Instagram, often thought to be a photo sharing site mainly geared towards students and young adults has quickly risen to become a staple in an a lot of organization’s social media strategy. So the question that churches are asking now is, “Is Instagram something we should use?”
I asked myself the same question when I came on staff at Brentwood Baptist. For me, I thought Instagram was a site where teens took pictures of themselves called “selfies” and artistic people posted heavily filtered photos of nature. However, when I started using it for our church, I found out I was wrong. Here are four ways I have found that we could use Instagram and you can to:
Take a Quote from Your Pastor and Turn It Into Art
One of the many things I love about my paster (Mike Glenn), is that his sermon’s are very quotable. He is fantastic at taking large concepts and boiling them down to their essence. So while I listen to his sermon, I write down anything that might work as a quote. Then after the sermon, I send the quote off to a local college art student, who creates a piece of art from the quote. I then post the art on Instagram. Here is a sample:
Highlight Volunteers and Ministries
You can never give enough encouragement to your volunteers. With Instagram, each Sunday you could highlight at least one volunteer in a different ministry. This not only works as a public encouragement for your volunteers, but also helps put a face with your ministries.
Give a Behind the Scenes Look at Ministry
Most of the people who attend your church probably only step in the building on Sundays. They probably have no clue of what goes on at the church from Monday to Saturday. Use Instagram to give people a peek into daily church life. This can been capturing a meeting, the set list for worship band, or yes even janitorial staff.
Give a Tease for Next Week’s Worship Service
One of things that we try to do with social media is to build anticipation for the next Sunday. Using Instagram we can post photos of our pastor’s sermon notes, screen shots of videos we are producing, and the worship band rehearsing. We want to give people just small taste of what they can expect next Sunday.
If you are not using Instagram for your church, I encourage you to give it a shot. It’s a fast growing social network that will help you expand your church’s reach hand further it’s mission.
Questions: Does your church use Instagram? If so, how are you using it? Catch me on Twitter at @dgirardier and let’s continue the conversation.