Being Presbyterian

The Facebook phenomenon has begun to (finally) find its way into the Canadian Presbyterian community. This means that Presbyterians from across the country have begun to experience the fellowship opportunities that social networking sites like Facebook offer.

There are currently at least 25 close to 50 groups on Facebook related to the Canadian Presbyterian community – and I’m sure there are many I haven’t found. Here are just a few:

• The Presbyterian Church in Canada (unofficial)
• Canada Youth 2009
• Knox College
• Knox, Waterloo
• PCC Webmasters
• Valleyview, Calgary
• National Presbyterian Museum
• The Elders’ Institute
• CNOB PYPS
• St. Andrew’s, Ottawa
• Friends of St. Andrew’s, Stirling
• Trintity-Oro
• Camp D’Action Biblique

If you don’t spend much time on Facebook, you might think that we must have had an explosion of university students in The PCC. As much as we would welcome such a blessing, the demographics of Facebook now are much different than they were just eighteen months ago and conventional wisdom hasn’t yet caught up. In fact, most Canadian adults on Facebook are over 25.

What is even more surprising is the sheer number of Canadians that spend some of their time connecting with friends and family on Facebook. About 11 million Canadians now have Facebook accounts – that represents well over a third of Canadian adults. Using demographic information extracted from Facebook’s advertising system, I was able to determine the size of each age group on Facebook for Canada. The results are:

While it’s clear that the university crowd is the largest single age group on Facebook, Canadians over the age of 25 represent about half of the entire Canadian Facebook population. To me, these numbers represent a huge ministry opportunity for The Presbyterian Church in Canada.

What do you think? In what ways could we, as a denomination, reach out to the Presbyterian community that already exists on Facebook?

In February, I’ll be speaking at an unconference called PodCampToronto where I’ll be leading a discussion called “First Church of Facebook: an Exploration of Faith and Social Media.” We’ll be talking about the ways that Canada’s faith community are (or could be) using social media (like Facebook) to engage and minister to their constituents. If you have a story about how social media played a part in ministry, please share it with me either in the comments below or by email: ccarmichael@presbyterian.ca.