So What Faith

Greg Smith

My Experiences with Tweeting in Worship (#0092)

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A few weeks ago, I wrote Tweeting in Worship to highlight the expanded usage of Twitter in corporate worship and consider some of the possible benefits.  To move from that theoretical exploration toward an experiential appraisal, I  tweeted in worship services on two consecutive Sundays in congregations affiliated with different denominations.  Shown below are my unedited tweets with time stamps:

May 9 – Emmanuel Lutheran Church (ELCA)

  • Bountiful God, you gather your people into your realm, and you promise us food from your tree of life. 8:42 AM
  • Listening to Rev. Steven Wigdahl preach a message entitled “The Divine GPS” 8:52 AM
  • GPS – God Positioning System. . . Christ has positioned me and you to be followers and disciples. — Rev. Steven Wigdahl 8:59 AM
  • God still speaks in ways that can be ascertained. — Rev. Steven Wigdahl 9:01 AM
  • We are in the Book of Life and now we are called to live like it. — Rev. Steven Wigdahl 9:05 AM
  •  We are called to be hope for the hopeless so hatred and blindness will be no more 9:14 AM

May 16 – Naples United Church of Christ

  • O God of hope and love … Open our lives to new possibilities. Open our heats to greater understanding and patience for others – Naples UCC 8:46 AM
  • Let your love and hope flow from us to others — Rev. Dr. Ronald Patterson 9:22 AM
  • Jesus prays for unity — that they may all be one. — John 17:20-26 9:27 AM
  • The church is meant for mission … Not to preach our creeds or customs but to build a bridge of care. — Ruth Duck 9:32 AM
  • As a green bud in the spring time is a sign of life renewed so may we be signs of oneness mid earth’s peoples many hued. — Ruth Duck 9:33 AM
  • What makes us unique? It has to be unity. Rev. Dr. Ronald Patterson 9:38 AM
  • Others will see Jesus in us when we see Jesus in them — Rev. Dr. Ronald Patterson 9:41 AM
  • God has spoken but God is still speaking and the language of God is love. Rev. Dr. Ronald Patterson 9:49 AM
  •  We all are one in mission, we all are one in call, our varied gifts united by Christ. — Rusty Edwards 9:58 AM

 So What?

To follow the format of my earlier blog, I will consider each of the five reasons tweeting belongs in the sanctuary as suggested by Scott Williams, Campus Pastor for the Northwest Oklahoma City Campus of LifeChurch.tv:

  1. You have the opportunity to be a real-time extension of your pastor’s voice while he/she is communicating God’s word.
  2. 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 some of your Twitter followers as well.
  3. When Jesus said: Go into all the world and preach the Gospel… “All The World” applies to the Internet world, as well as the Twitter World.  Do your part by going into all the Twitter World, tweeting the Good News.
  4. You will have a stored database of your compelling thoughts and notes, from your favorite sermons.  Use a #hashtag to keep up with the information that you share.  
  5. Many times people suffer from (SADD) Sermon Attention Deficit Disorder.  So instead of just wandering off into space, simply wander off into the space of the World Wide Web.  It’s better use of your time Twittering great thoughts, instead of drawing on the back of offering envelopes.

My initial experience was limited to two weeks but along with my longer term use of tweeting leads me to these preliminary conclusions:

  1. The real-time aspect of my tweeting led to heightened awareness that I was not only a part of the group of several hundred gathered in a sanctuary, but also part of the universal church. 
  2. I realized that many who were in church and some who would not be would read my tweets and thus share in my experience in a limited way.  I did receive a few comments from facebook friends who noted my sudden flurry of posts (my tweets are posted to facebook and my normal rate is a few a day not several an hour).
  3. I did my part to share meaningful moments and words. 
  4. While I would normally not research my own tweets, I realize others may.  Also, I found it was very easy to locate them on twitter and to copy and paste them into my blog.  Additionally, as I read them, I reconnected with those worship experiences and was once again encouraged to live faithfully in response.
  5. Since my experiment was somewhat artificial, I cannot speak as clearly to this point.  I did find that I was listening intently for quotes and phrases that could be expressed in 140 characters or less (it should be noted that some preachers tend to communicate great truths with powerful quotes that cannot be reduced to 140 characters while retaining the full meaning).

Convinced of the theoretical value and the experiential meaningfulness, I now return to the questions I posed previously:

  • What are you doing to encourage those in your congregation to tweet during worship and in response to what God is doing in their lives? 
  • Are you providing instruction to help those who tweet during worship do so in a way that adds to rather than detracts from the overall worship experience? 
  • Does your church have a Twitter account? Do your pastors or ministry directors/leaders?