Case Study
Our parish, St. John’s Episcopal Church is located in Grand Haven, Michigan, a small city on the shores of Lake Michigan in the heart of an area that is both geographically and religiously conservative. We are a historic congregation founded in 1866, and although we are not the oldest church in the community, we have the distinction of worshipping in the same building for the longest time. Our mission statement is, “As followers of Jesus, we believe all people, without exception, are God’s beloved and are called together by the Holy Spirit. Inspired through time-honored worship, the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church strive to boldly love every person and all creation. This is summarized by our motto: Following Jesus. Inspired through Worship. Boldly loving ALL.”
Throughout our history, we have sought to be a diverse church, rooted in traditional worship, engaging faith formation, and active justice and outreach. Many of our members come from backgrounds outside the Anglican tradition. In these times of social unrest and societal tensions, we have found a foundation and sense of rootedness in the traditional Anglican forms of worship. Though we have long been known as a progressive church, we increasingly feel called to be a church where people of diverse political perspectives can find a spiritual home. Living faithfully with one another in a community with diverse views remains a core commitment of our parish life.
Throughout history, the church has grown by taking advantage of the mechanisms for communication that exist in the dominant culture. Data from the Pew Research center indicates that four out of every five Americans use YouTube and nearly three-quarters use Facebook. So, a church that chooses not to engage in social media is withholding its message from a dominant way that people get information and communicate in the 21st century. Quite simply, we have to be where people are.
At St. John’s, our use of social media is also an extension of our sense of calling and mission. Being surrounded by so much religious and political conservatism, many in our community feel judged and marginalized by Christians. While we do not want to be known just as “the liberal church in town,” we certainly do want to be known as a welcoming place, in particular, for those who feel lost, excluded, or disconnected from God. Social media is an excellent avenue to speak directly to people's deepest fears, anxieties, and curiosities. The algorithmic nature of social media means that our content often finds its way to local people who are surprised to see a conservative-looking priestly figure talking about everything from LGBTQIA+ inclusion to various theological understandings of salvation to what Chappell Roan's music might mean when seen through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The most important part of any social media practice—or really any evangelistic effort—is authenticity. Several years ago, our congregation surveyed unchurched or de-churched people in our area to find out why they weren't involved in church and what sorts of things they would look for if they were to consider attending a church. We discovered that most of what churches fret about—music and worship style—ranked at the lowest of importance to people who don't go to church. What consistently ranked highest was authenticity, community, and feeling like they were making a difference in the world. So, we produce social media content that is authentic, that invites people into conversation and community, and that is actually impactful to the world in which we live.
Second, we lean into the rich theological and spiritual traditions of Anglicanism. When we talk about LGBTQIA+ welcome, for instance, we don't base it on a fuzzy notion that "we love all people," but instead on a deep and sustained reading of the Bible and a rigorous exploration of the theology of sexuality and gender. People enjoy being invited to go deeper into these questions and truly are hungry for how to think differently about God and the world around them.
Third, we cast our net widely. We use YouTube to stream our worship services, since it is the most-used social media platform, but we also cross-post livestreams to Facebook. We post Sunday sermons on a number of platforms in a variety of forms: within the YouTube stream, as a standalone YouTube video posted to Facebook, along with a three-minute snippet posted to TikTok and a one-minute snippet on Facebook Reels. Similarly, our regular radio spot each week on a local FM station becomes a column in the local newspaper, a podcast, a TikTok video, and a Facebook Reel. When we show up on other platforms (for instance, by speaking at city council meetings), we pull that content, repackage it, and push it out on our own social media accounts. We are attentive to when a Zoom-recorded faith formation class might also make a good YouTube video. All of this has vastly increased our social media reach.
Our heightened engagement in social media has made us a more outward-facing church. When people join our church, we learn that they normally have been watching us online for at least two to three months before they set foot in our building. So, even though the person running the worship stream doesn't necessarily know our online congregation, they work hard to run an engaging stream with multiple camera angles and lively conversation on the chat; we want to give people a positive first experience, and we are attentive to our online worshipping community, talking directly to them during the announcements and making sure they feel included and valued.
Thanks to our growing justice ministries, outside advocacy organizations are increasingly approaching us to use our space for their own meetings and events, which means we are building even more relationships. We increasingly see that even though our Sunday Eucharistic worship is our core and center that grounds us, the rest of our ministry flows out from that like tendrils of God's grace in the world. Even though there are people who (at least right now) don't join us on Sunday mornings, we have found graced experiences with them the rest of the week as we seek to cultivate the values of the kingdom in our world.
And interestingly, the ratio of "cradle Episcopalians" to those who have found The Episcopal Church later in life has shifted, and now our church is more comprised of people who have found St. John’s as adults and who describe it as the home they never knew existed.