Using Facebook Pages

Here in New England, one frequently finds that people are willing enough to participate in church activities, but are embarrassed to belong to a church (or at least to acknowledge that they belong to one).

Facebook -- and we assume that any house of worship of any denomination has a Facebook presence by now -- has recently made available to small organizations (and even to small businesses) their "Pages" capability, of which one can be a "Fan".

This is distinct from their "Group" capability, which one can "join" (and which perhaps makes church Facebook groups less than overwhelmingly popular where we come from (see paragraph #1).

We're still grappling with exactly how to use Facebook Pages, but we think that it holds some promise for connecting with the easily embarrassed, and thus is worth a fair amount of effort in implementing.

Here's our current effort, just three days old, but with some "fans" who would not be caught dead "joining" a church group.

Trinity Lime Rock Sports on Facebook

What do you think?

Benefits of Sports at Church

Yes, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 96 participants at Summer Soccer last summer. But what has become of them since?

Well, some attend Sunday School with varying degrees of regularity. But, really, not very many as a percentage of the total summer soccer participants. However, in most small Protestant congregations in the Northeast, that's very much to be expected.

However, when an opportunity that's a little different -- and respectful of the hectic pace of family life today -- appears, so do the kids from summer soccer.

Here's a short excerpt from our Christmas Pageant this year:



In that video, the still photo of the principal narrator depicts one of our Sunday School regulars -- indeed, the girl whose suggestion three years ago led to our summer soccer program. And the girl playing Mary who sings the solo is likewise a Sunday School regular. Some of the rest pictured attend Sunday School regularly, some occasionally, some rarely, and two not at all.

When you include the rest of the cast -- shepherds and animals, not yet on stage -- far fewer attend with any regularity. For some, it's their one appearance in church this year. For some, it actually was their first appearance at a church service ever.

Let me replay that last line: FOR SOME, IT ACTUALLY WAS THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE AT A CHURCH SERVICE EVER.

All but two of the participants, interestingly, were summer soccer participants. Of the two non-participants, one moved to town after summer soccer ended for the fall, and the other was brought by a Sunday School regular.

Using FaceBook

About a month ago I had mentioned that I was contemplating putting our weekly Summer Soccer sessions on FaceBook. At that point I was a complete neophyte at this web 2.0 networking stuff, having just been introduced to it by my grad student daughter.

Well, since then I have acted. You can now find a group called "Trinity Lime Rock" on FaceBook, and each week I am creating an activity for Summer Soccer for that group. This week I added it to the local network (Hartford, CT is the closest to us) and we will see if there is any discernible result.

I'm also working on the profile for Trinity Lime Rock on FaceBook, and am glad to have any suggestions at all. Swing by and take a look!

Getting ready to go public

Well, we've run the summer soccer program at Trinity Lime Rock for two summers now. The first one started off a bit slowly, but gained momentum. The second summer took off where the last one ended and grew from there.

Anyhow, we figure that it is now time to start reaching outside the church. There are certainly kids in Lime Rock who play soccer seriously, whose families have no connection to Trinity, and who wouldn't be apt to hear about the program. Well, they might hear if our kids talked about the program at Berkshire United, or in town rec soccer, or in school soccer. However, kids are kids and don't tend to tell other kids about church.

So, we will have to do the telling. We're thinking a press release that the local paper, the Lakeville Journal will -- with a little bit of luck -- print at least part of. We're also planning on mailing invitations to the known soccer kids who live in the area of the church. And, I guess I will e-mail all the area soccer folks who are in my directory.

It will be interesting to see how it goes. We'll keep you posted.