, “Let every worker in the Master’s vineyard, study, plan, devise methods, to reach the people where they are. We must do something out of the common course of things” (Evangelism 122-128).”
 
Facebook seems to fit that bill. However, in order to reach the multitude, the church needs your help. Start by following your church Facebook page. Stay updated on church events so that you can share invites with your personal network. Use social media to start building relationships with the community around you. These simple steps can make a profound impact on the digital footprint we as a church leave. The world needs more digital missionaries, and if ever there was a time to volunteer, the time is now.

In the wake of his father’s suicide, Gavin Larkin grappled with the realities of death. He wondered, “If this could happen to my father, am I susceptible to it as well?”

He was not okay
He looked back fondly at memories with his father and mentally replayed conversations. As a successful businessman, Barry Larkin had given no indication that he had been contemplating suicide. But the reality remained. Barry Larkin was not okay.

After documenting the impact of this experience in a documentary in collaboration with Janina Nearn, the pair realized the documentary served to tell the story but wasn’t sufficient to build a movement.

Building a movement
“In 2009, Gavin Larkin chose to champion just one question to honor his father and to try and protect other families form the pain he endured.”

“Are you ok?”

This single question, in all of its simplicity, is powerful because of the intentionality behind it. It challenges a nation to ask a question that now shapes the way Australia views suicide prevention with the hope that it will “genuinely change behavior Australia-wide”

R U OK
Karen Mudge, author of a Bible Society article published in 2012 said that R U OK Day “fits naturally with our calling as Christians to care for each other and those around us.”

Taking it one step further, R U OK day — its principles and intentionality — are especially pertinent to the Digital Discipleship movement: engaging with people online can be seen as a spiritual discipline.

Engaging online as a spiritual discipline
As Christians, we are familiar with the spiritual disciplines – if not as a collective than at least individually.

• Fasting
• Prayer
• Bible Study
• Evangelism
• Service
• etc.

In our digital age, engaging with people online is a spiritual discipline. It is the modern story of the Good Samaritan. It is Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well. It is Philip’s obedience to the spirit in meeting the Ethiopian eunuch.  It is Saul’s life-changing arranged meeting with Ananias.

In order for these online encounters to happen, we must reach out.  We must meet people where they are in the digital space.

Much of life is lived online.

While some see the online space as a public photo album, displaying pictures of kittens, vacations, clothes and food, others find the online experience cathartic. They find strength in speaking online that they wouldn’t have in person. They type away their sorrows, are often overly honest and send out digital distress signals.

Sometimes, even their silence online can be a loud cry for help. The question is, is anybody listening?

The R U OK Process
R U OK Day prompts us to ask this simple but important question and gives us tools for how to ask it.

As Digital Disciples, we are encouraged to be content creators, distributors and engagers. And as important as the creators and distributors are to the Digital Discipleship process, the engagers give humanity to a world of pixels, bits, bytes and code.

Step 1 – Ask
First make sure you’re in a good headspace to ask.  Start with something simple like “How are you going”.  If something has caused you to be concerned, mention it specifically.  If you receive a bit of pushback, just follow-up with a question to make sure things are really okay.

Step 2 – Listen
Listen genuinely to their answers.  Don’t rush them and hold back any judgment you may feel.  Follow-up with questions like, how did that make you feel?

Step 3 – Encourage Action
Ask them how you can support them in their situation.  Prompt them to tell you how they’ve dealt with a similar situation in the past. Share how you’ve dealt with similar situations.  (Sometimes the situation may be too big for you to deal with alone.  In this case, bring along an expert to help.  Check out this link for resources for expert help).

Step 4 – Check in
Putting a reminder in your diary will prompt you to follow-up.  Keep in touch and continue to show genuine care and concern. (For the full guidelines to How to Check-in, visit the R U OK resource page.)


A Lifestyle
For much of the nation, today’s focus on the health and well-being of their co-worker, cousin or online friend will soon fade.  It will be lost when the celebrities stop appearing frequently in yellow, when the pamphlets have been distributed and the commercials have run their cycle.

For Digital Disciples, engaging in genuine conversations online with our friends, family and strangers is a lifestyle modeled after Jesus’ life. It gives us permission and intentionality in our questions and it gives us purpose behind why we’re asking them.

So as you reach out today to ask R U OK, ask yourself how you can exercise the spiritual discipline of engaging online with your community with intentionality and purpose in order to grow God’s kingdom not just today, but every day.

Who will you reach out to to ask R U OK, and how can you build relationship with them and meet the needs they may have?

Re-posted with permission from digitaldisciples.info.

I don’t think folks realize how powerful Facebook Ads can be for churches. The ability to reach very specific individuals in your town is unprecedented. We must begin to wield this tool to connect with people that need to learn about Jesus.
 
Let me give you 9 examples of real campaign targeting parameters you could be utilizing in your community:
 

• Parents, ages 21-40 of children, ages 4-12 in Sacramento, CA, who enjoy cooking or watch cooking shows. Promoting a family cooking class.
• Men in Vancouver, BC between the ages of 25-50, who enjoy camping, hiking, off-roading, or rock-climbing. Promoting a men’s retreat in the mountains.
• Orlando, FL Spanish-speaking men and women who are new to the area in the last 12 months. Promoting an English as a second language course.
• People engaged to be married in the last 12 months in Detroit, MI. Promoting a marriage seminar.
• People who recently started a new job in Tulsa, OK, who maintain 4 or more lines of credit, and are an active credit card user. Promoting a money-management course.
• Married couples earning over $125,000/year who frequently travel internationally and have made charitable donations. Promoting a mission trip and corresponding costs.
• Anyone in Charlotte, NC who has expressed interest in prophecy or end-times, excluding those marking themselves as SDA. Promoting an evangelistic prophecy seminar.
• Single, pregnant women under the age of 25 in Toronto, ON who earn less than $30,000/year and rent their homes. Promoting a free community baby shower.
• People who have recently moved away from their hometown or away from family under the age of 30 who mark themselves as Christian or SDA. Promoting your church’s young adult group.

 
I want you to notice, while I wrote each of these examples as a complete sentence, each word or phrase is an actual set of data you can track for a given campaign. For any outreach you’re planning, consider your audience, their interests, relationships, professions, and behaviors, and you’ll be able to put your event in front of the exact people that need to see it with Facebook Ads.