STUDY: Half Of All Protestant Churches Are On Facebook
A new study revealed almost half of all Protestant churches in the country are active users of Facebook.
Would you feel comfortable expressing your faith on Facebook? One way to do that is to befriend your place of worship on the social network. There’s about a 50 percent chance you can do exactly that if you’re Protestant.
Nearly half of all Protestant churches in the U.S. have Facebook pages or profiles, according to Technorati, which cited a LifeWay Research study of just over 1,000 Protestant congregations, which include Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Mormon faiths
Not surprisingly, larger churches were more likely to be on the social networking site than smaller ones. Eighty-one percent of congregations with average attendance of at least 500 use Facebook, compared with 27 percent of churches with one to 49 attendees.
When asked how they use it, 73 percent said they use Facebook to interact with their congregations, 70 percent said they like to distribute news and important info on the site, 52 percent said they try to foster interaction among members and 41 percent said they use social media to manage the church’s group ministry.
We’re curious about how these statistics compare with other religious faiths on Facebook, whether there are any usage patterns that vary by how conservative or liberal a place of worship’s ideology is, and the percentage of different congregations’ memberships that become fans on the social network.
Have you looked to see whether your place of worship has a page or profile on Facebook? How might religious organizations improve their user of social media, if at all?
