6 Easy Ways Every Mormon Can Be An Effective Missionary On Facebook.

The new frontier for missionary work is online; specifically, it is sharing the gospel via social media. The largest of all social media platforms is Facebook. TechCrunch announced this past June that Facebook had crossed over the 2 Billion active monthly users mark, That means that 2 out every 7 people used the Social Media platform this past month. The New York Times reported that people are spending on average 20-50 minutes a day on Facebook!

Why is this important? Because, as more people spend their time on social media, the burden of reaching them will shift from the missionaries, who do in-person contacting to find new investigators, to the members of the Church to use social media and the internet to find people who are interested in the gospel. Statistically speaking, there should be over 2 million Mormons on Facebook alone. If every member was to realize and fulfill their missionary duty to share the gospel we would have the ability reach BILLIONS of people each month.

I am not joking or exaggerating. My LDS Facebook page (My life by Gogo Goff) reached over 1,000,000 people the first WEEK of January; and I am a small force compared to many. If every member only reached 500 people a month we would reach over one billion people a month. Here are 6 simple ways we can fulfill our missionary duty by being member missionaries on facebook!

“Member-missionary work is the key to the future growth of the Church.” Spencer W. Kimball

1st. Share Don’t Spam.

We are called to share the Gospel; not to spam. Not only is it good etiquette to avoid spam, it also prevents burnout when we pace ourselves. Nobody wants a friend on facebook who is spamming their wall with a billion political/food/religious posts. But a good dose of Gospel intertwined with other posts is member missionary work at it’s best!

“Social media are helping the leaders and members of the restored Church to fulfill the Lord’s mandate to ‘go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature'”

David A. Bednar

2nd. Come out of the shadows.

Many many members of the church are facebook shadow users. Meaning they read but rarely ever comment, like or share. That’s just their personality. My own dad was this way for a long time until I explained how that was hurting missionary work on facebook.

See, Facebook has algorithms (code) that will only show a post to a very small amount of friends/followers to see if they like it, if they do, more will see it; if they don’t less will.

Important:

If you thought it was good, but did not want to click “like” you’re telling Facebook “don’t share this with a bigger % of his friends, I did not like it.”

An example: Say I have 1,000 friends and I make a post on Facebook; Facebook only posts to 1% of my friends so about 10 friends. I am dependent on one of those 10 friends to either like, comment or share, or Facebook will not show it to the other 990. Each person who clicks like, leaves a comment, or shares is telling Facebook “this is good, show it to more people”.

“As disciples our purpose should be to use social media channels as a means of projecting the light and truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ into a world that increasingly is dark and confused.”

David A. Bednar

3rd Declare It Publicly.

The missionary power of Facebook is the ability to reach beyond your own circle. Your testimony might be the only thing that can reach a struggling mother in New Deli, or a lonely Father working the oil fields of Northern Canada. But if you limit your testimony my selecting the privacy setting of “Only Friends” then you are basically taking away the true power of Facebook missionary work. It is ok for most of your posts to be private, but when you are sharing the gospel by simply selecting “Public” you go from only helping your 20-300 friends, to being able to reach not just the 2,000,000,000 people on Facebook but anyone googling as well!

“What has been accomplished thus far in this dispensation communicating gospel messages through social media channels is a good beginning—but only a small trickle. I now extend to you the invitation to help transform the trickle into a flood.”

David A. Bednar

4th. Be consistent!

If your life and Social Media are not consistent with the Gospel people will not listen to you. You can’t preach about love and how we are all the children of God in one Facebook post and in the next post rail against someone and call a local or national politician a name. We must be consistently living the gospel both on and off social media to share it effectively! And if that means you need to abstain from political discussions until you can act civilly and not bring shame to the Church then do so.

“Authenticity is strengthened through consistency. The gospel messages you share will be accepted more readily if your Christlike example is evident in the ongoing pattern of your posts.”

David A. Bednar

5th. Choose what level of investment you can make.

Too many members think sharing the gospel online means they’ve gotta invest hours and hours and start their own pages, groups, blogs, or what not. That is simply not the case. Choose your level of availability and simply work on that, once you feel like you can do more, do more! Here are a few examples of AMAZING Member missionary styles for Facebook.

The Free Time Missionary. (Time Commitment: Low)

The vast majority of members will fall into this category. It is simple! When you have free time, you share videos/quotes/articles on Facebook. Or share your testimony. You can be a good free time missionary with 5 minutes a week!

The Curator. (Time Commitment: Low to Medium)

A smaller number of members are what can only be described as gospel curators. These faithful members manage Gospel-themed Facebook pages. They are the admins and moderators that make sure that the Anti-Mormons are not attacking the members in the groups and that the posts are appropriate. The manage groups range from your local ward Facebook group with a handful to maybe a couple hundred, to the massive LDS Facebook groups like LDS Standing United (Group) or LDS Followers Of Jesus Christ that boasts almost 60,000 members! If you have more time and want to be a gospel curator, ask your local ward if you can help manage the Facebook group or one of the admins in the larger Facebook groups.

The Creator. (Time Commitment: Low to High)

Everyone thinks that creating content takes hours and hours a week. That is not the case. The content creators are the vital lifeblood of Social Media Missionary work. Without someone creating content, there would be nothing to share! Becoming a creator does NOT mean you need your own page, it simply means you are going to be sharing content that you have created, be it pictures you’ve taken, memes, or a testimony, if you are creating something others can share, you are a creator!

Pro tip. If you feel your content is very good, reach out to an Influencer and ask them if you can share it. If you have a blog article idea but don’t have the time to start/manage a blog, reach out to a site and ask if you can do a guest post rather than start your own blog. Often this is far more effective and mutually beneficial.

The Influencer. (Time Commitment: Medium to Very High).

The LDS Influencers are the power players in the LDS Social Media. Often they are creating massive amounts of content or they own/run the massive LDS Pages, like LDS Standing United (160k+ followers) and LDS Daily (170k+ followers) they also run the smaller pages like mine, I love the Temple (20k followers), and My Life By Gogo Goff (18k followers). These are the people who create massive amounts of content and/or they also share content of other creators and reach millions of people a week while doing so!

“We need not become social media experts or fanatics. And we do not need to spend inordinate amounts of time creating and disseminating elaborate messages . . . According to our desires and circumstances, each of us can contribute consistently to the growing flood of truth and righteousness.”

David A. Bednar

6th, Befriend Others.

Growing up my Facebook friends consisted of only my friends I played with in real life. All of them were active members of the church. Since my mission, I’ve gotten into the habit of adding everyone in my ward of Facebook, especially those I home teach and the less active. I’ve also added any investigators I teach with the missionaries, and all of the members, investigators from my mission. Now I have a robust sphere of both active, less active, and non-members that read not only my public posts but also my daily day to day posts. Thereby exposing them to the joys of gospel living. I can also see what they are posting and what their needs are allowing me more effectively minister to those in need.

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