I found some of these stats to be very educational. They show us, as local churches, the impact and signficance of leveraging texting, such as Twitter, as an important strategy for these key demographics (and beyond).

• Nearly 60% of mobile phone owners use their phones to text
• 94% of teens make up the largest user group - 13 to 19 age group remains the most active, sending more than 500 texts per month on average
• 20-somethings at 87%
• Those in their 40s, usage jumped from 56% in 2008 to 64% this year
• Those in their 50s it jumped from 38% to 46%.

Despite the popularity of mobile data services, of those surveyed:

• 41% do not text
• 70% do not browse the Web on their mobile phones
• 73% do not use email on their mobile phones
• 74% report that they would use voice enablement as a way to make text messaging easier

These trends show a lot of what is working and the growth and adoption rate of older demographics. These trends will continue and make it impossible for churches to ignore the importance of instant communication and conversation via text messaging.

Twitter’s free service, ease of use and meteoric rise in popularity make it one of the most effective tools for churches to use in leveraging text messaging. If you’ve not read it yet, go download a copy of the E-Book, “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter” for only $5.

What say you about this data?

The article uses Scriptural references in additions to quotes from pastors and lay leaders, a first that I’ve seen in these news reports. Here are a few key quotes from the article, which you can read here:

“It doesn’t replace a lot of things — it doesn’t replace church, community or being with people — but it is another way to keep connected. We view it as a way for a leader to communicate with a lot of followers without a lot of extraneous (effort).” – Dale Swanson, Victory Church, Executive Pastor

“The Rev. Dave Evans, 53, senior pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Moore, OK, said he realized 150 to 200 members of his congregation were members of Facebook. He said he decided to try Facebook and Twitter for the outreach opportunities. Evans said Twitter has allowed him to follow the day-to-day lives of others and lets them do the same with him. “It is a way to offer prayer, support and encouragement to each other,” he said.

The Rev. George Back, 67, longtime dean of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, said his church, 127 NW 7, has about 70 people connected to its Facebook page. He said each day, more people are following its tweets on Twitter, though the church only joined the latter a few weeks ago. He said social networking seems to meet a need in a society where lots of people don’t know other people in their immediate vicinity very well. ”If you think back 100 years, people were meeting in the store or the bank. Now people are driving from place to place; they’re pressing the button and going into the garage and not seeing their neighbor,” Back said. ”Today, they are encountering one another in different ways. This enables a process that has been short-circuited by modern times. In that sense, it’s not brand-new; it’s a resurgence of something that was lost and now is found — that ongoing connection.”

On Easter Sunday, pastor Todd Hahn prefaced his sermon by saying, “I hope many of you are tweeting this morning about your experience with God.”

“It’s a huge responsibility of a church to leverage whatever’s going on in the broader culture, to connect people to God and to each other,” says Hahn.

If worship is about creating community, Twitter is an undeniably useful tool. The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires. At Westwinds, people can ask questions about the sermon that the pastors will answer later, or they can tweet in real time and hope another congregant offers insight. Some use Twitter as a note-taking tool. Often, it’s pastor-directed, with McDonald preaching while Voelz taps out, “In what way do you feel the spirit of God moving within you?” Discuss.

In a marriage of Christian tradition and digital technology, Wall Street’s Trinity Church is using the micro-blogging service Twitter to perform the story of Jesus Christ.

Followers of twspassionplay will receive tweets from the main characters of the play for three hours beginning at noon on Good Friday. The feed also can be delivered to mobile devices or e-mail addresses.

I gotta admit, that’s interesting, but I’m not sure how useful it will be other than as a good PR move. Your thoughts?

But what if your church could reach thousands of people for free and nearly instantly? That’s the power of not only your network (church members), but of their network of family, friends, neighbors and co-workers!

As the illustration on the left demonstrates, the exponential power of social networking isn’t how many people your church invites, but in how many people those friends invite from their network, and then how many people from that group invite friends from their network, and so on and so on.

For this Easter, or for any event where your church needs to maximize the power of social networks, think of how to leverage a simple, free and existing technology, like Twitter, to easily reach not only more people, but people with a personal connection to your church.

It’s more personal, more targeted, faster and free. That’s the power of a free viral marketing campaign using social networking for your church!

To learn how to use Twitter most effectively, make sure your church leaders have a copy of the $5 E-book, “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter”.

I want to apologize for the microphone issue for the first 12 minutes. I had no way to monitor how I sounded and didn’t realize the problem’s cause until the moderator, Carol, helped sort it out. The entire webinar was recorded, so if you can turn up your speakers a bit and listen carefully for those initial few minutes, it does clear up and is very easy to understand after I fixed it.

In fact, to watch and hear the webinar, simply click this link: http://budurl.com/TwitterWebinar

I answered as many questions during the Q&A as we had time, but I’m more than happy to answer any questions that we didn’t have time to answer during the webinar. Feel free to post your questions in the comments below or send me a question to either @churchtechie or @anthonycoppedge on Twitter.

Thank you again for learning alongside me as we leverage technology & communications to effectively communicate the Gospel of Jesus!

Phone calls are usually impractical (even with a phone tree).

Emails may not be read in time (or in days!)

But instant text messaging to cell phones is the most likely and fastest way to reach the most people.

And here’s where today is a perfect example. If your church is using Twitter to update your entire church body from your main church Twitter account (each ministry should also have accounts for specific information as well) then you’ll be able to send a reminder late this afternoon to all of your church members about setting their clocks forward one hour so they’re not an hour late to church on Sunday!

Such a simple and effective use of Twitter for churches!

The following data comes from an article by the Center for Media Research (at Mediapost.com). You can subscribe to their daily newsletters for free if you are also interested in this kind of data.

A Netpop study found that social networking has grown 93% since 2006 and 76% of US broadband users (105 million) are active contributors to the web via social media. In addition, approximately 29%, or 40 million broadband users, are regular contributors to the web specifically through social networking sites and are spending increasing amounts of their online time communicating with each other, both one-to-one and one-to-many.

In looking at the social network landscape, Netpop offers these Key findings about US social networkers:

• Social networkers in the US are most likely to be single, employed women, age 18-39 and living somewhere between Indiana and the Atlantic Ocean, or along the west coast.
• A typical social networker connects weekly with an average of 18 people one-to-one, and 110 people one-to-many.
• Social networkers spend an average of 36% of their online time talking and sharing.
• Social networkers use multiple modes to communicate and stay in touch. These include IM (Instant Messages), texts, blogs and microblogs (such as Twitter).

The Insight study reports that, of those individuals who participate in a social networking site, 71% have profiles on two or more different properties, with 26% having established four or more profiles.

Among social networkers who report having two or three profiles:

• 25.6% are 18 to 24 years old
• 23.3% are 25 to 34 years old
• 14.7% are 35 to 44 years old
• 15.6% are 45 to 54 years old
• 18.4% are 55 to 64 years old

Among people with four or more profiles:

• 31 percent are between the ages of 25 and 34
• 14.1 percent are 55 to 64 years old

Source: Netpop Connect Social Networkers US, December 2008

There’s some really interesting data in there that shows the trending towards online communications habits. The fact that we’re seeing a wide cross-section of age demogrpahics using multiple online profiles (such as a combination of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Ning, etc.) is shattering the myth that only “young people” are using these online tools. Certainly, there’s a larger percentage of younger generations using it, but that’s to be expected. What’s most intriguing to me were the numbers of those even up to 64 years old who are leveraging these 21st century digital tools.

In addition to joining the efforts of Twestival and helping support their 2009 charity choice, Charity:Water, I wondered how churches could organize community-wide (not merely church-wide) events that benefited non-profits in our own areas such as food banks, shelters, Christian counseling services, domestic outreach and the like.

By leveraging the large network of people’s social connections via services like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and others, the reach far exceeds the influence of the local church. Clearly, this is being demonstrated today by the organizers of Twestival, all VOLUNTEERS without a staff to help coordinate and support the effort.

UPDATE: It turns out that the organizers of Twestival have compiled some stats as to the HUGE impact this simple event has had. Over $250k raised and over 17,000 people served. To see what they’ve accomplished thus far, take a look at this post.

The value of Twitter – and, really, social networks – continues to have further and wider impact on our culture. It’s simply not a matter of “IF” your church should be using them, it’s HOW STRATEGICALLY will you use them!

I appreciate their website (great resource) and was pleasantly surprised to see it reviewed there. Their website is one worthy of bookmarking; and I have said that (and linked to it on this blog’s links) way before they reviewed the E-Book, so I’m not just being partial.

Enjoy!