The New Worship Question:
To Tweet or Not To Tweet
By Kami L. Rice
The Rev. Matthew Johnson discovered Twitter a year ago at a conference. He marveled at the way the odd collection of questions and comments projected on a screen and referred to as a Twitter-feed turned “a rather large and passive event into an interactive and oddly relational experience.”
In an e-mail interview, Johnson called the moment “revelatory.” After downloading the Twitter application to his phone, the associate pastor at The United Methodist Church of Geneva (Ill.) “held the conversation in [his] hand while the lecture happened across the sanctuary, and imagined the room getting smaller and larger at the same time.
He thought Twitter might be just the tool for his church’s alternative worship service. Intended to be very interactive, the service can be intimidating for people who do not like speaking in front of others. Perhaps, he thought, Twitter would help include introverts in the conversations.
The latest social networking application to grow from buzz to roaring phenomenon, Twitter is everywhere. Users share information in very short bursts, called tweets, of 140 characters or less. They open accounts in order to follow updates from other Twitterers and create a list of their own updates that can be viewed as a Web page by non-Twitter users. New Twitterers can learn the process simply – and follow others whose tweets provide ongoing tips and instruction.
November 14, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I suppose my question moves beyond the question if whether we should tweet or not…but think through what is the end result…did we see more people come to know God…where there more disciples made…or was there some sort of redemptive process that occurred?
Just wondering when do we look at the results based off of what we are called too do verses methods we use?