What are the Facebook pages for churches and ministries with the most likes, aka fans? As we’ve entered the post-billion era of Facebook (the social network that surpassed 1 billion monthly active users on October 4th, 2012), it’s time to update my previously manually-compiled list of top churches on Facebook back in February 2011. Recently found a handy web service called SocialBakers.com that makes it much easier to find the most liked Facebook pages by category, including one for Church / Religious Organization.
This is the 2012 list of the top 20 churches and ministries on Facebook —
| Church / Ministry | Facebook Page URL | Likes (fans) |
|---|---|---|
| Joel Osteen Ministries | http://www.facebook.com/JoelOsteen | 2.5m |
| T.D. Jakes Ministries | http://www.facebook.com/tdjministries | 1.2m |
| TB Joshua Ministries | http://www.facebook.com/pages/TB-Joshua-Ministries/103470916440360 | 478k |
| Online Church (of Community Bible Church) | http://www.facebook.com/CBConline | 237k |
| International House of Prayer | http://www.facebook.com/ihopkc | 166k |
| Hillsong Church | http://www.facebook.com/hillsongchurch | 137k |
| John Hagee Ministries | http://www.facebook.com/JohnHageeMinistries | 129k |
| Hillsong Church London | http://www.facebook.com/hillsongchurchlondon | 128k |
| LifeChurch.TV | http://www.facebook.com/lifechurchtv | 104k |
| Kenneth Copeland Ministries | http://www.facebook.com/CopelandNetwork | 86k |
| Bethel Church, Redding | http://www.facebook.com/bethel.church.redding | 81k |
| Grace to You (John MacArthur) | http://www.facebook.com/GracetoYou | 68k |
| Mars Hill Church (Seattle) | http://www.facebook.com/marshillchurch | 46k |
| Saddleback Church | http://www.facebook.com/saddlebackchurch | 25k |
| NewSpring Church | http://www.facebook.com/newspring | 24k |
| Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale | http://www.facebook.com/CalvaryFTL | 21k |
| Crossroads | http://www.facebook.com/crdschurch | 18k |
| Church of the Highlands | http://www.facebook.com/highlands | 17k |
| New Creation Church, Singapore | http://www.facebook.com/nccsg | 16k |
| Christ’s Commission Fellowship | http://www.facebook.com/CCFmain | 16k |
And there are very popular Facebook pages about Christianity and Jesus (with million+ more likes than organized churches and ministries), like Jesus Daily (14.3m likes), Digital Bible (8.5m likes), GodVine (3.0m likes), and ChristiaNet (1.5m likes).
And there are some well-liked denominations and networks of churches on Facebook pages too:
- The United Methodist Church (158k likes)
- The Resurgence (54k likes)
- Church of God (54k likes)
- Calvary Chapel (50k likes)
- The Episcopal Church (38k likes)
- The Gospel Coalition (35k likes)
- Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (21k likes)
- Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (21k likes)
Time to make this participatory, too. What observations do you notice about these Facebook pages? What kind of content and how often are they posting? What are the principles you can infer from how they’re encouraging social engagement (cf. “talking about this”) so people will like, comment, and/or share a page update?
Comments
7 responses to “Most popular Facebook pages of churches and ministries 2012”
Other than the fact that you found a new tool, is there a reason you started including ministries this time? I did like the way you previously kept it to only churches… 🙂 It’s an important metric I think.
Hi Aaron, thanks for the comment. I included ministries and denominations mostly because that’s what came up in the results table. The way Facebook categories work, it puts all of those — churches, ministries, denominations, Christian religious pages, all in the same bucket. I only scrolled thru the top 200 in the Church/religious organization category, you can keep scrolling to find your church, probably on the next page 😉
Please consider The LCMS denomination for your list. 38k+ Likes
Also: here’s an Interest List with all the big churches on FB
Nice curated list DJ! It’s not easy to separate wheat from chaff from socialbakers or any other automatically-generated lists/tools