How Churches Can Use 2025’s Biggest Social Media Trends to Reach More People

In this episode, we explore how churches can strategically engage with the digital landscape using insights from TikTok's 2025 Trend Report. We discuss emerging trends, including the use of AI, the importance of niche communities, redefining success, building trust through transparency, and harnessing social commerce for ministry growth. 

• Emphasizing the role of AI in enhancing ministry effectiveness 
• Engaging niche communities to create authentic connections 
• Redefining success for modern churchgoers' values 
• Building trust through transparency and vulnerability 
• Leveraging social commerce for financial support and engagement

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Chapters

• 0:09 Trends for Church Outreach in 2025
• 9:12 Maximizing Church Outreach in Digital Age

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

all right, listen up. The digital landscape is shifting really fast and if you want to reach people where they are in 2025, you really need to understand how they're engaging with content. Tiktok just released it's what's 2025 Trend Report, and whether or not you're active on TikTok, I'm not the insights that they shared are really game changers for how churches can connect with people online. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes. I am the co-founder over almost forgot who I was there co-founder over at chemistrystaffingcom and you're listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Today we're going to break down these five key trends that I found from this TikTok report and how your church can use them to expand your reach and to deepen engagement. So let's dig right in. Okay, five different things here. Here's number one AI is here. I've done another episode on AI. I would encourage you to try and find that. I'll try and put it in the notes as well, but AI is here and what you need to do as a church leader. You could shun it all you want to, but it's here and it's not going away. Let me tell you it's not going away. So what you can do is use it to level up your ministry.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Artificial intelligence is not the future. Okay, it's not because it's already here. Tiktok, for example, is rolling out all kinds of AI-powered tools. Probably most of the church software that you're using, if not just Word and Google and all of it everyone is rolling out AI-powered tools, and that really does help creators generate content faster and more effectively. That's for TikTok, right, but we're not TikTok, we're the church, right? Churches can use AI in the same way. We can automate captions and transcriptions for sermons. We can use AI-generated voiceovers for some video devotionals. Maybe Some of these are maybe pushing it a little bit where we're not comfortable yet, and that's okay. You need to lean in and see where you should be using AI and where you shouldn't, but, using AI, you can quickly repurpose sermon clips into bite-sized content for social media.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Now, what's the goal here? Is it more content with less effort? Yeah, that's part of it. You can be more effective with your time, but you have to look at it this way AI is not replacing ministry. What it's doing, though, is it's freeing you up to focus on what really matters, and I talked about this on the episode we did with AI.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Ai can replace a lot of things, but it can't replace people and it can't replace relationships and it can't replace in-person discipleship of people. So the first is AI. The second, which I find really fascinating, is niche communities are the future. So, as the church, we need to engage ours. People aren't just scrolling anymore online At least that's what they're finding at TikTok they're finding their tribes online, and, whether it's faith-based content or mental health encouragement or parenting advice, people are looking for trusted voices. Now, how does that apply to us at the church? The church can totally tap into this right, encouraging staff and leaders to share their personal faith journeys online on social media. By creating content tailored to specific life stages even young families, single adults, retirees you can partner with other people in your location, in your church, in your locality. Not the people that have a million followers you might not know any of them, but some people that have some credibility in your church and in your community. And here's what I think is going to happen Churches that lean into authenticity and storytelling, those are going to be the churches that tend to grow, because that's really one of the trends that they're seeing. So that's the second trend.

Speaker 1: 4:19

The third trend, also I think really interesting, is the definition of success is changing. It's changing with the generations. It's just changing in 2025. And because the definition of success is changing, your message should also be changing. Here's a big shift. Younger generations aren't chasing those traditional milestones that my generation did, things like home ownership or even marriage early, or climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, though, they value other things right, you always value something Instead of those things that we thought were really important. They care more about experiences, they care more about mental health and they care more about community, so that really should excite us as church leaders. Right, it means the church needs to adjust how we talk about purpose and success, but those are areas that we should be, as a church, excelling in, so we just need to highlight stories of impact and not just big wins, but small, meaningful victories in people's lives.

Speaker 1: 5:30

We need to teach on emotional and spiritual well-being. We didn't teach on that in my generation because it was just not something that was discussed a whole lot, but the younger generation wants that type of teaching, and it can be biblically based. Right, it needs to be. In the last 10 years, we've talked a lot about financial or career success, and we've done programs. We've done financial peace and we've done programs. We've done financial peace and we've done all different kinds of things to tailor to young people. Don't care as much about that. Maybe we need to offer more community driven programs that meet the basic needs, like the mental health support groups, some mentorship programs, things based around experience, that if the younger generation is, if that's what drives them and the church is not helping drive them in those areas, they'll find other places to feed what they're looking for. If the church is only speaking to the old definitions of success, we're going to lose out. We're going to lose the next generation. Okay, a couple more.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Trust is everything. You got to be real and you got to be transparent. The trend in the church I think I'm the last, I'm the youngest, I can be and still be a boomer, I believe, and boomers man, we wanted everything polished, we wanted it corporatey, we wanted it polished, we wanted it perfect. Not so much anymore and this has been a trend that's been coming right and we need to know this. The younger People are not everybody, but a lot of people. The more they want real and the more they want honest, the more they want transparent and the more that they want unscripted moments. Now, this is huge. It's huge. It's huge for churches, because trust should be our greatest asset right it should be.

Speaker 1: 7:35

How do we build it? We need to be consistent and open about everything, because that's what people are expecting. We need to be open about finances. We need to be open about leadership decisions. We need to be open about vision and where we're going. Consider showing behind the scenes moments how your team prays, how your team prepares, how your team serves. Address some of those hard topics head on instead of avoiding them. And, honestly, the more real you are this is the trend the more real you are, the more people will trust you in your church. Not asking you to back off a biblical anything biblical at all, but I'm asking you to be transparent and real, because that's where our culture is right now.

Speaker 1: 8:18

And then, finally, social commerce is absolutely exploding, so we need to figure out how to leverage that for ministry. So social media is no longer just about engagement. It's becoming a whole marketplace. Tiktok has a shop and other platforms are making it easier than ever to support causes and purchase directly through content, and this may be a little controversial, but churches can tap into this as well. Social giving tools make it easier to donate as easy as tapping a button and a lot of churches found that out during COVID right. The online giving was literally a savior for many churches and those churches that hadn't implemented any kind of online giving solution. They were really behind the eight ball.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Maybe you can create some merch with a mission shirts, devotionals, books that support your ministry. I'm old enough that the merch shop at churches for me personally, it's a turnoff. I don't like it. I don't care for it. I just turned 60 this year and I think I'm pretty open to change, but when it comes to t-shirts and merch, I'm the get off my lawn guy. But you know what my kids different generation, totally different view on that. You can promote event registrations and mission trip fundraising straight on your social media platforms and you can make it easy for people to support the mission right where they are.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Here's the big takeaway, and I need you to hear this the way people engage with content is changing and we as a church need to pay attention. We just have to pay attention. The church is so slow to change and people. We can't take 20 years to figure this thing out. We have to move with the generations and we have to move with the culture. On this Again, not sacrificing any biblical convictions or changing any theology or biblical teaching, but if we can leverage AI, if we can engage these new niche I always never know how to pronounce that niche communities if we shift how we talk about success, if we build trust through transparency and if we embrace these new ways to support ministry financially, we are going to reach more people, we're going to grow deeper connections and we're ultimately going to be successful in what we want to do, which is expand the impact of the gospel right.

Speaker 1: 11:06

What do you think? I would love to hear from you. You can email me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. You can leave a comment here. Wherever you're listening. You can leave a comment and just drop me a line. I would love to hear your thoughts and, if you found this was helpful, share this with others on your ministry team. I think it's that important. Let's use these digital tools to build the kingdom together.