Twittering in Church

Twitter.com is the website that allows you to keep up with folks who send out brief updates of no more than 140 characters. Hollywood stars Twitter, politicians Twitter, and now congregations are encouraged to Twitter in some churches according to a Time article, Twittering in Church, with the Pastor's Permission.

The Time article focuses on an experiment at Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Michigan in which the congregation was taught how to use Twitter and then given space in worship to use the online service to interject their own thoughts into worship. They created a system that would project Tweets sent to be posted during the service and up on the screen started popping messages like

"I have a hard time recognizing God in the middle of everything."

"The more I press in to Him, the more He presses me out to be useful"

"sometimes healing is painful"

But Westwinds is not the only church making the interactive connection. The article went on to say

In Seattle, Mars Hill churchgoers regularly tweet throughout the service. In New York City, Trinity Church marked Good Friday by tweeting the Passion play, detailing the stages of Jesus' crucifixion in short bursts. At Next Level Church, outside Charlotte, it's not only okay to fuse social networking technology with prayer; it's desirable.

On Easter Sunday, pastor Todd Hahn prefaced his sermon by saying, "I hope many of you are tweeting this morning about your experience with God."

"It's a huge responsibility of a church to leverage whatever's going on in the broader culture, to connect people to God and to each other," says Hahn.

If worship is about creating community, Twitter is an undeniably useful tool. The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires.

I tend to see this as a passing fad and one that could detract as much as it could add. But, as in most things, I am prepared to be wrong. The full text of the article is online here: Twittering in Church, with the Pastor's Permission. What do you think?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor