Does your church have a digital advocate?

“Chenaniah, leader of the Levites in music, should direct the music, for he understood it” - 1 Chr. 15:22

For years, many churches have appointed a ‘missions advocate’ (by whatever name they chose) to be a channel for information and challenge to the fellowship about worldwide missions. Coordinators for other areas of ministry are also commonplace.

There is now surely the same opportunity for churches to appoint someone to be the church advocate for the use of digital media in evangelism and discipleship.

Mavens needed?

Such a person would obviously need to be a web maven - a networker who knows a wide variety of online Christian resources/strategies and loves sharing them. They might function like this:

• be available to consult one-to-one about ideas and resources.
• write about digital opportunities and resources in the church newsletter/website
• help the leadership team consider ways the fellowship can develop online strategies to reach the community, including a defined social media strategy.
• share digital resources and news from time to time during meetings.
• train church members to use Facebook appriately to share the good news, especially by sensitive conversation-starting, including how to add to add an evangelistic video short to a Facebook post. Videos resources include:
  • YesHEIs.com (range of topics and languages available)
  • Damaris (discussions about film releases)
  • God: New Evidence (apologetics for outsiders)
  • Global Short Film Network (range of topics, some are parable-like stories).
• encourage people to load evangelistic apps on their smartphones, such as Talking About Jesus, create a small library of video clip downloads in their phones, or add online Bibles such as YouVersion.
• encourage creative people with appropriate gifts, including a youth group, to consider creating video shorts and posting them on YouTube.
• suggest to those with the appropriate gifts that they consider volunteering as e-mentors with big outreach teams such as TruthMedia.com and GMO.
• point people to, for example, the best online study or youth discipleship resources.

This is a role very distinct from that of an existing missions coordinator or church webmaster, and there should be no automatic assumption that this is something extra that should be placed on them! Does your church have someone in this role? Please share how this works for you, and what lessons you have learned.

Image credit: Wael Attili | sha3teely.com | Creative Commons