How to Get Senior Adults in Your Church to Embrace Facebook
Had a chance to meet-up with a group of local church leaders today at a forum on Church 2.0 held by Greg Atkinson. Greg has been organizing these meet-ups around the country to give local leaders a chance to discuss the topics of technology and innovation in the church and the greater Kingdom. In Atlanta we had probably around 20 people or so.
I appreciate the effort Greg has made to bring these forums about and am all for the discussion on new best practices for churches in a modern, digital world. We had some good discussion, even a little debate, and I got to meet some new friends who I’m sure I’ll connect with over the next several months.
One of the concerns raised within the group went something along the lines of, “How do you get people (beyond the typical teenager/young adult) to embrace the technologies you are using?” It’s a question that I think is asked week after week across the country by churches trying to utilize technology in their mission to make disciples. The discussion was good, but started off really narrowly focused for a little while.
It seemed like we were discussing ways to show senior adults why they should be on Facebook. That wasn’t the main discussion point, but the feeling in the circle seemed to be focusing way too much on how great technology is and how much people should be on it (and how we can help).
It was only a short while before the discussion turned back towards the fact that the only reason we, as the Church, should go down these digital paths is because 1) we should be willing to use whatever tools we have at our current disposal for Kingdom focus, and 2) those worlds are where people naturally are - if we want to reach them, we need to become familiar with them.
What do you think? Where should the line be drawn between seeking ways to use technology and muddying the waters too much as a consequence of trying to be relevant?
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Chris shared their voice on 08.22.2008:
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John shared their voice on 08.22.2008:
Obviously, what’s relevant to 20 somethings is drastically different to what is relevant for senior adults. We need to continue to minister to the senior adult audience in ways that they feel comfortable. Not only are they less likely to change that younger generations, but forcing new technologies on them that they are not comfortable with may blur the message more than communicate it.
All of that said, I’m a huge advocate of using all of the technology that we can to reach people for the Kingdom. But we can’t assume that technology is going to reach everyone in the Kingdom, and we need to be sensitive to that.