The conversation is heating up. Should folks tweet in church?
I say yes, but it’s certainly not conducive to all churches, cultures, and settings.
5 Reasons To…
Just today, Scott “#fistbump” Williams wrote on “5 Reasons To Twitter During Church.” Here’s what he says:
- You have the opportunity to be a real-time extension of your pastor’s voice while he/she is communicating God’s word.
- If the pastor shares something that moves you, inspires you or changes your life; there is a good chance it will have the same impact on the lives of your followers as well.
- When Jesus said: Go into all the world and preach the Gospel… “All The World” applies to the Internet world, as well as the TwitterWorld. Do your part by going into all the TwitterWorld, tweeting the Good News.
- You will have a stored database of your compelling thoughts and notes, from your favorite sermons.
- You can spare a couple of minutes of (SAD) Sermon Attention Deficit during most sermons. It’s better use of your time Twittering great thoughts than drawing on the back of offering envelopes.
Not To, According To Piper…
John Piper posted “More on Not Using Twitter During Worship Services,” back in May. Here’s an excerpt:
Twitter before and after corporate worship to say what you take in and take out. But when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God.
There are more great arguments presented by Piper. Take a few moments to read them if you have a chance.
Twitter “Think Tank” Invitation?
A while back I wrote the post “There might be something to this Twitter ‘fad’ after all.” I approached the subject with ways churches can embrace tweeting during the service.
In addition, I had a cattle call for all those interested in taking Twitter to the next level, and discussing during a “Think Tank” session.
In other words, “let’s take two hours out of our busy schedules to dream big dreams about the potential Twitter can have for the Kingdom — All from the comforts of our phones or webcams. The sky’s the limit as we ask God to lead our discussions.”
There has been good response to this. Are you interested in joining us?
“Where do you stand?”
John Saddington,over at ChurchCrunch.com, presented Scott’s points and excerpts from a July 4th New York times article, today. He’s asking the following: “Where do you stand? What angle of approach are you or your congregation and ministry taking? Has it changed ever or flip-flopped?”
Hop over to his blog and join the conversation, or post your thoughts below. This is a great conversation to have at the water cooler this week.
I think twitter in the service is a great “sometimes idea.” Like communion, or a certain worship song, anything that is done the same way over and over can grow stale and lose meaning.
Tweeting in church because it the flavor of the moment and something new and hip is just lame. If a pastor got up and “encouraged” the church to tweet during his message I would probably gag or something like that. I visited a church recently and their weekly bulletin was basically begging people to mention how they enjoyed the service and also that they were going to this particular church on their Facebook and Twitter updates – this is just contrived and lame (I am plugged into a local church – just visited another bigger church in our city to see how they were doing things).
For me, tweeting is really a way of journaling my thoughts – it just so happens that Twitter as a platform allows me to do this in a public forum. The added benefit of this is that I get to connect with other people who I find interesting and others get to connect with me – I also get to share my thoughts, which I believe are valuable to a larger audience. My thought is that tweeting in church would be much the same. Currently, many people journal or write notes during the sermon – what’s wrong with doing that using Twitter as a tool instead of a book? I would not advocate Tweeting during worship – you don’t write about your worship while you are doing it right?