By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
Kyle Johnson said even though he’s in his mid 30s, his knowledge of Facebook Live was still limited when his church moved online in March.
“I’ve never done much with it,” said Johnson, pastor of Union Hill Baptist Church, Cottonwood.
The day he got on Facebook to launch his first livestreamed daily devotional, he thought he was posting it in his church’s group, which wasn’t public. But turns out he was posting it on his personal page, and as he realized his mistake, he also realized something else — it was reaching a much broader group of people.
New faith
“I was amazed by the amount of people I knew, [some] who have in the past really shut down any gospel conversation I tried to have with them,” Johnson said, noting that he kept on posting the devotionals there from then on. “They started watching, and it just kind of blew up in a week’s time.”
At the end of that week, five people had professed new faith in Christ, and several families had asked to join the church.
“God took something that seemed like just a clumsy mistake on my part and really humbled me with it,” Johnson said.
“He’s put us in this position where He’s flooded social media with the gospel, and we’re just seeing a lot of people respond. We’re having 10 to 15 conversations a week with lost and unchurched people who are seeing the devotionals and wanting to talk and understand what the gospel means.”
And other people in his church are getting involved in that too.
Team effort
Cory Solomon, Union Hill’s youth pastor, has helped get the tech stuff in order so it can be leveraged in even more ways. And Amy McNeill, the church’s children’s minister, has been leading online devotionals, as have several members of the youth group — Natalie McCord, Kevin Dixon and Annabelle Spooner.
“We’ve been seeing a huge response from that as well,” Johnson said. “It’s been cool to watch God move in that way.”
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