Methodists use text messages to draw believers

“I think it’s a great idea. It’s a challenge to reach that generation,” said the Rev. David Streets, pastor at Ingomar United Methodist Church in Franklin Park.

The success of the campaign initially might be hard to judge, Streets said. Attendance normally increases this time of year, when college students are home for the holidays.

“My religion is based on personal beliefs, not advertising,” said Lisa Erb, 27, of the South Side.

Great story about how the church is seeking to connect with 20-30 somethings, a missing population in many United Methodist Churches, though the Methodist are certainly not alone in this.

The last comment was very telling to me however. There comes a tipping point where the church moves from proclamation to pandering or “advertising”. The question of course is where is that point and often we discover it just after we have crossed the tipping point!

I don’t see a problem with the program – having someone text to a number if they want more information but we are getting awful close here to the spam factor. I have members of the church who text me on Sundays to tell me they will not be there because we are a small enough community that I notice. In our context we find email a more attractive option to spread the message.

Each week our church sends a weekly email update to people who write down their email address or subscribe on our website – Crossroads Church Website.

We use a service, Constant Contact, to produce our emails. CC does a great job making professional emails in minutes and enhancing the attractiveness and readability of emails but there is a more important feature – the easy opt out.

Subscribers can forward a message about an event to a friend with a little note – “I am going to this, would be interested in joining me?” or something like this. If the friend want to come, great, if they want to subscribe even better, but it is not a lifelong commitment to receiving emails from our church. In fact if they do not subscribe they will never get an email from us again and if they do subscribe they can cut the emails off easily.

I want people to try our email updates on for size and if they do not want to receive them anymore, not to fee guilty about opting out. The last thing I want our church to become is a weekly inbox annoyance. There are several ministries that I have subscribed to and a few I never subscribed to that email me each week and I cannot get off their lists, no matter how hard I try.

I applaud any church’s effort to invite people to consider Christianity, so long as they guard against the annoyance factor. Intrusive efforts and ill conceived programs will lessen the likelihood that a person will visit church or consider the claims of Christ.

Asking people to text “believe” to a number for more information about where church services are in their area is a solid plan and I would be very interested to see what the conversion data (both spiritual and texting).

Before a church or a ministry considers a marketing campaign it is probably a good idea to test it on a sample group of people to ask if they find it intrusive or at the very least appealing. You can save resources and the risk of damaging the cause this way. If you are targeting 20 somethings and cannot find a half dozen to a dozen who would be willing to help you with this, you probably are not prepared to welcome them to whatever you are offering either.

Technology is emerging a lightning speed and no small or medium sized organization can maintain an effective presence in all of these areas (Facebook, texting, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, etc.).

Start with a good website and then develop one or more of these mediums based on the number of your current friends and members who are using that tool. Like everything else friends draw friends, let your friends do the lifting.

Maybe you don’t have the desire or resources to develop a slick billboard to texting campaign, but you can ask people to text their friends about events they will be attending and invite them or to post on their websites, facebook and myspace pages about what you are doing to bless the community.