This week, in honor of Easter and the resurrected Savior, the Church is launching new devotional media dedicated to focusing on Christ in our lives, and reminding us what we are truly celebrating at this and ever Easter.
The first site, “Because of Him” launches a brand new inspirational short reminding us of the grace and unlimited potential found through Christ. It’s a new format— current, relevant and contemporary. The Church is trying something new here, and it’s beautiful, quite moving and worth your time. This video will likely be shared through social media by members and non-members alike, with it’s focus deeply meaningful for all Christians.
Along with the video, which you are welcome to share, there is missionary information on Easter and on the ministry of Jesus.
The second campaign is “Starting Today” which challenges Christians of all denominations to dedicate themselves to making small, immediate changes in their lives to reflect their love of God and of the Savior.
Starting Today also is encouraging people of faith to use the hashtag #StartingToday to create and share memes and pinterest-style testimonies on social media. It’s Christ-focused and reminds us that through small and simple things, great things can come to pass. Really, we can all make small changes to bring us closer to God.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
As a 31 year old who admittedly uses facebook (but strictly regulates the info) but does not use twitter, pinterest, imugr, or hashtags, I generally roll my eyes when the Church cranks out all this social media stuff. I scoffed when I was told to make a mormon.org profile during a joint P/RS meeting.
What is the general feeling about social media use for religion around here? How do the older generations feel about it?
I think it’s a mixed bag, TK. Love Church videos but I’m not convinced hashtags do anything unless you get a critical mass. Twitter is good stuff though.
I’m not sure either-though I do think these projects (in particular the videos) are both really excellent quality and a move in a good direction for Church media. Steve’s right in that hashtags don’t do much unless critical mass is reached, and even then it’s fleeting. That’s the nature of Twitter.
I don’t know if I count as “the older generation,” though I’m older than you, TK. :) I personally cringe a little when my LDS friends use their FB statuses to quote scriptures, put up cheesy memes, bear their testimonies (often complete with “in the name of Jesus Christ, amen” at the end), etc., but it really works for some people, and I can easily scroll past things that annoy me. I have engaged in a number of conversations via Twitter and Facebook about religious and LDS-oriented topics, mostly related to social issues, and I do enjoy that. The most common way this happens is that a non-member or ex-member friend posts a newspaper article or essay about something the Church has done or a non-believer friend posts something about a religious topic, and asks for opinions. I have had some very good missionary-type experiences from these sorts of things when I have been able to correct misconceptions, explain or elaborate on something that seems confusing, and so forth. Conscious efforts like the campaigns mentioned in the OP fall flat for me, but if they are helpful or pleasurable for others, then different strokes for different folks. And if they stimulate useful conversations in which people actually exchange views and listen to each other, then I say more power to them. I abstain from Mormon.org, though.
The Church has, since its inception, sought out ways to reach people the way that they can be reached, in the media and format that they are used to. In the end, the ultimate medium is sincere prayer, but there are many ways to bring the message to people in a way that sparks their faith enough that puts them on the road to sincere prayer about the restored Church of Jesus Christ.
Good call, Wayne.
Can someone explain the radiant.org url? why no association to the church?
Matt, good question. Radiant is a new entity under DMC (Deseret Management Corporation) that will be publishing various content initiatives aligned with DMC’s mission, which is a bit broader than that of the Missionary Department of the Church. Therefore, because the message of Starting Today is broader than Because of Him, and because attribution to the Church is tricky business, Radiant becomes the more natural home for Starting Today. Keep in mind, the intent of a message like this is to be shared, and the moment the Church’s logo pops up on the video you immediately limit your potential shares.
I like them. I often haven’t, but these are good.
I love the contemporary sensibilities of these videos–historically not the Church’s strong suit. These are very well done.
This video was shown in my wife’s RS meeting today. The problem is that my wife is blind and a video with no dialog only music and images means little to her. This is a growing trend with church videos. Just as the deaf rely on captions the blind rely on video description tracks to tell them what is going on in an image with no dialog.
I’m with Ben S. THIS is good work. Happy to be pleasantly surprised when it’s normally quite easy for me to be critical.