With 5.2 billion people on social media daily, how can Christian organisations cut through the noise without contributing to ‘doom scrolling’?
In early December 2024, we appointed two social media consultants to help run our social media channels. Between them, Karen Maurice and Claire Walford have more than 30 years’ experience in communications and have recently begun working together to support Christian charities. If you follow Crosslinks on X, Facebook or Instagram, you will have noticed the impact they’ve made!
We have loved being able to use our social media channels to share stories from our mission partners and communicate more immediately when we’ve had news to share or urgent prayer requests, such as when the earthquake hit Myanmar.
A modern minefield?
But we’re not jumping on the bandwagon unthinkingly! We’re well aware of the perils associated with social media. On a personal level, many of us will know how hard it is to be disciplined with our own mobile phone usage. The last thing we want to do is to be complicit in drawing more people on to social channels and encouraging timewasting ‘doom scrolling’.
Yet while there are inherent traps, there’s no getting away from the fact that as a modern organisation, it is basically essential to have some sort of social media presence.
The stats speak for themselves – there are around 5.20 billion users user on social media worldwide, which is approximately 64% of the global population. Facebook is the largest social media platform, with over 3.15 billion monthly active users. In the UK, there are 53 million active social media users, which is 77.9% of the UK population and the average UK user spends about 2 hours on social media per day.1
If we want to communicate with people directly, social media channels are the obvious medium. And this is increasingly true, if we want to connect with the next generation of potential mission partners, supporters and church leaders.
A powerful tool
Many people look to socials as a source of up-to-date information and so the absence of an online presence can breed mystery and suspicion. In contrast, we want to be transparent, providing a ‘shop window’ to Crosslinks and sharing as much information as is appropriate about our mission partners. Being able to quickly find out what we stand for and what our mission partners are getting up to means supporters will feel confident about partnering with us.
The goal of our posts since January has been to educate, inspire and challenge. We want to interrupt the ‘doom scroll’ with images and films that stir the heart and help people see something afresh of Jesus and about world mission. We are not interested in posting for the sake of it, and we’d rather have gaps in our socials than fill them with fluff!
For every post, we ask ourselves:
Does it build up? Point to Jesus? Encourage believers? Challenge believers? Is it useful or does it just waste time?
We believe that social media can be harnessed for good – it is an amazing communications tool and can be extremely reactive and nimble, providing timely information to supporter churches in a way that other channels cannot.
A visual medium
We are also passionate about the way photos and films on socials can capture the imagination and bring the work of mission partners to life, in ways that words can’t – a picture really is worth a thousand words.
A recent example of this was when mission partner Bethanie Walker sent us a photo of the local church giving out grapes at harvest time. The idea of ‘door to door grape deliveries’ is intriguing and enabled us to give a taster of life and mission in Argentina, invite people to find out more about the Walkers’ ministry and to pray for them.
Similarly, we shared this photo from mission partners Mark and Jane Oden’s church Facebook page. It shows believers in Naples studying the Bible by torchlight during a power cut. It gave a beautiful insight into the ministry there and drew people in, in a way that just words could not have done.
This is the power of storytelling and it underpins all that we are trying to do on Crosslinks’ social media platforms.
Telling the Crosslinks story to a new audience
Our social media consultants haven’t had to invent stories or content. They’ve simply shared what was always going on, mostly unseen, across the world. Our hope is that through the powerful algorithms on social media, these stories and messages will reach new followers, supporters and churches who are also seeking to obey Jesus’ Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.
How are we getting on?
If you are on X, Facebook, Instagram and/or TikTok, please follow us. We’re currently experimenting with whether TikTok is a worthwhile channel to be on, recognising that many young people use it but acutely aware that much of the content is a bit silly.
And we welcome your feedback on our posts. Do you find them helpful to learn more about our mission partners? Do they inspire you to pray in a more informed way? Is there anything you’d like to see less or more of? Let us know: contact@crosslinks.org
1Priori Data: https://prioridata.com/data/facebook-statistics/