The majority of your church isn’t on Twitter (or perhaps even Facebook), and the majority of your church probably don’t carry smartphones. But the majority of your church can probably send and receive text messages, so I’m curious: Do you use text messaging to communicate with your members? If so, how?
We want to talk about churches and text messaging in an upcoming COLLIDE article, so let us hear from you.
We are about to start. We have a Twitter account but it is rarely used. Facebook has become one of the best ways to communicate with our church Next is text messaging. We explored several resources for a year and think we have landed on a place to start. We are testing it now with our youth and then plan to launch by Easter with the church. We will do sign ups for three levels, those who want just the most important stuff, those who want a little more than the basics, and those who want everything we can text them. We plan to use this for everything from alerts to schedule changes reminded people that it is Sunday morning and almost time for church, depending on their interest.
I use symt.us, which is a bulk text messaging service marketed by Doug Fields’ Simply Youth Ministry. I use it to send text announcements to our youth group. You can schedule future messages, so I can do a week (or a month, or a year) at a time. I also used this for an text message Advent devotional for the whole church. People signed up by giving me their cell number and carrier, and I sent a short prayer, Scripture, or thought each day. I recently used the same list to recruit volunteers for our soup kitchen serving.
We have just started using texting as part of our young adult community. We started doing some texting polls during our gatherings where we could see the results live on the screen. Now we created a Tatango group that people can join to receive text updates.
One of the polls we did asked how they (the young adults in our community) would rather communicate with their friends. Texting was first by a long shot, then Facebook, Twitter, Email.
Scott, thanks for making this conversation possible. The more churches I speak to, the more I realize how communication channels are developing/evolving. I have found that email and text messaging (or SMS) are the primary avenues to contact ministries, staff, small groups, members, volunteers, etc.
I currently work for a company that is helping churches & nonprofits enhance communication with and among their members. I encourage you to check out MemberHub.com – which allows text messaging and emailing features with automatic reminders.
I would love to connect with anyone who is interested. Email me at Millee.Massey@MemberHub.com or DM me @milleemassey.
At this time, alot of our members DON’T use text messages! GRR!! I would love to. And I am one of 3 people in our church that uses Twitter, so that just doesn’t work!
Anyway, we EMAIL like crazy. I think like 98% use email at least once a day!
And for our students and twenty-somethings we do a lot with Facebook. Thanks for the conversation.
We use Txtsignal (www.txtsignal.com). It has different levels of membership which gives you different features. We use it for announcements, contests, prayer requests, event changes, etc. It’s really affordable, really simple and really effective since I work with teens.
We’ve been using text messaging for almost a year now at Park Community Church (www.parkcommunitychurch.org). Our congregation’s average age is 29 and we are 60% single, which naturally lends itself to using texting techonology as a means to communicate.
We initially used texting to communicate announcements only and in August partnered with Jarbyco (www.jarbyco.com) and took to the next level.
We now allow people to text in questions during all of our services and we take about 5 minutes at the end of every service to answer questions that are texted in. We podcast the Q&A from each week as a seperate podcast. We’ve also used text polling in services (http://timschraeder.typepad.com/cr8ve/2008/10/text-polling-in-service-.html) to ask people how the current economic crisis was impacting their faith.
I will say that it might not be the right medium of communications for some churches, but for us it made sense and has worked great!
We (sort of) built a new service around texting that just launched two weeks ago (www.txt3.tv).
Using polleverywhere.com, we either ask one question with moderated free-form answers displayed or do a poll, both of which are incorporated into that night’s message and consequently posted to our site for further discussion.
We also make use of group2call.com to send out a weekly challenge in regards to what we talked about on Sunday night.
(But I am deliberating moving our txt missives to twitter because it’s free.)
We’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but it’s new and different for our area. Our shirts say “i txt @ chrch” in hopes that that’s intriguing enough to get someone to attend a church service.
We use text messaging to let people know what is coming up at our church – Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA. We have separate text groups for churchwide events, velocity (student ministries) and fusion (singles ministries). We’ve been using eztexting.com which is very simple to use – and cheap. We pay anywhere from 2.5 cents to 5 cents per message depending on how it is sent (standard or express). It allows us to set up keywords for different groups and has a simple subscription process by texting that keyword to 313131. Texts can be sent from an admin panel at the eztexting site, or from a phone.
We use texting to send a weekly uplifting message to those who have signed up and our youth pastor has a list of kids that he sends text messages to about upcoming events. We have found it very hard to move our congregation towards some of the technical gadgets. We also have a Facebook group that is really just getting off the ground, but that too is very slow. Our region (Northern Colorado) is very agricultural but I am from the Dallas, Tx area so this is a very frustrating challenge for me.
check out http://www.broadtexter.com – I’ve been using it a few months now and I’ve been happy with it, plus it’s free and no ads!
We have a Twitter account that we use for texting. People don’t have to ever log on to Twitter to actually use it. They text “follow [username]” to 40404, and they’re signed up – without even knowing they’re on Twitter. It’s easy for us to use ’cause of all of the apps available to make Twitter easier, and it works like a free SMS service for them.
While we don’t currently use texting alone, we are looking into our options. We do have a Twitter account that also feed a Facebook Profile and I am sure there are a few people who get those via TM. We do see it as a real opportunity to increase our reach in communication.
We’ve been using group texting for a couple of years (via clubtexting.com), primarily to remind people about upcoming events. We added an opt-in box for text messages on our weekly Communication Card if they provide their phone number. We now get 3-4 new requests for text updates every week.
Over the last few months, text messaging has becoming the next big thing in our church. We’ve been able to use it to answer questions and struggles to guide the course of the service. Audience members could text in questions and opt in for daily text memory verses and sermon points. We believe it’s It is a great tool and a way to deepen communication on multiple levels. We unveiled this method of communication two months ago in our traditional / transitional church and it took off like wildfire. We knew we stumbled on to something big, when sub-ministries and our 500+ youth department wanting in on the new communicational tool. In many ways text messaging is the new phone tree, but with more vibrant application. Whether it’s communications for volunteers, event notification, registration, and as interactive elements during services it a robust service that deepens communication for all of your attendees. Why use this? Because it’s the primary means of communication for people right now. The key with using this technology as a communicational tool is not to over do it, or It can feel intrusive, like you’re getting sales calls if not done with respect to the end user (frequency, permissions, etc).
Epic Church http://www.epicchurchonline.org uses text messages each week. Try it now: text the word: epic to 23907
We have a Twitter as well: http://www.twitter.epicchurchonline.org and Facebook: http:/www.facebook.epicchurchonline.org
We use different keywords as well for different things. We use a keyword each week where during our Gathering people register their cell phones then text in questions which are answered live off the cuff in the end.
If you would like to know more about the service we use please feel free to contact us: epic@epicchurchonline.org
I love the emerging technologies and want to see churches use them, not to be “cool”, but to help connect people, since the gospel works person-to-person. But it’s important to remember that there will always be a group that is not interested in a particular technology — even texting. I probably come from the stone age, because on my phone plan, I pay for each and every text I send or receive.
That said, I have seen one church use group messaging to get prayer requests out immediately. I could also see it used as a way of remotely praying at set times, a sort of Divine Hours. But some people will want certain messages that others are not interested in. How about setting up multiple channels? In fact, don’t dictate the channels from the top-down, but give the members the means of setting up their own (all listed in a common directory), for example, each small group could have their own channel.
I’m in the missions office at Irving Bible Church and direct our Water is Basic program. Whenever we drill a new well, we send out a text message to inform our donors of what’s happened.
Also, as a church we’ve been using text messages during the lent season to send out a daily reading and question to help encourage our members to participate in the season.
[...] Magazine recently asked people to respond how their church was utilizing texting and twittering. @mikeyanderson let Collide know that Mars Hills Church in Seattle had recently been featured on a [...]
How about textmarks.com They are free and you can use them to mass text message. We currently use this with our students and it is super simple!
we are going to use text messaging to create our after Easter service topics and blog series. We are going to ask people to text in questions during the Easter service and see what happens. I can’t wait.
Hoping this will open the door for communication TO them as well.
We have started a Twitter account, but only a small number of people have even tried twitter. Otherwise when it comes to pray reminders we have sent out a handful of bulk sms on the very odd occasion and only by ’subscription’.
I like the idea of buzzable to allow for group tweets. I think that that will be very useful in a Church environment. If the congregation gets onto twitter. I am not sure what the hesitancy is because there seems to be a good number of FaceBook users that have joined our Church’s Facebook group. hmmmmmm
posted at 3:20 am on March 3rd, 2009 by Phillip Gibb