Here are four facts and figures about Facebook in Australia that might surprise you:

- Facebook accounts for 29% of all time spent online by Australians,
- In October, Australian users spent 27.2 hours online - 7.55 of which were spent on Facebook,
- In the same month, Australian users uploaded 80 million pictures, wrote 32 million ‘wall posts’ and 45 million ‘status updates’.
- Australia also leads the world in time spent on social media sites.

These were all quoted in an article this week in the Sydney Morning Herald about the rise of Facebook, and the demise of its older competitor, Bebo.

Of course, these statistics are averages, and your church might have very few people on Facebook, or most of the people might be on Facebook. But these statistics beg the question - how does, and how might your church use Facebook in its ministry to Christians, and connect with those who don’t yet know Jesus?

Here’s 11 opportunities for using Facebook to promote ministries, disciple and encourage Christians, and make the gospel known:

- Create a Facebook page or profile for your church/ministry. This could even be used in lieu of a church/ministry website.
- Create groups within a particular church or ministry (e.g. a group for your Sunday evening congregation).
- Promote church events (learn how to promote an event on Facebook). For example, here’s the event page for ‘Carols under the Bridge’. One of the benefits of promoting events on Facebook is the ease with which others can pass on the invite to others.
- Start discussions about the weekend’s sermon.
- Follow up people who haven’t been at church in a while.
- Discover when someone is having a birthday and send them a birthday greeting.
- Become a fan of other groups or ministries (to raise awareness of other important ministries)
- Share prayer points, praise points or Bible verses via the status update feature.
- Share church news (e.g. you can automatically connect your church blog/website news to appear on Facebook).
- Promote opportunities to serve.
- Share how God is working in the lives of his people (e.g. ‘praise God - just experienced his power as I shared the gospel with my colleague’).

Of course, if people in your church and community aren’t on Facebook then using it as a ministry tool is probably a waste of time. If, however, your congregation spend 29% (or more) of their time on Facebook, then this social networking tool presents some great opportunities.

Can you think of other ways that Facebook could be used for ministry?

How is your church making the most of Facebook?

If you’d like to learn more about Facebook and social media, check out:

- ‘Top 10 social media sites in Australia, and the world’
- ‘15+ resources to learn more about social media’
- ‘15 ways for churches to use Twitter’
- ‘Harness Twitter for post-Sunday communication’