Church spreads its message via social media

CEDAR FALLS - Pastors typically use sermons and Bible verses to spread messages of faith, but now many churches are hopping onto the social media bandwagon.

Heartland Vineyard Church in Cedar Falls has two services on Sundays. The messages, however, don't stop flowing when those services are over. From Twitter to Facebook and YouTube, they're all over the Internet every single day.

“The goal is to try to reach out to people who wouldn't normally come to our church to be able to provide to them uplifting tweets (and) things of encouragement,” church member Kevin Briden said.

Briden writes the tweets and uses software to send out about 100 tweets a day.

The church also uses YouTube to allow people to watch weekly sermons. Over the next couple of months, they plan to start streaming sermons live during services. The church recently kicked off its major push to use social media to keep in touch with its members and potentially to meet new ones.

“It really has become kind of a new focus, and it's kind of like one of those things like social media is here to stay. It's not going away, so we need to embrace it here,” executive pastor Josh Paxton said.

In this day and age of smartphones and tablets, church leaders know it's vital.

“So, if that's how people communicate, the church needs to communicate that same way,” Briden said. “I think you will find more and more churches going that avenue.”

Heartland Vineyard's Facebook page has more than 1,000 “likes.” Church member Krista Reed said the page helps her stay in touch with what's going on at the church throughout the week.

“The world is constantly changing,” Reed said. “If we don't change how we do outreaches and ministry, then we are just going to fall behind. Our church has so many young people,” Reed said. “We are so close to a college. We are so close that we have to be relevant with the times, otherwise it's just going to die away.”

Paxton said he thinks his church is setting the tone for social media within faith circles. He believes the man upstairs is “liking” the changes.

“I think he's behind us 100 percent,” Paxton said. “I think he's just as excited as we are.”

Church leaders said they plan to keep up with social media. That means asking for more volunteers and more training as networks continue to change. They know the social media scene could be much different in just a few short years.