Dear Church, Avoid This Costly Social Media Mistake

The result? Reaching fewer people in your local community.

Brady Shearer
December 19, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hey, it’s Brady,

Too many churches make this costly mistake on social media.

If you don’t fix it, you’ll be reaching fewer people in your local community.

It starts like this. A pastor will say to me:

“Brady, we don’t care about going “viral.” We just want to reach people who are local to us.”

So I ask them to consider two scenarios:

Scenario #1:
Your post reaches 300 people. 50% are local.
The result? You reach 150 people local to your church.

Scenario #2:
Your post reaches 300,000 people. 1% are local.
The result? You reach 3,000 people local to your church.

This is the paradox:

The best way to reach local, is to go viral.

To make a point, here’s an example of how this played out in a real church:

Said differently, your objective should be to reach as broad of an audience as possible.

Should every post have this objective? No. Social media has two axes: depth & width.

When you post photos of people in your church, the objective of those posts is to reach deeper with your existing congregation. Not reach broadly.

But I like to say it this way:

The wisdom of Scripture is for all people. For all time.

So, when you repurpose your sermon content for social media, look for the parts of the message that have the broadest potential reach.

This means that the subject matter should be accessible to people who know Jesus and to people without any faith background.

Here are a few examples where the wisdom of Scripture intersects with the needs of the world:

And remember this:

The more you reach broadly, the more you reach locally.

Today we hear directly from the online pastor of Saddleback Church. His name is Jay Kranda and he's been in this role since 2013.

Saddleback Church is one of the pioneering churches of online ministry dating all the way back to the early 2000s.

With that being said, they have some approaches to online church that certainly go against the conventional wisdom.

How Saddleback Does Online Church Differently

Thanks as always for your time, attention, and trust. Talk to you in the new year. - Brady Shearer