I’m not much of a social media person. I opened a Facebook account years ago when our nephew was traveling in Central and South America. He was posting some pictures of his trip and I wanted to keep up with him as he traveled. I accepted invitations to be Facebook Friends with people that I knew when they invited me. I didn’t ask to be friends with anyone. I set up a profile so that my friends could identify me and I made a few posts. I was reluctant to post photographs because I didn’t want to have Facebook control my photos. Unlike some friends, I didn’t feel that it was appropriate for me to post pictures of our grandchildren when they came along so I didn’t do it. Later, I added Facebook Messenger because it was a way to contact friends who lived on South Dakota reservations. It seems that Facebook and Messenger worked for my friends as a communication tool when they didn’t keep up with regular email accounts and didn’t have reliable phone service.

Later, when I was working with media accounts for the Association of United Church Educators, I opened a Twitter Account and experimented with using short messages.

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, I expanded the use of social media to keep in touch with members of the congregation. When we had to shut down in-person worship for a while, we posted worship services live on Facebook. I also opened a YouTube account to post the videos of worship for later access by church members. I began a practice of daily prayer broadcast live and lodged on YouTube with links in the church web page. The prayers enabled shut-in church members to stay connected and proved to be popular.

After I retired, I pretty much stayed off of social media. When I went back to work as Interim Minister of Faith Formation, I once again took up a bit of social media, making most of my posts on the congregational accounts.

I know that social media is an essential communication tool and I have observed as our son has used media effectively in his work as a community librarian. I have followed his library’s social media as well as the social media of several congregations. I enjoy reading of the activities of my friends on Facebook and have tried to respond to the many birthday greetings I get each year.

Most of the time, however, I am a content consumer and not a content producer. I don’t post much on social media.

Last week, while attending the APCE annual event in St. Louis, I took a workshop on the use of social media in Faith Formation and listened also to the leadership that younger colleagues are offering to AUCE and APCE. As a result, I decided to open an Instagram account to follow activities in some of the congregations of my colleagues as well as the pages of AUCE and APCE.

For some reason I decided that I should probably post a picture from time to time so that my colleagues know that I am present on the media. I don’t have any particular desire to gain a lot of followers or to be a content provider, and I don’t intend to post many of my pictures, but I thought that playing with the media might be a good way to learn a bit more about it.

Because Instagram and Facebook are both owned and operated by Meta, my accounts are linked. It was the easiest way to set them up and I let the default settings remain. Yesterday, I posted my first picture on Instagram. I had cooked myself a particularly nice breakfast and plated it with an element of artistry. It was a fried egg on a bed of quinoa with a few fried cherry tomatoes and half an avocado. I drizzled a bit of balsamic reduction over the food, took a picture and posted it before I sat down to eat.

The picture didn’t make any kind of a splash on Instagram, but quite a few of my Facebook friends took a look at it when it appeared on that media. By bedtime, I had received comments and reactions from 46 people on Facebook. The picture, with the single word, “breakfast,” generated more response than many other things. I had comments from high school classmates who I had forgotten were my Facebook friends.

I’m not one to take selfies and I’m not much to look at in the first place. There are plenty of pictures of old white guys in the media, so I don’t feel a need to add more. I am, however, wondering what I might photograph to post next. I like cooking and so might add a few pictures of food. My bees aren’t active outside of the hives right now, but when spring comes I might get a few good pictures of bees. I like to use a macro lens to capture a few images. I am also in the process of building new hives and the structures might be worth a single image. I like to take paddling pictures and have a lot of images of paddling at sunrise. I have taken to making multiple sunset pictures simply because the sunset over our bay is gorgeous.

I’m glad that I am retired in part because I think that the use of social media is very complex for churches. I don’t feel that it is a good idea to post images of children, especially the children of other people on social media. Our congregation doesn’t do so except in a few cases and then they are very careful to have permission to do so and do not put any identifying information with the post. Still, it is hard to tell the story of a church without telling about the people. A church, after all, is all about the people.

So, if you follow social media, you might find a random photograph by me from time to time. I’m not a gourmet cook, so don’t expect pictures of food often. If I really figure out how to make good use of the media, I may become more active. But for now, don’t get your hopes up for much news about me.