{"id":85420,"date":"2019-10-11T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=85420"},"modified":"2019-10-11T07:56:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T11:56:51","slug":"bbc-holy-tech-churches-try-new-ways-to-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=85420","title":{"rendered":"(BBC) Holy tech! Churches try new ways to connect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Geraint Harries, a technology specialist, for St John the Evangelist in Lancashire, admits that when his parish first started using social media, it didn&#8217;t get it quite right.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At first we didn&#8217;t really know what social media meant for the church and fell into the trap of simply chasing the number of likes and followers on our Facebook page,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>But when a parishioner credited the Facebook page for her decision to return to the church, then he felt the strategy had started to work.<\/p>\n<p>Weekly posts on the social media page of the church which simply asked &#8220;How can we pray for you today?&#8221; resonated with the woman going through a divorce last Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sometimes it can be daunting to turn up in person to a service so connecting online, more anonymously, can make it easier to take that first step into the building which happened here,&#8221; he adds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-49772169\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">&#x1f4f2;CHURCH OF ENGLAND GOES DIGITAL&#x1f4f2;<\/p>\n<p>&#x1f468;&#x1f3fc;&#x200d;&#x1f4bb; The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/churchofengland?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@churchofengland<\/a> has a major focus on digital engagement<\/p>\n<p>&#x1f469;&#x200d;&#x1f4bb;Well done to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/adrianharris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@adrianharris<\/a> &amp; the CofE digital team who have already trained 2000 churches with digital best practise<\/p>\n<p>&#x1f447;What do you think about this?&#x1f447;<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Jef4acHkkk\">https:\/\/t.co\/Jef4acHkkk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Matt Hogg (@Mathogg) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Mathogg\/status\/1182555857437057024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 11, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geraint Harries, a technology specialist, for St John the Evangelist in Lancashire, admits that when his parish first started using social media, it didn&#8217;t get it quite right. &#8220;At first we didn&#8217;t really know what social media meant for the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=85420\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,108,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parish-ministry","category-religion-culture","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85423,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85420\/revisions\/85423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}