Social Networking for Missionaries?

Should LDS missionaries be on the online social networks?

A few missionaries from the New York, Rochester mission have been approved to set up Facebook accounts for a pilot program. The photo shows some of their Facebook profiles.

In the spirit of my last post, calling into question why missionaries might blog, I'd like to think through why they might participate on Facebook or any other of the social networks now available.

I have some of the same concerns I expressed with blogging. Is this really the best use of a missionary's time? Doesn't this risk reconnecting missionaries with the world they left behind at the expense of keeping their focus on where they are called and their proselyting purposes?

I want to be an advocate for missionaries doing social networking. But first, how could it go wrong?

Answering an Apostle's Call to Action

In what by now has become a ground-breaking and memorable moment in LDS church history, Elder M. Russell Ballard, a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, has challenged church members to take to the Internet to spread the word of the Restored Gospel.

In his stirring call to action (first given as an address to graduates of BYU-Hawaii in December 2007, then later reprinted as the cover article for the Ensign magazine in July, 2008), Elder Ballard urged Latter-day Saints to

join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple, clear terms the message of the Restoration.  

Members have responded, posting their testimonies as videos or on blogs. And now, selected full-time missionaries have been assigned to pilot the use of New Media. These include missionaries who chat online with people through Mormon.org (the Referral Center Mission at the MTC and certain Visitor Center missionaries), as well as field missionaries who have begun blogging and using Facebook (such as in the New York, Rochester mission beginning in May 2010 under the direction of Pres. Michael Hemmingway).

Precisely because the New Media are new, they take getting used to. A blog, a chat room, or a Facebook wall are places where conversations happen, but according to new rules and customs. How can those who have been asked to use the New Media do so effectively? This blog attempts to answer that question.