I finally did it. I killed my Facebook account. Now it seems silly that I waited so long to do it. I researched, listened to other pastors, asked tons of questions, made my decision and then pulled the trigger.

Please keep in mind that I am no Facebook expert. I am simply sharing my process behind the decision. For all I know I’ll go right back to Facebook months or years from now.

While I don’t see anything wrong with having a Facebook account (unless you can’t settle this stuff) I don’t think its the best thing for Pastors now that I put Facebook to death. I do see great value in churches having a Facebook page…after all the Revolution Church Facebook page is one of our greatest marketing outlets. We get more click throughs from the church page than just about anywhere.

Here is what I learned (remember, I am writing this to pastors. At the same time, there is some good wisdom in here no matter who you are):

1. People LOSE THEIR MINDS on Facebook. I am not sure why. It will be interesting 20 years from now to read the studies and theories behind this social phenomena. For some reason you can say some things face to face and people are fine with it. BUT, if you put it on Facebook…KABOOM! I think that people just feel freedom to share anything because they just don’t perceive the same consequences for putting something on Facebook as they do for saying something face to face.
2. It promotes a false sense of community (this one is something to think about for everyone, not just pastors). Again, it will be fun to read the studies. I am not sure why but for some reason people will rant and rave about how they can “finally share real stuff” and how they “feel safe” when sharing on Facebook. Really? Think about that for two seconds…So you are ok sharing publicly with the entire world but not with real life friends? I think this is a symptom of a bigger problem…the lack of authentic community. At Revolution, we value authentic, Biblical community. And I don’t see that on Facebook.
3. Drama drama drama. My gosh. There is more drama on Facebook than I experienced in junior high.
4. Farmville, Cityville, the aquarium, blah blah blah…I cannot believe that anyone actually has the time to play these games. It discourages me and makes me sick. And I recently learned that some people even spend money to play these games. Really? Don’t get me wrong…I am all about some mindless entertainment from time to time. But I recently had a church planter call me asking how to get his church to grow because they are on the verge of shutting down. My heart really went out to the guy…and then I started  getting a farmville request from him. Every. Single. Day. Ummmmmm…maybe you need to stop playing games and WORK bro…
5. Some people will believe anything…and I mean anything that is on Facebook. Which would be great, except for that anyone can put anything on Facebook!
6. Many people would come up to me on Sundays offended that I had not responded to their “e-mail.” When I would dig down into that a little, I would find that they had actually sent me a Facebook message. I’m not sure why people can’t distinguish between the two. They are different.
7. As I talked to different pastors I heard several horror stories of people contacting pastors about serious stuff via Facebook inbox. Since the pastors did not ever check it, they missed out on important stuff. One guy had missed a death in a church member’s family simply because they did not log on to Facebook. Consequently, the family got very upset and left the church, causing lots of damage. Another pastor shared about a kid sending a suicide note to his pastor via Facebook…and hours later, he committed suicide. It wasn’t the pastors fault obviously, but still, that pastor deals with deep feelings of guilt and responsibility daily.
8. I also heard several pastors who have gone through very difficult stuff say that Facebook makes you far too accesible to the press, bloggers, etc. One friend even dealt with haters downloading pictures of his family and photoshopping them to portray things happening that never happened. That is just flat freaky. I certainly don’t need anyone jacking with my wife and kids. You can think this is ridiculous if you want, but the fact is, we are in a fight pastors. My family has already dealt with people crossing lines on Facebook. Satan will use ANYTHING he can to discourage you, steal your joy and tear apart your vision.

Finally, here is the thing that really struck me. For the most part, I found that guys who pastor larger churches would tell me “kill facebook! You cannot spend time messing with that junk!” Guys that pastor smaller churches either said “you have to have one…that is where the people are” or they defended Facebook and told me I was an idiot if I shut it down.

I see value in both of those opinions. But I also see a happy medium. I want our church to reach people and grow and I am willing to remove ANY barrier to reaching people. So here is what we do at Revolution:

We have our church Facebook page, which again, is very effective. I have a superstar that runs it all on his own. When he sees me post something on Twitter that he thinks Facebook peeps should also see, he just copies it into Facebook and puts “-Pastor Zak” at the end.

So there you have it. That is why I killed my Facebook. I have to admit, it feels GOOD. And, I’m not wasting all that time managing it. Twitter is much easier. I spend about 8-10 minutes a day managing Twitter. I use software that schedules my Tweets and posts them later on and I actually only follow about 50 people. Its just more simple.

Of course, I could be writing the same blog post about Twitter in the future.

Just sharing my story. Hope it helps someone else!