Felt board? Now there’s an app for that. For real.
1,000 pages of noisy onion-skin-like pages? Download this instead.
Stone tables meet your match: an iPad.
When it comes to organized religion, many churches and church leaders have chosen to stay in the dust of the past, while others move forward into the present and the future. With the advent of social media and other technological breakthroughs in communicaiton, churches have more avenues to spread their message than ever before.
Current leaders in the Catholic church are hopping into the social media sphere, albeit a few years behind.
In December of 2012, Pope Benedict XVI launched a Twitter account, offering tweets in eight languages. He has over 1.4 million followers on his english languange account alone, Twitter handle @Pontifex.
Following the Pope’s lead, Franciscan Friars launched a platform to allow followers to text them a prayer intention. Yup, you can text a prayer.
Father David Convertino, executive director of development for the Fransiscan Friars of Holy Name Province: “With technology changing the way we communicate, we needed to offer people an updated way to ask for prayers for special intentions and needs either for themselves or others.”
Regardless of one’s thoughts on religion, it’s powerful to see one of the oldest organized religions in the world seeing to connect in new ways.
At the dawn of social media, only the so-called ‘early adopters’ jumped in full force. Until recently, many organized religions seemed to lightly stick a toe into the social media waters, refusing to get immersed in the ever-changing waters.
Now they’re jumping in full force. Apparently the thinking is changing for churches and organizations who are willing to change.
At its core, social media is about making existing connections stronger and foster new connections that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
And though we don’t represent one ideology, religion or creed, we do tip our hat to those church leaders fearless enough to reach out with a handshake…and a tweet.
