As I have been analyzing the nominees standing for Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I have noticed a number of interesting things.  I’ll do an analysis of their statements and positions in the next post, but in compiling this information I noticed a wide range of approaches to their use of social media in connecting with the church.

Before I begin, let me acknowledge that in addition to the usual search engines, including Facebook search and Twitter search, I have to thank Robert Austell and his GAhelp.net Moderators page as well as the information from the “In their own words” feature published by the Layman.  And for comments on the role of the Moderator and the election of the Moderator you can check out my GA 101 article “The Moderator — All Things In Moderation.”

Before I launch into this let me answer the legitimate question “Why does this matter?”  I would say that it matters because individuals on the national level of the PC(USA) have now bought into the idea that the world has changed and that new technology is the way to go.  After all, the 219th is supposed to be the first paper-free Assembly.  At the 218th GA the election of Bruce Reyes-Chow as the Moderator was supposed to herald a new day and the church was now adopting technology and moving into the 20^th 21^st Century.  Now I think that we can all agree on two things: 1) Bruce’s use of social media is exceptional and 2) Vice-Moderator Byron Wade did an admirable job trying to keep up with Bruce.  For the record you can follow Bruce on his personal blog, Moderator’s blog, church blog, Facebook , Twitter, and podcast , to name only some of his social media connections.  And in my opinion, Byron has really held his own to Bruce by writing a really excellent blog (think quality not quantity), as well as his Facebook and Twitter presence.

The other thing I am trying to figure out for this analysis is what are typical “Moderator campaign” numbers for social media followers.  At the present time Bruce has 4996 Facebook friends (there is a limit of 5000) and 2688 Twitter followers.  Byron has 1881 Facebook friends and  519 Twitter followers.  But their numbers increased dramatically after they were elected and I don’t know what their stats were during the campaign.  Maybe a good comparison would be the Rev. Bill Teng, who I would judge as the second-most social media savvy nominee for the 218th.  He currently has 531 Facebook friends.  Interestingly, the current nominee I would judge most social media connected in the pool for the 219th GA is Vice-Mod nominee Landon Whitsitt who has 596 Facebook friends and 184 Twitter followers.  So about the 500-600 range for a well-connected nominee before election? What about the rest of this year’s pool…

Web page
This is technically old-school Web 1.0 and even Bruce has not had one of these.  These are sites with static web pages that do not include interaction through comments.

Moderator nominee Rev. James Belle/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Wonjae Choi – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Elder Cynthia Bolbach/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Landon Whitsitt – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Rev. Jin S. Kim/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Matt Johnson – No Moderator specific site I could find.

Moderator nominee Rev. Maggie Lauterer/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Theresa Cho – Moderator specific site

Moderator nominee Rev. Julia Leeth/ Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Hector Reynoso – Dynamic (music, scripting) site but no interaction

Moderator nominee Rev. Eric Nielsen/Vice-Mod nominee Rev. Marilyn Gamm – Moderator specific site

Blog/Web 2.0 Site
This is like a traditional web site but new articles are easily posted in sequence, there is interaction through comments and the content can be tracked through a “feed” using RSS or Atom.

Belle/ Choi -No blog I could find.

Bolbach/ Whitsitt – Food for Thought (11 entries, all posts closed for commenting) (Landon also has a personal blog with occasional Mod comments.)

Kim/ Johnson –New Church Rising/GA Moderatorial (The main blog has been active as the church blog since October 2009.  The GA Moderatorial specific section has two posts.)

Lauterer/ Cho – Finding Our Voice (Brand new this week, one post)

Leeth/ Reynoso- None I could find

Nielsen/Gamm -The website has a blog page but it appears to only be used to comment to the Rev. Nielsen.  No postings

Facebook
It appears that most nominees have personal Facebook pages but since they are not Moderator related and have privacy set to keep the general public out I won’t link to them.  Here are the Moderator-related pages I found:

Bolbach/Whitsitt
Lauterer/Cho
Nielson/Gamm

Twitter
Most of the nominees have Twitter accounts.  While Cynthia Bolbach has one listed in the Mod lists, it is private so not Moderator related and not listed here.  Here are the others I know of and their statistics:

	Twitter name	Followers	Following	Tweets
Theresa Cho	@theresaecho	73	103	132
Maggie Lauterer	@maggielauterer	16	13	9
Julia Leeth	@julia_leeth	10	0	10
Hector Reynoso	@elvicemoderator	5	16	7
Landon Whitsitt	@landonw	184	171	7155

Other
I was very impressed that two of the nominees also have items up on YouTube:

Bolbach
Lauterer
Nielsen

That is what I and other web sites know about. If I have missed anything or something new is launched let me know and I’ll update the article.

Analysis and Conclusion
As I look at these statistics I have a hard time seeing any of these candidates stepping up to anywhere near the social media connectedness that Bruce and Byron established right from the start, with the obvious exception of Landon.  For the other candidates the level of connectedness so far gives the impression that they are either just getting their feet wet in this sphere or are not placing a major emphasis upon it.

So the question is, does it matter?  If you are of the opinion that the world has not changed then all this is probably interesting but not important.  Or, with the stereotype of the typical Presbyterian being of the “greatest” or “boomer” generation that does not heavily invest their connectedness in social media, this lower penetration into Web 2.0 may be perfectly reasonable since few of the commissioners, whose votes count, would be influenced.

But I think that this does make a difference at two levels.  The first is that the YADs, now YAADs, have traditionally predicted the outcome of the Moderator election on their first advisory vote.  One has to ask if their enthusiasm for a nominee has a conscious or unconscious influence on the commissioners in their voting.  If so, connecting with the YAADs in their native media would be helpful to a nominee.

The second place that I think it makes a difference is connecting with the larger church.  While I don’t know for certain, I have to think that a Moderator nominee who shows they can connect with the younger members, and potential members, of the denomination would be viewed favorably by commissioners when they make their decisions, especially if they are thinking about the graying of the church.  But the other half of the battle is for the successful nominee to actually be connected after they are elected.

As I look through all these media statistics I have trouble seeing any of the Moderator nominees with a strong social media presence or potential.  Conventional wisdom is that a Vice-Moderator choice has little, if any, affect on the Moderator voting so I don’t know if Landon’s strong on-line presence would be any substantial support to Cynthia Bolbach.  But looking through this data that is the only real strength I see at the moment.

Finally, this post is not intended to pressure any of the nominees into redesigning their campaigns to have a more substantial Web 2.0 component.  On the one hand I think it is a little too late for that and on the other I think what is more dangerous than not having a social media connection is one that is forced and unauthentic.  Web 2.0 is, after all, about being yourself and being transparent, right?  My advice is to be yourself, but try to have your on-line presence reflect who you are.

With 17 days left before the election I would not expect a change in presentation now to make a difference in the Moderator election.  So maybe this is more an argument for the successful nominee to figure out how to integrate more social media into their time as Moderator.  Do we expect a repeat of Bruce and Byron’s presence — probably not.  But by the same token we would expect the Moderatorial term to reflect that the world has changed, at least if we believe that it has.  Stay tuned to see how they do.