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Editor's Note: Drew Goodmanson, co-founder and pastor of San Diego's Kaleo Church and a church web consultant, recently conducted a research project on the state of social media for churches. In Part 1, Drew explains the research project, the scope of the findings, and the first of three discoveries that church leaders, business administrators, and pastors should note. In Part 2, Drew reveals the second and third discoveries made from this research.

The social nature of media will continue to converge in ways we cannot imagine during the next five years. As church leaders, it is important to understand the state of social networking, and the directions of these participatory technologies. These tools may promise significant benefits to churches, who seek to build community, mobilize congregations, and offer greater interaction with unbelievers. And an understanding today leads to better action today and better planning for tomorrow.

To gain a full understanding, though, it's critical that church leaders learn both the benefits and challenges of social media sites. Earlier this year, Monk Development set out to discover some answers to these questions through a "state of social media" research project, surveying hundreds of church leaders about the social media sites they're using, what features and functions their church members seek, and what benefits and challenges they face using open source solutions or "church-only" ones.

We first shared the results of this research in a webinar entitled, "Church, Christians, and Social Networking" (watch an archived recording of the webinar). I'm the founder of Monk Development, a web consulting firm, and I'm also co-founder and pastor of Kaleo Church in San Diego. Cynthia Ware, who has two decades of pastoral ministry experience and a master's degree in new media, helped me present. She helps Christian leaders use their online presence to enrich and expand their ministry reach, and she actively speaks and writes on the subject.

Our work provided insights on three areas where social networking intersects with social media: outreach, discipleship, and community. While we can't predict the future impact of social media, Cynthia quoted 1 Chronicles during our webinar, focusing on the passage where the "men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do." Hopefully this information helps your church in that process.

In the research, 43 percent of church technology leaders said participation in social networking sites is one of the most effective online strategies for a church to generally use.

We reviewed the web analytics for more than 50 churches and found that 6 percent of all website visitors come from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. By far, Facebook is used most among all social media sites by churches. At last count, Facebook now boasts 350 million members; if it were a country, this would make it third-largest in the world, ahead of the United States.

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