Take Your Church Outside the "Walled Garden"

In the communities of professionals  that talk about online community and social networks there is a term called a "walled garden." It is the situation where different community sites, services and social network services  limit the ability of their users to interact out side of their particular community / website. The "walled garden" method not only limits the ability for these services to grow, but it limits the potential for their users to connect, share and process in ways that would present tremendous value to the service itself as well as the users. The "walled garden" approach is put in place by a controlling mindset, not one focused on growth.

Take for instance the micro-blogging service Twitter. Twitter is everything but a walled garden. They allow out side developers to connect into their service and search it, display it and use it outside their own domain. Twitter has become as much a stand alone site as a utility for commenting and status updates on sites like Seesmic.com, Summize.com, Facebook.com, FriendFeed.com and many others. By being open Twitter's users are able to connect their experiences (and the service itself) to all of their other networks of people whether work, personal or niche. This not only "evangelizes" the twitter service, it allows the natural activity of its users to help them make new connections and relationships.

Needless to say Twitter is the de-facto standard for this type of service, and has become one of the highest value places to build a "social graph" (your web of connections and relationships online).

This revelation begs the question:

Why would the strategy of a church to interact online demand the control and constraint of a walled garden?

Just as there are opportunities for service, connection, evangelism and relationship through the real-life networks your church community interacts in every week, the same is true as your church extends itself online. You would never be so unreasonable for your church community to only ever interact with each other inside your church and then never mention the activity and conversations outside those four walls.

Here are suggestions for what an online strategy outside the walled garden could look like for a local church:

1. Invest in Facebook (not a custom social network): Just this month Facebook.com surpassed MySpace.com in monthly unique views / web activity. And with 80 million users it is pretty much guaranteed that the members of you church are already there. But establishing a Facebook "Page" or Group for your church will give you the ability to send updates, events, pictures, and videos from the activity in your church to them AND their network of connections. The Facebook social networking service has all you will ever need to build, engage and connect to your congregation online in this way.

(Facebook is obviously one of very many services out there, and eventually it would be good to extend your church's presence to others. But Facebook is where you should start and find what works for you and your church.)

2. The home page of your church website needs to be a blog (or at least feature one dynamically). Blogs are the most foundational tool for communication and connect in online community, and they are open to everyone no login or sign up required. And on a website they instantly become the most popular and highly viewed page because it is interactive and updated the most. Blogs are also the most effective means to help people find your church online (has to do with a bunch of SEO stuff, but believe me blogs will boost your find-ability online right away). There are many ways a blog can be used, but just having it to update people on the news of your church is very effective. (A lot of pastors assume that if their church has a blog they need to write devotional content for it, this is not the case. A blogs primary value is just sharing the news of a community with those interested.)

3. Video Everything. Seriously, every weekend, every event, every baptism you should be recording on video and sharing online (as you have permission of course). Individual videos can be their own result in a Google search, where as an entire site can only show up once. Video is engaging, people can see your community and get to know it before they come to be with you on the weekend or at another gathering. Video is very shareable to many sites at once through tools like TubeMogul.com - and you can easily track the progress of these videos with the same tool.

I am sure there are many opinions on how the church should engage online, whether inside the walled garden or outside it. And ultimately the culture of your church, whether contemporary, missional, emergent or even Purpose Driven should influence your online strategy. But know there is a dramatic increase in the ministry opportunity and value for your church outside the garden then inside it.

Now, tell me how I'm wrong, or what you would add!

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- Tony Steward

Comments

[DJ Chuang]

Tony, welcome to the Digital blog! [cf. Tony's bio at http://digital.leadnet.org/about.html#tonysteward ]

Thanks for sharing several great tips on how to open up the "walled garden" of a church (and, likewise, this would apply to Christian ministries and non-profits alike). In the business world of large organizations, this sounds similar to the notion of "silos".

I agree that we don't need to be shelling out big $$s to build custom web apps, when there are excellent existing tools that connect people _within_ a community AND connect people _into_ a community.

I'd be curious to hear how you (and others) compare Facebook to Ning [ http://www.ning.com ], the latter being a social networking web app with customization.

[Joe Franz]

Hey Tony!

You make some very valid points in your post. The church that I serve at www.FirstChristian.info in Canton, OH is just beginning to explore online social with intentionality. Many in our community are using Facebook. And, while we don't have an official church Facebook page/profile - it is something we are considering. Who will update and maintain it is certain to be of interest to church leadership. Any thoughts on that? Multiple Staff or volunteers?

Also planning to build blog into central part of homepage...stay tuned.

Glad you're contributing here... more places to read one of my favorite social media authors ;-)

Joe

[Sandor Kovats]

Thanks for the article Tony, especially the comments about being a "Walled Garden" .. We're a Missions organisation that has just launched a custom Social Network site using ning (http://www.reeftoutback.com). The site incorporates Social Networking with along all the standard (static) content that we had previously. One of the reasons we went with Ning was that they are also aware of the limitations of walled gardens and are working with the OpenSocial framework to try and overcome that constriction. We also have a facebook profile but believe that being able to brand our own site has benefits that outway the "Walled Garden" concerns.

[Cynthia]

Tony, welcome aboard Digital. So glad I got to know you in person before you became a contributor. Enhances my perspective on your posts and this one is really good. Reminds me of the "walled garden" dialog we participated in at the Church 2.0 Forum in Irvine.

Also, since one of your recommendations is Facebook, I wondered if you might know why Facebook is dropping Network pages?

Correction: Sandor Kovats comment contains a URL with a missing letter; should read: http://reeftooutback.com/

[Tony Whittaker]

The 'Walled Garden' concept is very helpful. This takes a church website beyond what they should also be - a 'shop window' and 'virtual doorway' for the outside community. Instead, so many church sites are just ghettos.

I've tried to draw out this emphasis at our church website design self-assessment tool
InternetEvangelismDay.com/design
and also in the related golf parable
InternetEvangelismDay.com/golf

I'll be running a link to your post.

Blessings

Tony Whittaker

[Greg Atkinson]

I've been saying for years: "Video everything!" Well said.

[Greg Atkinson]

I've been saying for years: "Video everything!" Well said.

[bob cameron]

How are you managing all this information? Who is effectively caring for a Facebook, Ning, twitter, and blogsite, in order that it is current and responsive?

[Rev.mentor B.Yormie]

THanks

[Rick B.]

I do agree a church should be active on the net, mine is fairly well connected especially the youth & college, though I have to admit - even though i am an internet addict - I really never check my churches website. For me there's no new info they have on there that I don't know about already (but I am pretty involved in church anyways). Also, I know in some areas twitter is huge, but honestly most people I know that are as net savvy as me or more so, don't use it or pay it little attention. I have a twitter & have updated it twice in the last 3 months. Really seems more novel than anything else.

I also want to say I applaud that he encourages facebook & myspace rather than the X-ian knock offs. For one you will reach a wider audience with actual market social sites & the quality of fb & myspace is much better.