So I’m back on Facebook…how on earth did this happen? Especially after this post? You will notice at the end of that post I did say, “I may be back someday…” but I didn’t expect to be back, in fact my return to Facebook was quite by accident. Our church has a Facebook page, well in order to have a Facebook page there must be another account, a personal account that has set it up. I had that account set-up but had never used it and therefore no one ever asked me to be their friend. Well, I don’t know how, but one day I received an invite from a church member through that account when they invited me to be their friend suddenly I was receiving messages, “We thought you weren’t on Facebook anymore?” “Your name just popped up on my account saying I should be your friend.” “Is this you pastor, there is no picture and I don’t want to ask a stranger to be my friend?” Then I started getting messages as well, folk asking me questions, or just wanting to say “hello”. I finally responded to something and the next thing I know I had 10 or more friend requests and that was that.

So what am I doing so that Facebook won’t once again become a vacuum of my time. Two main things:

1. On days that I at work and am in the office, I am only checking Facbook in the morning and in the evening.
2. I am not adding a Facebook app to my iphone.  I found this to be the largest contributor to wasted time of anything. I became available 24/7 to the Facebook world because of my phone. So now if I’m not at a computer I am not accessing Facebook and this is saving me lots of time.  

What I missed about Facebook while on my hiatus & what I found to be the great benefits of Facebook while I was away:

1. I missed connecting with a few friends that I found I never am able to connect with in any other way. That is really all I missed.
2. I found that Facebook is literally the easiest way to communicate with a number of folk in my life, including church members.
3. Facebook greatly increases my blog activity and I am grateful for that.
4. Facebook provides greater access to getting the word out about events and happenings going on in the church, and this is very needed especially as our church grows!  

So I’m back, but hopefully not as imbedded in Facebook as I was last time.