To connect with people outside the church, Allen Hendrix, the minister of communications at Broadmoor Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., used the church’s Twitter account.
Hendrix intentionally started following Twitter users online who live within 10 miles of the church and have no connection to the church.
About 25 percent of the people automatically began following the church’s tweets too. Another 10 to 15 percent purposely blocked Broadmoor from following them, Hendrix says.
In addition to providing opportunities for conversations with the unchurched, Twitter also gave Hendrix a better understanding of what people were talking about in the community beyond the insulated church subculture and what the broader culture is geared toward. And it softened his heart “toward the ache of this community.”
“Ultimately, our goal is to infiltrate the culture with the Gospel and pray for those names that come across us—that their lives will be changed in some manner,” Hendrix says.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2010 issue of Outreach magazine.
