Ever wonder if you could use Facebook to help bring the Gospel to unreached people groups? Laura recently discovered a great way to do this. Here is her experience and steps of how to do it:
Angi and Laura recently wrote a book about how to use social media to reach and influence the world for Christ. The day of the book's launch we put on a college student retreat focused on the need to go to the 10/40 Window. The Lord used the combination of the book release and world focused retreat to get me thinking of more ways social media can be used to get the gospel to these unreached groups so I decided to experiment.
I placed an ad on Facebook for two days pointed solely to the cities in India where the Ansari people live, a group of over 10 million people where there is not one known believer. Since India's people have more mobile phones with access to the Internet than they do toilets, what an opportunity to reach them. The ad was in Urdu, their language, and directed them to GotQuestions.org, an evangelistic website. The article the ad took people to explained who Jesus was and shared the gospel.
In 2 days 90 (most likely Ansari) people clicked on the ad and got to read the gospel for the very first time in their language. The most shocking thing is that the cost to reach 90 Ansari people with the gospel was not the cost of a few thousand dollar plane ticket and time learning the language, it was a total of 20-30 minutes and $12, our cap which enabled the ad to run for two days.
Imagine how many unreached people groups you could reach with a few hundred dollars!? Imagine if even just a handful of women regularly took steps of faith to steward their resources including Facebook to reach the world for Christ. The opportunity to see the world reached for Jesus in our lifetime is at hand friends.
Want to try reaching an unreached people through Facebook?
Here's how:
- Pray and ask God to lead you through this whole process.
- Pick an unreached people group you want to reach by going to https://joshuaproject.net
- Find out what language they speak.
- Find a evangelistic website or tool in their language. You can do this couple different ways:
- Click on the language directly underneath the language tab from the unreached people group you picked on https://joshuaproject.net and then click on the different tabs and explore available resources in that language.
- Google evangelistic websites in the language you are looking for. A good thing to keep in mind when picking a site is if there is enough information on the site to allow for them to keep discovering about Jesus if they are interested. And keep in mind you want a site that clearly shares the gospel and offers some sort of discipleship material if they do surrender their life to Jesus.
- Once you found the specific article, video or website you want to make an ad out of copy the url and head over to https://www.facebook.com and Create an Ad
- Paste you url where it says Choose a Facebook Destination or Enter url and hit Enter
- Click Suggest an Ad
- Click Upload an Image. Pick a eye catching photo even if it isn't really related. You can save as a google image of trendy trees or something.
- On the facebook ads page scroll down an you'll see where it says Choose your audience. This is the most important part. Go back to Joshua Project to the unreached people group you picked and look at a map of what city the majority of them live. You might have to open Google Maps to help you identify the exact city. Once you've identified the city (or cities) click City under location and then type those cities into the facebook Choose your Audience.
- Scroll down to where it says, Campaign, Pricing and Schedule. Give the campaign a name (whatever you'd like).
- Pick your campaign budget. What is your final cost that you are willing to pay?
- Click the button where it says Cost per Thousand Impressions.
- Look at the Suggested Bid on the right of your screen and put the minimum amount in the Cost per Thousand Impressions box.
- Click Place order.
Facebook will then keep you updated on the reach and how many people saw the ad and clicked on the ad.
Have fun!
It might be neat to let people know on facebook what you just did and ask them to be praying for the people the ad is going to get in front of. Feel free to share this how to so we can reach more unreached people with the gospel.
Here are some websites on the subject:
http://www.brigada.org/2013/08/25_12293/comment-page-1
http://www.joshuaproject.net/facebook-and-the-unreached.php
http://www.missionalwomen.com/internet--social-media/using-facebook-to-reach-an-unreached-people-group
https://equipping4eministry.com/2013/07/24/how-to-reach-the-unreached-for-12-on-facebook/
