I had the pleasure this week of speaking about social media to a distinguished group — a gathering of Atlanta area church pastors and their IT administrators.

What amazed me was how many people in the group had already been using social media to communicate with their members — and non–members. One pastor at a 17,000-plus-member church found the time to actively update his personal Facebook page. Another pastor talked about his church’s effort to live stream video of services and how they used a Facebook page to promote the video.

What was equally amazing was this group not only saw the value of social media, they wanted to keep on top of the latest, cutting-edge ways to engage with their members and attract new ones. They had lots of questions about how to optimize Facebook and Twitter, streaming video, mobile texting and improving their Web sites (yes, they all had sites, and they were quite good.)

One survey in April found 32 percent of “prominent” churches were using social media. Factoring in all churches, I would suspect the number would drop to around 1 in 5 churches. Which is probably similar to the percentage of small businesses actively using social media as a marketing tool.

A recent Citigroup survey of small businesses found that 76% of respondents didn’t believe using social media had helped them attract new leads or expand their companies in the past year. The survey also found that most don’t take advantage of social media for best practices on their businesses.

The obvious questions for those reporting no successes: Did they have a plan? Set goals? Talk to anyone in advance? Were they really active in using the tools? Did they just sell and not give anything in return?

While churches and small businesses are in different “businesses,” there are similarities in goals — communicating with members/customers, sharing information, offering services, expanding reach and more.

This diverse group of religious leaders got it. They talked of social media as a tool in their outreach efforts. I suspect word of mouth will encourage more adopters in the nation’s pulpits as the good works of churches and other religious institutions are spread across the social Web.

While the media is filled daily with stories on how businesses — big and small — have used social media successfully, somehow many small-business owners aren’t getting the message. This social media “thing” can work.

Perhaps they should talk to their pastor/priest/rabbi.