Tweets Are the New “Amens” in Church

by David Cassidy, Pastor of Christ Community Church

Twitter is so highly valued in my head that I tend to think of the Book of Proverbs as King Solomon’s Twitter account. I can easily imagine seeing ‘@RoyalWisdomSol’ right after, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue” or “Without a vision my people perish”.

While a great deal of the twitterverse is a sea of silliness and shame ­ like all social media ­ there are notable islands of sanity, encouragement, and healthy entertainment as well. Its also quite a barometer about world culture. Lady Gaga has over 40 million followers while an exceedingly popular Pope has just 4 million. That little stat might give pause to the religiously self­satisfied or self­important: you’ve got work to do on the communication front.

Which is just one reason I tell people to tweet in church if their worship service style has the contours to handle it.

This all got started a few years ago when I noticed that people had stopped looking up texts of Scripture in gold edged rice paper, leather bound Bibles, preferring a smartphone app instead. I still teach/preach/lecture using a real book (for a lot of reasons), but I have no problem with the presence of smartphones in worship ­ as long as they are set to stun (phones going off in worship is incredible annoying, just as it would be at a wedding or performance of some kind). In fact, I’d rather make the most of it, which is where twitter comes in. I encourage people to replace “amen” with tweets and retweets.

When I said, “The prodigal son outran his inheritance but could never outspend his father’s inexhaustible love”, or when I said, “Churches have to stop acting like competitors in a members market and become co­ belligerents in a battle for souls”, I got some hearty “Amens”. Something more happened too. Several listeners tweeted that message out to their friends and they took it ‘www’ in moments. Hook your tweets to Facebook and away we go. The message spreads fast!
Not every church or minister will favor mid­sermon tweets, but if its allowed I hope you’ll go for it. Get the message out to everyone you know. The sea of silliness could use your loving, encouraging presence. After all, “a word in season is like apples of gold in settings of silver” ­ @RoyalWisdomSol

For other David Cassidy articles, Buzzers, Brackets, and Prophets, The Reason to Celebrate St. Patrick, Is Your Legacy Etched in the Mind of Others.

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