Churches are turning increasingly to social networking tools as ministry aids, and Facebook is by far the most popular, according to a new study by LifeWay Research.
The survey of 1,003 Protestant congregations, which was conducted by phone in September, found 47 percent of churches actively use Facebook. Three percent use MySpace, 2 percent a church-specific package like Cobblestone, Unifyer, or The City and 1 percent use Ning.
However, 40 percent of churches do not use any social networking tools, according to Lifeway -- the research and publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. with close to 16 million members.
"Churches are natural places of interaction," LifeWay Research Director Scott McConnell said. "Congregations are rapidly adopting social networking, not only to speed their own communication, but also to interact with people outside their church."
Large churches use Facebook far more than small ones. Eighty-one percent of congregations with 500 or more in average worship attendance use Facebook, compared to 27 percent of churches with one to 49 attendees.
Forty-three percent of churches with 50 to 99 attendees use Facebook, as do 46 percent of churches with 100 to 199 attendees and 56 percent of churches with 200 to 499 attendees.
Large-city and suburban churches are more likely than their small-city and rural counterparts to use Facebook. While 57 percent of suburban and 54 percent of large-city churches use it, only 46 percent of small-city congregations and 39 percent of rural churches are on Facebook.
Among churches that utilize social networking tools, 73 percent use them for interacting with the congregation, 70 percent for distributing news and information in an "outbound only" manner, 52 percent for fostering member-to-member interaction and 41 percent for managing the church's group ministry.
A majority (62 percent) of churches that utilize social networking tools use them to interact with individuals outside the congregation.
A separate LifeWay Research survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors in October 2010 found that many pastors are personally using social media to interact with their congregations. Nearly half (46 percent) of pastors personally use Facebook, 16 percent blog and 6 percent use Twitter. In addition, 84 percent send email to groups.
