Youth leaders use MySpace, other online tools to stay connected

Youth Minister Lara Blackwood starts her day the same way most of the young people at her church do — she signs on at MySpace.com.
  
“Any time they post a new blog, I get a message in my e-mail and cell phone that such and such has posted a new blog,” said Blackwood, the youth minister at First Christian Church of Fayetteville, Ark., and a regional youth minister for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
  
“If the title tells me ‘Gosh, prom was fun,’ I’ll read it within a couple days. If it says ‘I hate my life, I want to die’ — which I’ve read some similar to that — I’m on immediately.”
  
More youth ministers are discovering the promises and pitfalls of social networking Web sites such as MySpace.com as they use them to stay connected with their students. It’s a place where students can be honest about their lives and keep an open dialogue with their ministers.
  
MySpace is one of the hottest sites on the Web — New York-based hitwise.com rated it No. 1 for December 2006, accounting for nearly 5 percent of all U.S. Web traffic. Alexa.com, another ratings Web site, puts it in the No. 3 spot among U.S. Web sites. Either way, MySpace has more than 100 million accounts with a demographic that is dominated by teens and 20-somethings. 
  
While the site has allowed ministers to advertise activities and keep in touch with students, youth ministers and students alike can be bombarded with pornography, and teens can be subject to predators.
  
“As savvy as students can be about technology, it always amazes me that they really believe that their personal thoughts and comments posted (on MySpace) cannot be viewed by others,” said Mike Nuss, director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions office of collegiate and student ministries. “When in reality, they are putting what amounts to very personal information in a very public place.
  
“Student ministers need to directly address this issue with their students and help them understand that they are personally accountable for what they say about themselves or someone else in a public space,” he said. 
  
Nuss credits the phenomenon of MySpace and Facebook.com — a MySpace-styled site based around company, region or school networks — with promises and challenges for student ministry.  
  
While he acknowledges the brave new world of cyberspace presents challenges for student ministers attempting to reach students “immersed in online relationships,” Nuss said MySpace and Facebook can also be tools for ministers to connect with students who would never frequent a church or Baptist Campus Ministry. 
  
Wes Sullivan, student minister for The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, in Birmingham Baptist Association, uses Facebook regularly to communicate with and encourage his students. He believes America’s “Internet-focused culture” leads many students to check their Facebook accounts even before checking their cell phone voice mail.
  
“Kids want to find their specific group of friends, stay up-to-date on information and stay in the know of what’s going on,” Sullivan said. “They want people to know about them, and they want to find out information about their friends and their area. If it’s not Facebook or MySpace, it’s going to be another way that they use to communicate.”
  
According to Kenda Creasy Dean, associate professor of youth, church and culture and director of the Tennent School of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, “[s]ocial networking is what being a teenager is about.”
  
“For people my age (in their 40s), technology is a tool. For kids, technology is the air they breathe. It’s social glue,” she said.
  
Students in Blackwood’s previous youth group in Abilene, Texas, initially encouraged her to get an account so she could read their blogs. Her involvement grew from there.
  
She keeps in touch with her former students, encouraging them and offering advice when asked, on MySpace more than anything else. She is currently working on building her roster of “friends” with the students in her new youth group so she can send out mass announcements about upcoming events.
  
“They’ll get the word faster if I post it as a MySpace message than if I try to call them,” she said. “Most of them check their profiles so many times each day.”
  
Julie Richardson Brown, minister of youth and young adults at Beargrass Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., has also used social networking sites to promote church events. She said part of the appeal of MySpace for students is the community aspect.
  
“I think they long to be part of something bigger than themselves and desire to be part of a community,” she said. “My hope is to make them part of a Christian community.”
  
Ministers might be surprised at what they find on their students’ profiles. 
  
Some teenagers present themselves online in a different way than they present themselves at church.
  
“It’s definitely something you can talk about, though,” Blackwood said. “They’ve opened the door to that conversation. It’s easier for me to have a conversation about drinking if on MySpace they’re talking about it all the time. We can actually have a conversation that’s real.”
  
A church in Fort Worth, Texas, is trying to familiarize parents with MySpace.
  
Last year, Wesley Black, a professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, led an instruction session for parents at Travis Avenue Baptist Church. Thirty attended, along with some teenagers enlisted to teach. “Most of the questions dealt with (parents) struggling with the technology,” Black said. “They brought laptops, and we met in a room with wireless access.”
  
Dean thinks few parents will be able to keep up with their tech-savvy kids and said it’s more likely for a youth minister to be on MySpace.
  
“By definition, youth ministers are people who want to connect with teenagers,” she said. “We all can be conversant in it. And we need to be. This is the world we live in.” (RNS, TAB)