Seminar for young adults

Evangelizing in the Social-Media and Technology Space

Matthew 28: 18 - 20; 2 Corinthians 10: 16

In modern times, social media evangelism is one way to share the gospel with over 4 billion active users worldwide. According to a survey, Facebook has almost 3 billion monthly active users, so if you have a Facebook page, you have access to millions of people. However, for many Christian young adults, this is “…regions beyond…” their reach (2 Corinthians 10: 16); not because they do not have social media presence, but they remain ineffective in using it for gospel evangelization. Posts by many Christians on social media barely reach beyond their connected circle. Worse still, many Christian young adults become captives of sin through the misuse of social media. How are we going to reach the

“…regions beyond…” our circles? How can we turn the tide of falling prey on social media? How can we start making a difference for God in our world through our social media handles as young Christians? In this seminar, we will discuss strategies for becoming effective social media evangelists and developing contents that will reach beyond our circles.

• 1. Launching Effective Social Media Evangelism Campaign.
• 2. Creating Captivating Contents for Social Media Audience

1. Launching Effective Social Media Evangelism Campaign (Romans 1: 13; 1 Corinthians 7: 31)

Gospel preaching social media organizations recommend steps for effective digital evangelism. We have condensed some of the steps for our discussion and needed actions.

Step 1 - Find a problem to solve

When you evangelize, you are trying to help someone change their life, and this means that you must provide an answer to a question or solve their problem. The gospel happens to be that problem solver. The gospel is the “power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1: 13). The journey of a potential audience for evangelism will most likely begin with a question. Someone will most likely go over to a search engine platform like Google, YouTube, Pinterest, or Instagram to search for a solution to their problems. So before starting any evangelization project, make sure that you have identified a specific problem that needs solving.

Step 2 - Understand the platforms.

The Bible warns us to use the things of the world rightly “…they that used this world, as not abusing it:…” (1 Corinthians 7: 31). Social media is included. Before you begin to use social media rightly for sharing the gospel, you should understand what type of platform you will use, the risk it poses for distracting yourself, the potentials you can tap into, and the ideal type of content to post. There are many social media platforms, the main ones are Facebook, Instagram, Twitters, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Quora, Reddit, and Pinterest. Each of them has their niches and serves demography differently. While Facebook have a lot of young adults and middle age subscribers, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest are popular photo-sharing apps. They serve younger generations of users who seeks convenience.

Step 3 - Post steadily and regularly, work in a team

In 2 Timothy 4: 2 - 5, we are admonished to “… do work of an evangelist” “… in season and out of season…” Posting regularly is essential so that your followers know you are there. Avoid posting random stuff. Post consistently. The challenge of posting valuable and useful contents can be daunting. A way to be consistent is to prayerfully work as a team, for example, each fellowship location has a social media team to keep the pace of posting consistent contents.

Step 4 - Be authentic.

Set your goal on building trust with your audience. Be genuine in your experience and intent when you share the gospel online. People want to connect with others who share their values and beliefs. Your followers want to see real people behind the profiles, and they want to feel as if they are interacting with someone rather than simply reading words on a screen. Be an authentic example of an authentic faith (1 Timothy 4:12).

Step 5 - Promote your posts, engage with others.

Promoting your posts is a way to increase traffic by tweeting links to the posts. You can also pay for advertising services. Social media platforms do render promotion services by sending post to a selected demography for a fee. Likewise, engaging with others by commenting on their posts and interacting with them can increase visibility of your posts. Commenting on other people's posts shows that you care about what they are saying. Interacting with others helps build relationships and allows you to connect with potential followers. Proverbs 18: 24a says that “A man that hath friends must show himself friendly…”

2. Creating Soulwinning Contents for Social-Media Evangelism. 1 Timothy 1: 4; Isaiah 50: 4; Colossians 4: 6

A golden rule: Avoid arguments (1 Timothy 1: 4). Soul winning digital contents must offer recognizable benefits to the audience. Quality gospel content is “…seasoned words…” engaging, relevant, and demonstrates problem solving potency. Hence, the more time spent on research, the better the content. Here are some steps you can take to ensure that your content is relevant and helpful to your audience.

A. Use A Balanced Mix of Social and Spiritual Listening.

Social media evangelism experts recommend active social listening to find out what topics your audience cares about. It also gives insight into your audience's questions regarding. You can do this through various tools such as Google Alerts or by manually searching on social media platforms. Data from experts that can use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to monitor trends can help. We can engage such experts. Spiritual listening on the other hand is listening to the right answers in the place of prayers and fellowship with God. So, while social listening gives insight to the audience’s struggles, spiritual listening gives insight to heaven’s answers.

B. Ask Your Audience.

When you have understood what your audience are struggling with, asking them questions digitally will help prioritize their needs and help create relevant contents for them. For example, if you find that relationship discussions are frequent on the platform, you can put up a question like “What is your greatest relationship stress?” with a digital tool like a sidebar form. The answers generated will become a source of content.

C. Create Content that Solves Problems

Remember to create content that solves problems. This can come from various sources like personal and team prayers and meditation, and inspiration from others. In this regard, contents from our father in the Lord like short prayer clips or contents from GCK daily can be useful problem-solving contents. Explore miracle evangelism through anointed prayers. When you provide solutions, you show that you care about your audience and Jesus is able to save them.

In conclusion, remember to define the benefits that your Social Media handle offers. Understand your audience’s needs and struggles, ask them questions that can open up their inner struggles to you, proffer solutions based on answers from the Holy Spirit, work with other believers to generate the right content. Finally, make good use of anointed resources. 

Social media evangelism is a call to every one of us in the fellowship of young adults, so everyone should make a commitment to be engaged in it. We can now discuss action points and exchange notes about what has worked before and what we believe can work for us in this country.

Reference

Social Listening Evangelism. https://www.delmethod.com/blog/social-listening-evangelism

Action points