February 20, 2010
Youth ministries, parishes use social networks to spread the good news
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
A young person reads a text message via a cell phone’s cellular network. Many cell phones and handheld devices also include software that allows users to access the Internet and send e-mail. Jose Luis Aguirre/El Heraldo Católico photo
When Mary D’Acquisto became regional coordinator of the Shasta Deanery’s Catholic youth ministry in November 2007, she took on nine groups of young people from four different parishes: Sacred Heart in Anderson, Our Lady of Mercy and St. Joseph in Redding, and Sacred Heart in Red Bluff. Collectively the groups are called Fuel’d Ministries.
Keeping in touch with so many different groups, located in different communities and ranging in age from teens to young adults, was a challenge.
“I needed a central place to post information,” D’Acquisto said. Updating addresses, then e-mailing and physically mailing newsletters was very clumsy and often not effective.
So D’Acquisto launched a Web site, www.Fuel’dministries.org, to create a central information space for teens and young adults.
On the Web site she posts announcements, forms to fill out, calendars, photos, prayers and inspirational quotations — all of the information anyone would expect to find in her office. The Web site became part of what she calls Fuel’d Ministries’ non-gathered ministry, the ministry that takes place individually, when people are not physically gathered into groups.
Then in May 2008, D’Acquisto added a more interactive dimension to the non-gathered ministry by creating a Fuel’d Ministries Facebook page. People register at the social networking Web site — Facebook users register as a “friend” at an individual’s Facebook page and as a “fan” at a group’s page — and then are free to post their own thoughts, add links to other Web sites, post photos, and comment on everyone else’s posts.
These online communities offer opportunities for youth ministers and other church leaders to evangelize and spread the word about their ministries. Youth ministries are leading the digital way in the Diocese of Sacramento, and parishes are hot on their heels.
Many youth ministries in the diocese have their own Web sites, D’Acquisto said. It’s a way of creating community with teens and parents and even with other youth ministers, she noted, adding that youth ministers often explore one another’s ministry group sites to gather ideas for their own ministries.
“There are 168 fans on the Fuel’d Facebook page, but if you’d asked me how many kids were in the various programs, I’d have figured about 100,” she said. “The Web pages give kids a way to stay connected even if they are only able to attend events sporadically or have just heard about the group from someone else.”
D’Acquisto noted that young people in different communities use different technologies. In her area, Twitter, another social networking Web site, was very popular for a time, but now seems to be passing out of usage. Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as “tweets.” Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
Sending text messages (texting) from cell phones continues to be a primary means of reaching young people, she added, though she also reaches out to kids thorough flyers, parish bulletin announcements and face-to-face conversations.
But most of all, she said, teens want to be seen and spoken to personally.
“Kids ignore any message that seems to be impersonal, like a bulk e-mailing or a group text message,” she said. “Even though the digital medium itself seems impersonal, the kids use it to make real connections.”
Kevin Staszkow, associate director of the diocese’s Department of Evangelization and Catechesis, who oversees youth and young adult ministry and has a Facebook page, told The Herald that teens want someone to spend time with them, listen to them, get to know them.
“The technology is just a means of reaching out to them to say, ‘I’m listening. I care about you,’” he said. “And the same is true of social media in the adult world.”
People already use the Internet the way they once used the Yellow Pages and phones, Staszkow noted. They use the Internet for research and use e-mail to communicate with one another. Interactive social networking pages just facilitate the same communication, he said.
Some parishes in the diocese are following the lead of youth ministries by utilizing social networking sites, reaching out to parishioners and others with information and inspiration.
Almost all parishes in the diocese maintain informative Web sites. These can function as a church bulletin, directory of ministries and photo album combined. But several parishes are now beginning to add Facebook pages to their presence on the Web. These include St. Philomene and St. Francis of Assisi parishes in Sacramento and Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Redding, where the parish’s Facebook page has more than 300 registered fans.
Father Jonathan Molina, parochial administrator of Our Lady of Mercy since last July, considers his parish’s Facebook page “a kind of online ministry.”
“For some people, it’s the only way to connect to them,” Father Molina said. “They don’t listen to announcements and they don’t read the bulletin, but they do check their e-mail.” Each time the parish updates its Facebook page status — that is, adds a new post — that update is popped into each fan’s e-mail inbox.
Besides posting announcements and information about the parish, Father Molina also uses the page to post short passages from the Gospels, photos from parish events, and links to other Web sites of interest to his community, such as CatholicCulture.org, CatholicsComeHome.com, and familyland.org.
A posting for Tuesday, Feb. 16, for example, gave an explanation of “Mardi Gras” or “Fat Tuesday,” noting that it is formally known as “Shrove Tuesday,” the last day for Christians to indulge before the sober weeks of fasting that come with Lent.
Parishioners post on the Facebook page, too, asking for prayers, commenting on events and encouraging one another in their faith lives.
As a means of communication, Father Molina noted, the parish’s interactive Facebook page reaches a large section of the parish population, with parish Facebook fans ranging in age from teens to people in their 50s and 60s. “It’s not limited to the kids,” he told The Herald.
Not only parishes but religious leaders themselves are online with interactive social media. Priests and deacons have their own Web pages and blogs; groups dedicated to specific purposes have their own Facebook pages, such as “Circle of Friends” for single Catholics in the Roseville area and “Catholic Fellowship Club of Sacramento” for married and single adult Catholics.
Yet as fast as people adapt to a new use of the technology it changes, Staszkow noted. Young people in particular immerse themselves in the new technological advances, so keeping in touch with them helps us see how the culture’s communication means are evolving, he said.
“For example, many young people don’t check their e-mail anymore, they text,” he said, explaining that they send text messages to one another through their cell phones.
Staszkow noted that teens text almost continually, while people in their 20s and 30s text more intermittently and people past the age of 40 tend not to text at all. Young adults will send text messages to their spouses, he explained, requesting an item at the grocery store on the commute home, while teens will text all day the way an earlier generation talked on the phone all day.
“The presence of this digital technology around us right now is like the advent of telephones or TVs,” he said. “When those new devices came in, people said, ‘Why would I put a telephone in my house?’ or “Why do we need a TV?’ Then in less time than you’d think, everybody had a phone and everyone had a TV.”
“These days, cell phones are like laptop computers,” Staszkow said. “You can e-mail, research, listen to music and watch movies on your cell phone,” he said. “Young people depend on them. And new, faster, smarter, cheaper versions come out all the time.”
As more people become accustomed to social networking Web sites such as Facebook — more than 132 million people had Facebook pages in June 2008 — it’s only natural that youth ministries, parishes and other religious groups will start using and expanding their use of social networking, Staszkow said. He pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI recently called for priests to use the new technology to evangelize.
“Following Jesus’ example, we have to go where the people are, and where people are is online,” he said.
