Last summer I had the chance to lead a couple of workshops on Social Networking as Ministry at the United Methodist Collegiate Ministries ‘Prepare’ Conference.

It was a lot of fun and generated some great conversation.

I made sure that they knew I did not consider myself to be an “expert” in the area of social networking and let them know that there’s a lot for us to learn from one another as we think about having a pastoral e-presence.

I utilized this great video as a way to open our eyes to the present reality — and potential for ministry — in the social networking world:

I also shared a few more stats (compiled and shared at banking2020.com) on social networking:

• 30 billion pieces of content (e.g., links, photos, notes) are shared on Facebook each month (Source: Royal Pingdom)
• 25 billion tweets were sent on Twitter in 2010 (Source: Royal Pingdom)
• 200 million views of YouTube via mobile per day (Source: Google)
• 152 million blogs on the Internet at the end of 2010 (Source: Royal Pingdom)
• 100 million new accounts added on Twitter in 2010 (Source: Royal Pingdom)
• 53% of American Internet users look for information on Wikipedia, up from 36 percent in 2007 (Source: Pew Internet)
• 50% of U.S. CMOs at Fortune 1,000 companies said they launched a corporate blog because “it’s the cost of doing business today” (Source: eMarketer)
• $3.08 billion will be spent to advertise on social networking sites in 2011, a 55 percent increase over 2010 (Source: eMarketer)
• 200 million registereed accounts on Twitter as of January 2011 (Source: Twitter)
• 110 million tweets are sent per day on Twitter (Source: Twitter)
• 27.5 million ‘stumbles’ on content discovery site StumbleUpon in one day, a new all time record (Source: StumbleUpon)
• 65% of U.S. adults use social media and say they have received a positive benefit as a result (Source: Harris Interactive)

Some mind-boggling stuff here!

My point was that with the amount of time that people spend in the world of social media — our students being some of the chief among them — our ability to utilize this knowledge becomes a matter of stewardship. If we truly want to become ‘all things, to all people’ then we need to find ways to bring the love of Christ to our students through this medium.

So we spend the majority of our time talking around these three questions that I now pose to you:

• What would it look like to have a pastoral e-presence?
• Do you have a strategy for ministry online?
• What might a team approach look like?

My guess is that this might be the first time some of us have ever thought about our time online in this way — and that’s OK.

I’d also guess that there are some of you out there who have spent a lot of time thinking about this — and probably even have made some substantial strides in having a ministry presence online.

Wherever you find yourself, let’s join together in thinking about how we can better utilize the medium of social networking for advancing the cause of Christ on the campuses we’ve been called to.