Facebook preaches to the converted with prayer tool

Subscription models are said to have been offered by the social media giant along with advertising breaks in livestreamed services.

Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg says ‘faith organisations and social media are a natural fit because both are about connection’. Picture: AFP

Facebook is offering America’s megachurches tools for fundraising and prayer requests as it seeks to become the main forum for online religious communities.

Subscription models, in which parishioners pay monthly for exclusive messages from church leaders, are said to have been ­offered by the social media giant along with advertising breaks in livestreamed services.

The drive has led the company to enter partnerships with evangelical churches in Oklahoma and Atlanta and with the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal ­denomination with six million members worldwide.

Nona Jones, Facebook’s head of faith partnerships, who is also a pastor in Florida, said a new prayer product had been created during the pandemic, when the company saw many of its users asking friends to pray for them.

Tested in faith communities and then launched at the end of May, it allowed users to click a button saying “I prayed”, adding their names beneath. Users could elect to receive a reminder to pray again the next day.

Ms Jones said the prayer posts were used to personalise advertisements but that companies were not able to target worshippers based on the content of their prayers.

Angela Clinton-Joseph, the ­social media manager of the Church of God in Christ, told The New York Times that it had ­trialled a tool which allowed users to pay monthly fees to receive messages from their bishop and other exclusive content.

Another tool allowed the faithful to send donations while watching services online, she said. The church was also offered advertisements during video streams but declined them.

“I am sure there would (have been) a revenue split,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University who is also a pastor in the American Baptist Church. “Facebook would take 20 per cent, the church would take the remainder.”

A spokeswoman for Facebook referred questions about the ­offers to the church, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Professor Burge said the offer of advertising showed “how clunky Facebook is in making these pitches”.

“What church would say: ‘Yes, let’s throw in an ad in the middle of the service?’” he said. “Can you imagine the pastor saying, right before the sermon: ‘Here’s a 30-second ad for Revlon’.”

Facebook began working with churches early in the pandemic, sending equipment to livestream services.

“Faith organisations and social media are a natural fit because both are about connection,” ­Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer, told church leaders recently.

THE TIMES