Twittering in Church
Confessions of a Sunday Twitterer
I imagine that millions of people have already read this month’s TIME magazine article, “Twittering in Church, with the Pastor’s O.K.” (TIME, Sunday, May 03, 2009). It’s an interesting read. That article has prompted some responses by various leaders in the Christian community. I thought I would mention here two of those leaders, Josh Harris of Covenant Life Church (yes, that’s the Josh Harris of I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame) in Gaithersburg, Md. (DC Metro Area); and John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn.
Speaking as one who has found it useful and beneficial to both “tweet” and text during church services, I thought both Harris and Piper had some great things to say about the subject. You can read their thoughts for yourself… I included here a few salient quotes:
“More on Not Using Twitter During Worship Services ,” by John Piper
* “Don’t tweet while having sex. Don’t tweet while praying with the dying.”
* “Great power flows through fragile wires of spiritual focus. Perfume can break it. A ruffled collar can break it. A cough can break it.”
“Should We Use Twitter During Church?“, by Josh Harris
* “God’s word preached is so important, so precious, I don’t want anything to distract me from hearing it.”
* “Just because something is incredibly popular in culture doesn’t mean we have to accommodate it in our worship. Who cares if the whole world is talking about Twitter? When the church gathers and the Word of God is opened, God Himself is speaking again. Everybody else can shut up.”
* “When God is speaking again through his word, we should all be silent–and so should our Twitter feeds.”
(After posting this blog today, a family friend wrote in a comment, asking for my personal opinion on this issue. So if you click on “Comments” up top, next to the title of this post, you will find my thoughts in brief.)
By the way, for those who think this subject is mostly a “youth culture” thing… Think again. According to a recent Reuters article, Twitter is most commonly used by an age group much older than you may think: 45-54 Year Olds Most Likely to Twitter? If you don’t have time to read the article, the chart below should tell you a lot:
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Age, I love your blog. I love your thoughts and insights. I looked through your booklist and I want to read along all of them with you. If only I made the time. As you finish each book, I’d love to hear some standout thoughts and the application / assimilation of that information is your philosophies / theology / practice. That’s probably too much to ask, but it shouldn’t be said of me, “You have not because you ask not!”
I wanted your take on the two men’s comments…so guess you need to add more to this blog!!!! Thanks age…I really am interested in hearing your point of view.
OK, fair enough! Not much time to write at this moment, but in short, I largely resound with what both authors had to say. Honestly, I like to twitter (tweet?) during services, for the same reason that I like to talk during services. I just enjoy sharing my observations, even my experiences of the moment. Drives my wife crazy sometimes. I try not to, however, not only because I think it’s often rude to the leadership and at times to the Holy Spirit. I think the same can be said about twittering (tweeting) during church.
I mentioned that talking to your neighbor can be “rude to the Holy Spirit.” That’s probably a gross understatement. There ought to be something about our corporate worship times that is holy–dedicated, separated unto sanctity, devoted unto a sacred transaction and a sacred transmission. Hence, I find Piper’s admonition to keep from using Twitter during sex, while praying for the dying, etc., very appropriate, as these also are sacred moments.
Bottom line, I can say with Harris: “When the church gathers and the Word of God is opened, God Himself is speaking again. Everybody else can shut up.” Well said. When the preaching of the Word is taking place, it is unlike any other medium in our culture. It is not a speech, it is not a monologue, it is not a talking head; not a pundit, not a news anchor, not a professor, not even a State of the Union. No, preaching is incomparable to any other form of communication. It is a prophetic utterance issuing forth from the bowels of God through His choice of messenger–flawed, failing, floundering flesh. Preaching is a shadow, but perhaps more than a shadow, of the Incarnation. And despite all of the maddening flesh that gets in the way, full of sin and soapboxes and politics… it’s still the Word incarnate once again. And that is holy. And that calls for all creation to fall silent… even Twitter.
Funny. I was just reading this article yesterday. Good blog and enjoyed the comments!
Thanks Age. I appreciate hearing your thoughts! Keep writing brother…you’re an inspiration to the rest of us!
A good sermon invites dialogue rather than being a static monologue – live twittering projected for the congregation would seem to invite such a discussion. Like any productive discussion, however, as participation increases methods to keep it from becoming chaotic noise will need to considered.
YES! A Spirit-inspired sermon does, indeed, invite dialogue! Perhaps especially dialogue with the Holy Spirit… but also dialogue with one another. Seems to me that if one’s theology supports the idea that the vehicle of preaching is one vehicle whereby God is prophetically speaking oracles to man, then horizontal dialogue would most appropriately take place after the prophetic event. I love the live projected twittering as a productive discussion during any discussion-based medium–a seminar, conference, interactive teaching, etc.
Good post. I would still be really interested in meeting up sometime…
“And that calls for all creation to fall silent…even Twitter.”
Love it.
This is an interesting discussion. Right now my biggest problem is kids just blurting out questions in the middle of preaching. I think this also leads to other questions about what is happening during the preaching time, e.g. talking, getting up and down. I heard a local pastor tell a congregation of youth that if they could sit through a 2 hour movie, they can sit through a 30 minute sermon. I though it was a well places admonition.
Your comments raise another issue–that of the theology that is being taught (directly or indirectly) to churched children of America with regard to the spiritual activity in a corporate church service. In the minds of our churches’ children, is the worship “event” a spectator experience? An interactive experience? Is there anything different, in their minds, between sitting and taking in a concert, watching the news, listening to their schoolroom teacher… and engaging in a worship service? Or has “engaging” even entered their consciousness? What about for adults?
In Luke 10:16 (NASB) Jesus informed the 70 disciples whom He had sent out to minister that “The one who listens to you listens to Me”. The apostle Peter later wrote that “Whoever speaks, {is to do so} as one who is speaking the utterances of God” (1 Peter 4:11). The first Scripture emphasizes the responsibility of the listener, the second that of the speaker. When God is speaking to me through His appointed messenger (inevitably flawed and hopefully inspired) I don’t think I should be chewing, clipping, picking, pulling, digging, stroking, titillating, beautifying, burping, gargling, gasping, or gyrating. Taking notes? Good! Long live writing, typing, texting, tweeting, and twittering…otherwise it’s for the birds. If we’d improve our mnemonics we wouldn’t need any of them.
As for “writing, typing, texting, tweeting, and twittering,” would these be considered (with relationship to God) vertical communication, horizontal communication, or something else?
The New Covenant relationship to God is of course non-spatial and spiritual (“In Him we live, and move and have our being”). Since God is omnipresent Spirit, I think the best preposition to describe man’s relationship to God is “in”. Under the New Covenant we are to have “the mind of Christ” and the H.S. “dwells in” the believer and we “are hid with Christ in God”. (He related to man much more in spatial constructs under the Old Covenant, i.e. appearing on the mount, in the tabernacle, in the cloud and the fire, etc.) So, getting back to the subject, i.e. recording notes during a sermon, I do not think of it relationally or spatially but simply in the traditional classroom sense of recording information. Yet if one’s texting is truly restricted to what God is saying (and not communicating horizontally with another human), it may be viewed as a form of praise that honors God because one is bothering to not only listen to Him but also endeavoring to remember and later study further what He is saying so that the seed planted by the Word produces a greater harvest by being better remembered and hopefully repetitively acted on in the future.
Wow. My mind is stretching.