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5 Social Media Strategies to Reconnect With Your Church Family This Fall

Not much beats social media for engaging people with the messages that matter to your church these days. The average person in your church likely spends over two hours a day on social media platforms. If you want to draw them back into your church’s orbit this fall, leveraging social media is crucial. 

Here are five key ways to use social media to reconnect with your church family as you head into the fall. 

1. Virtual Prayer and Bible Study Experiences

In 2020, many of our churches became familiar with the ministry potential of virtual experiences, such as online worship services, prayer times, and Bible studies. Of course, they aren’t a replacement for face-to-face connections with people, but they can help you engage people who can’t make it to your regular worship services. 

As we head into the fall, think of these as an easy first step back for people who may be hesitant to return for some reason. For most churches, Facebook is an ideal place to do these. Consider scheduling a midweek Facebook Live session where you give people an opportunity to pop on, share prayer requests, and pray together. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes these live videos. The longer you’re on, the more likely others are to find you.

Before setting a time for online events, check to see the times of the week when you tend to have higher engagement. Generally, weekends and evenings after six will work best.

2. Stories

Churches are a storehouse of stories. If you’re in the disciple-making business, you’re in the story-creating business, too. Every person God has transformed in your church has a story to tell. Social media gives you an ideal platform to share those stories.

The best way to do this would be through short (about three-minute) video clips. Make sure you include captions on the video because many people watch videos without the sound turned on.

Humans of New York (HONY), a popular Facebook account that highlights stories in the Big Apple, gives us a great template for testimonials. HONY tells a compelling first-person text story over multiple posts and adds a strong photo to it. For churches, it’s better to keep your stories to one post though.

Regardless of the format, make sure your testimonials have some sort of visual element (either a photo or a video). 

3. Interactive Content

Social media specializes in interactive content that gets your followers involved. For example, as you head into the fall, post a poll that asks people about the fun things they did over the summer. Start a live chat discussing people’s fall expectations.

To make the most of interactive posts, connect them to live events, such as the weekend worship service. Consider a weekly live Q&A to allow congregants to ask questions related to the weekly sermon. Open a discussion time where congregants can talk about how they’re trying to apply the sermon’s lessons to their lives.

Fish for ideas on future sermons with a poll about topics that might interest your audience. Make sure you turn on comments for the poll. Then encourage people to not only vote on future topics but to include a comment for further details on what people would like to see covered. 

4. Bible Verses and Sermon Quotes

There is a reason many church accounts post Bible verses often. It’s not just that the Bible defines our faith as Christians. Bible verses are also some of the most-shared social-media content in circulation. Christians may disagree on a whole host of issues, but most can agree on scripture.

Pull some key verses from the weekend sermon or find a few verses that relate to the message but didn’t make it into the sermon. When possible, add them to an image to get even more visibility.

While you’re combing through the weekend sermon, look for some compelling quotes to share. Keep them short—and make sure they can stand on their own with little context. Package the quote with a photo of the preacher. Popular AI platforms like Chat GPT can take sermon transcripts and pull out possible quotes. 

5. Fall Sermon Series Preview

Use social media to provide your disengaged congregants a sneak peek at your fall sermon series. Starting about a month out, try the following combination of posts, sharing at least once and maybe twice a week. Make sure you have some kind of landing page to link the posts to. Consider investing some money in social ads and/or boosts, too.

If possible, develop a consistent look and feel for these posts so you can tie them together and to the upcoming sermon series. 

  • Teaser video – Create a simple video previewing the sermon topic. Use a traditional Problem-Agitate-Solution framework to focus on the problem the sermon will solve, drill down on the consequences of not solving the problem, and tease the sermon series as pointing to a biblical solution to the problem.
  • Inspirational quotes on the topic – Find some quotes related to the topic, particularly centered on the problem the sermon helps to solve. Include some Bible verses to set the scene for the sermon.
  • Short testimonials – Find some people who have walked through the issues discussed in the sermon series and record them sharing a short testimony. Focus on the problem and the fact that scripture has a solution. Possibly share a small clip of the testimony related to the solution in the sermons themselves.

Always make these posts sharable and encourage people to invite friends and family to the fall series. 

Time to Start

It’s easy to get so focused on your effort to bring people back this fall that you hyper-focus on your church’s needs. Remember your social media channels shouldn’t be relegated to only self-promotion. For every post promoting an event or activity at your church, make sure you have three or four that aren’t promotional and are simply designed to serve your audience.

If you’re wanting to leverage social media to grow this fall, now is the time to get started. The key is to share consistently. Pick a rhythm of at least once a week and stick to it.

For about how to re-engage people this fall, check out our free ebook, The Fall Church Communications Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Re-Engaging Your Church Family.

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