How SPACE has used Facebook

Everyone and their mother seems to be writing about churches and Facebook. So here is a perspective from a globally-connected, out-to-change-the-world component of a youth ministry.

SPACE has seen the following uses of Facebook:
- Connecting
Of course, the first and foremost use of FB is connecting with friends. Writing on walls, messaging [although I would rather use normal email] , checking on their status, reading their profiles and seeing who has new friends all are various ways to connect. Most recently, we've seen a lot of our students connect and stay in touch with the new friends they have made while serving around the world.

- Community
FB is also an environment for community. The amount of FB groups are evidence of that. The groups represent affinity and can be closed or allow anyone to join. We've started a general SPACE group as well as specific groups for SPACE summer teams, book clubs and groups just for fun [like the "SHENGS have more fun" group.] My latest favorite is the "IDK my BFF Jill" group [from LB's FB profile.]

- Photos, Video and Tagging
Part of the fun of FB is being able to upload media [photos/video] and then tag your friends in them as well as leave comments. Through this, you can see all the pictures/videos/etc FB-wide of your friends. All of our summer teams uploaded huge quantities of pictures from their experiences this summer, then tagged their teammates and commented on those pictures as well. On the left, one of my favorites, detailing an experiment I was conducting with cellophane - note the funny comments.

Other Resources:
- Churches on Facebook, from digital.leadnet.org
- The Lifechurch.tv swerve blog's informal social network survey results

One thing to note about security and privacy - only add the people you know and you should be fine. Feel free to add me as a friend by clicking my profile badge at the upper right of this post.