Last spring the Diocese of Western New York gave each Deanery a mustard seed in the form of $250. We were told to take the money, do something that would make the world better and report back to Convention in October.
As you may remember our deanery (Eastern Erie) and the Northern Erie Deanery decided to work together and that the way we were going to make the world better was to try to spread the word that, contrary to what people might have heard, God Loves Us, no exceptions.
We put up a blog with a variety of resources and people telling the stories about how they came to believe that God loved them and that God loved everyone - no exceptions.
Here's the blog. We sent out 1,000 postcards to tell people about the blog. We printed some banners to use at events, parades etc... and, oh yes, we started a facebook page. Here's the facebook page.
We spent about $100 on facebook advertising.
We were hoping that people might notice, but more importantly that people would begin to believe that God loved them - no excpetions.
Well here's an update. The facebook page has gone viral.
In the week of March 28 to April 3 - the facebook page had a reach of 15,795,050. Yes you read that right over 15 million people were reached. And 22,005 were "talking about this" that is facebook speak for engaging the content - reposting it, commenting on it etc...
This week March 30 to April 5 - the reach is down a little to 13,386,832 - still not bad - over 13 million people. But the exciting thing is the "talking about this" figure. 562,688 people were engaging with the content this week. That's right over half a million people.
To give you a comparison - in 2011 the Average Sunday Attendance of the Episcopal Church - that is every church in The Episcopal Church in the United States, the American Churches in Europe, Haiti, Venezuela etc... was 698,376.
Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." Matthew 13:31-32
