If you’ve spent any time messing around with Foursquare, you’re probably familiar with the concept of becoming a “mayor” (an honor earned by checking-in at a location more than any other person). A rare display of geeky street cred, becoming the mayor of your favorite location plasters your face right at the top of its people tab and can net you some fairly bizarre benefits depending on where you’ve been checking in; I’ve seen everything from a high five to free snacks reserved for the upper echelon of Foursquare royalty.
My simple question for you today: Should a church offer something fun for its Foursquare mayor?
My immediate knee-jerk response to this question was “of course we shouldn’t… that’s promoting selfish competition instead of selfless service!” Although I’m still kind of wrestling through things, I’m now leaning more on the side of easing up and just having a little fun with it. Here are a few giveaway ideas I’ve come up with so far…
- A simple logo t-shirt. (Only one per mayor)
- A simple logo keychain. (Only one per mayor)
- Free coffee or donut every Sunday morning (we have small snack stands throughout our campuses).
- Their choice of a free book from the discount rack (we also have a small resource area).
What do you think? Good ideas or totally stupid? Is there a way we could introduce the Gospel into this experience?
It’s always fun to brainstorm ideas around some new tech; I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.
**Update: Answering Brad’s comment below, you can register your church with Foursquare (in order to control specials) here.**
Eric, I have been thinking the same thing now for my local church ..
However, quick question - How do you become “owner” of a said venue to put out the the Mayoral incentive ?
Brad
Brad - Check out my update to the post above.
Great ideas here..
Maybe a more traditional church could offer a seat on the platform, or a baptist church could offer the best spot in the back row. Just sayin..
But for real, leveraging technology for use in a church is always a great idea.. needs to be evaluated for effectiveness to the church. If someone is the “mayor” for 18 mos. and someone would have to check-in like 100 times to catch him or her, might not be a good thing.
@Steven Anderson - One of the cool things about 4sq mayorship is that it goes by the past two months. So, if someone monopolizes for a period of time, it doesn’t mean they’ll never be caught up to. Unless they continue to frequent the joint, it will only last 2 months.
“best spot in the back row,” LOL. How about a police escort out of the parking lot ahead of the rest of the traffic after a service?
Hey Eric, very good post. Brian Barela(Director of New Media for CCC) and I had a phone conversation with Josh Williams CEO of Gowalla yesterday about this subject and others. I do not think that the idea is stupid to reward people but it gives them another reason to love going to church even more.
@adam — Thanks for the info.. I’ve been doing gowalla.. and have tried to remain there with my loyalty… but I’m definitely considering 4sq… seems to be more interactive.
@eric — Police escort — that’s halarious.
Thanks i’ve claimed our church in foursquare although we have only had 3 checkins :p
Eric - that’s more than we had, which is wild considering we average 5000+ on a Sunday with a tech-savvy congregation. Foursquare is just now catching on around here I think…
Eric - thanks for the update - I will have to read when not “blocked” from work. What? - Yeah, seriously; BLOCKED!
Timely post for me. This has really been on my mind.
There’s something here for multi-site churches I think as far as the competition goes. Competition is tough though. I feel like if it lives within the Facebook/Twitter world, it works. It gets weird when it’s announced from stage on Sunday morning.
Great post though. Something I’ll be thinking about
@tommybowman
andre’s and my phone conversation w josh went well.
a big thought for me is helping believers identify as believers online–since a badge/pin is earned it’s less like someone is shouting that they go to bible study but more that the particular activity is part of the social ecosystem.
anyway thanks for posting on this and drawing attention to LBS!