3 Quick Ways Your Church Can Use Meta’s New Threads Today!
Everyone is buzzing about the new social media app Threads. Some media outlets are calling Threads the “Twitter killer” because of its similarities to Twitter and because of the timing of its launch. It’s no secret that Twitter is going through a rough patch following its transition in leadership. Elon Musk has made major changes to the once beloved platform and those changes are quickly driving away staff and affecting the daily use of the app.
So what is Threads? Threads is a social media, text-based app, created by Instagram (Meta) that allows users to create threads (posts) of up to 500 characters that can include photos, links, gifs, and videos. It is an app that allows people to participate in public conversations that are friendly and open. Threads also allow you to bring your followers over from Instagram so that you don’t have to build a new audience (there are still some kinks in this feature) and it is growing FAST. Mosseri, head of Instagram, is reporting that Threads has over 70 Million signups in 3 days. Having said that, I believe that there is an opportunity for the church to share the Gospel, disciple people, and build community on this platform. Here are 3 quicks ways your church can begin using Threads today!
Sermon Notes
Adding online discussion about the sermon from the previous Sunday can add another dimension of discipleship to your church's digital ministry. Threads is a great platform to have ongoing discussions around an idea, quote, or point from your pastor’s sermon. You can ask engaging questions, highlight main ideas, and foster discussion around points in the sermon that likely ministered to the majority of listeners. Small group discussions can thrive on this platform. Start with the main idea from Sunday's sermon and see where it leads you.
Prayer Thread
The Bible often reminds us that there is power in prayer; the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous makes tremendous power available. I posted a prayer on Threads the other day and invited people to begin to pray in their own way. While some prayed with a thread (comment) and others showed their approval with a like, for the moment, one thing was clear, we were all on one accord in prayer. A prayer thread can provide a great opportunity for people to pray for one another and for us to petition God’s throne. We often invite prayer onto our platforms when a tragedy happens, but if we consider adding weekly prayer threads to your social media strategies? I wonder what would happen.
Announcements
I’m not big on using social media platforms as a bulletin board for our announcements; I believe this is best done on a church’s website. However, since Threads is a text-based application, creating a quick thread to announce what’s happening at your church seems okay. Is your church having a community outreach event? Talk about it in a thread. Do you need volunteers for the back-to-school drive? Let people in your thread know. I’m not suggesting overloading the platform with announcements because that usually doesn’t drive engagement on social media platforms (which means, you’re posting it, but the algorithm isn’t showing it to anyone); however, I am suggesting that your ’Join us for an event’ content MIGHT do better on Threads than it does on Instagram.
While the app is still relatively new, it has the potential to become a valuable tool for churches looking to engage with their members and connect with their communities. There is still so much that we don’t know about Threads and Meta hasn’t revealed what the driving algorithms of this app will be, but it’s worth diving in to see what the app has to offer and how your church can benefit from it. Start ‘threading’ for Jesus and see how it will make an impact!
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