Is Facebook enough?

As small church or ministry, one of the first questions that comes up is, 'Do I really need a website?' After all, creating a Facebook Page is free, it takes a matter of minutes to set up, and chances are you already know how to use Facebook. You can post pictures, communicate with your people in your area, promote events, and even collect reviews. For many churches and Christian organizations, that sounds like everything they need. However, there is a big difference between using Facebook to promote your ministry and using Facebook as the primary online presence for your ministry; the former can be a great idea, but the latter comes with some serious drawbacks.

Why Owners Love Facebook

Let's start with the most obvious advantage: Facebook is easy. Most don't need to learn anything particularly technical to create and manage a Facebook Page. If you already know how to make a post, upload a photo, or respond to a message, you know enough to get started. There's no hosting account to configure, no website software to install, and no code to write. For a church, ministry, or non-profit who already has a hundred other things competing for their attention, that simplicity is incredibly attractive.

Creating a Facebook Page doesn't require the upfront investment of having a professional website developed. Instead of spending money on a website immediately, the owner can create a Page, upload some photos, add contact information, and have an online presence almost immediately. That low barrier to entry has undoubtedly helped countless churches, ministries, and Christian organizations get started.

A website has to attract visitors, yet Facebook already has them. Instead of waiting for someone to discover your website, Facebook allows owners to operate inside a platform their customers may already use every day. People can share your posts, tag their friends, leave comments, recommend your church, and interact with your content without ever leaving Facebook. For churches that depend heavily on their local community, that can be especially valuable because the people you're trying to reach are right there. A congregant or volunteer of a ministry who shares a picture of a recent event can expose your organization to dozens or even hundreds of potential visitors. Someone moving to an area and asking for a local church in a Facebook group can result in several people recommending the same place.

Facebook also gives customers a convenient way to communicate with a church or ministry: they can comment on a post or send a message without making a phone call, searching for an email address, or filling out a contact form. Christian businesses can quickly announce holiday hours, new products, special promotions, unexpected closures, or upcoming events, making Facebook particularly useful for businesses whose information changes frequently.

A traditional website is generally a one-way experience because you publish something, and someone reads it. On the other hand, Facebook is built around interaction and engagement; users can react, comment, share, tag other people, ask questions, and participate in conversations. That gives ministries, organizations, and Christian businesses something a website often struggles to create on its own: a community. When used properly, Facebook can help turn visitors into followers and hopefully followers into new Christians.

So What's the Problem?

All of those benefits can make a Facebook Page seem like a perfectly reasonable replacement for a website. With all those benefits, why even bother with a website? There's just one rather large problem: It's not your platform!

Your ministry may have its name at the top of the Page, your logo as the profile picture, and thousands of followers, but Facebook still controls the platform. You're building your online presence on someone else's property. Facebook determines what owners can post, how Pages operate, which features are available, and how users interact with them. There is no guarantee that the rules surrounding Pages will stay the same. For instance, a feature your church depends on today could work differently next year. Facebook can redesign Pages, alter its policies, change how content is displayed, or discontinue features entirely. When Facebook's corporate stance on religion and politics is thrown into the mix, to a Christ-following, Bible-believing ministry, that has a small chance of causing friction with the platform that hosts your Page.

Now compare that to owning a website. If you want to redesign your website go for it! If you want to add a new feature, the world is your oyster. If you want to move the website to another hosting company, get to work. Your website operates primarily according to the decisions you make for your organization. A Facebook Page operates according to the decisions Facebook makes for its platform.

Imagine building a Facebook Page with thousands of followers - those people voluntarily chose to follow your Page, so naturally they'll see everything you post, right? Not necessarily. Facebook decides what appears in a user's feed based on complex algorithms and a user's engagement habits with Facebook. Your Facebook Page could have thousands of followers and still have a particular post reach only a fraction of them organically, all because Facebook isn't showing them your content.

As a result, there is a reason advertising is very lucrative for Facebook. If you want more people to see your content, advertising may become necessary. This creates an unusual situation where a church spent years building an audience on a platform and may then have to pay that same platform to reliably reach more of that audience. A decision that was originally made to help curb costs has now become a necessity because advertising on Facebook isn't cheap and quickly adds up. Facebook can still provide tremendous marketing value, but Christian organizations shouldn't confuse the number of followers they have with the number of customers they can reliably contact.

One of the biggest reasons making Facebook the center of your ministry's online presence isn't recommended is that Facebook can restrict your presence. Accounts can be compromised, Pages can be restricted, automated systems can flag content or activity, administrators can lose access, and Internet trolls can actively work against your efforts by plaguing your posts with ugly messages and false reports. If Facebook is just one part of your online presence, losing access is a major inconvenience, but if Facebook is your online presence, losing access can become a major blow. Suddenly visitors can't find your information, years of posts and customer interactions may be inaccessible, or your primary method of communicating with customers is gone while you try to figure out what happened. That's an uncomfortable amount of control to hand to another company.

Not Everyone Uses Facebook

Facebook has a massive audience, but that doesn't mean every potential visitor uses it, or even wants to use it to interact with organizations. Someone may discover your company through Google. Another person might receive your church's name from a friend. Someone else may see your ministry brand or logo driving down the road. What happens when they search for your ministry? Unsurprisingly, they're not going to Facebook first to search.

A professional website gives them a destination designed specifically around your company. A Facebook Page sends them into Facebook where attention can quickly be diverted. Your church shouldn't unnecessarily require potential visitors to participate in another company's ecosystem just to learn more about you.

You're Limited in What You Can Build

Facebook gives owners quite a few tools, but ultimately every business Page still looks and behaves like a Facebook Page. You can upload your logo and images, write your own content, and publish videos and posts, but you can't fundamentally decide how Facebook works. A custom website can be designed around your ministry with things like custom quoting systems, customer portals, booking workflows, interactive tools, payment systems, specialized forms, or integrations with other software. Meanwhile, Facebook provides the tools Facebook chooses to provide.

Your Organization Has to Share the Stage

Visit a company's website and the experience can be completely centered around that company - its colors, logo, products, and message are all unique. Visit its Facebook Page and you're still very obviously on Facebook. Facebook's navigation, buttons, recommendations, notifications, advertisements, and so many buttons to distract a visitor from your content onto someone's content because Facebook is designed for users to consume Facebook content, not solely your ministry's content. You might have finally convinced someone to look at your Page, only for a notification to remind them that their cousin posted pictures from their vacation to Hawaii. Good luck competing with that.

Facebook and a Website Shouldn't Be Competitors

This is where the conversation sometimes goes wrong. The question shouldn't necessarily be, 'Should my organization use Facebook or have a website?' For many, the answer should be both because Facebook and your website perform different jobs. Think of Facebook as a place where you meet people, andyYour website is where you bring them home. Facebook can help people discover your Christian business, interact with your content, ask questions, share your work, and recommend you to friends. All the while, your website gives those people a place to learn about your company without distractions, explore your services, request quotes, make purchases, schedule appointments, and ultimately become customers.

Don't Build Your Organization on Rented Land

There's nothing wrong with building an audience on Facebook; in fact, it's encouraged to do so. The problem begins when that audience becomes your only audience and your Facebook Page becomes your church's primary home on the Internet. A social media platform is ultimately rented land, where you don't control the property, you don't make the rules, and you have no say in what changes tomorrow.

Your website is different - it gives your ministry a digital property that you control and provides a central location that Facebook, Google, email marketing, advertisements, business cards, and every other marketing channel can point toward. Use Facebook to start conversations, to build relationships, to promote your presence, to communicate with customers, and to introduce your organization to people who otherwise might never discover it. But don't mistake a powerful marketing platform for something you own.

Because just as a wise man builds his house upon the Rock, so he also builds his Internet presence on something he owns.