Twittering in Church, With the Pastor's Encouragement
John Voelz isn't trying to brag, but it's fair to say he was down with Twitter before most people knew it was a proper noun.
I'm down with the shut up.
Last year, Voelz, a pastor, was tweeting at a conference outside Nashville about ways to make the church experience more creative — ways to "make it not suck" — when suddenly it hit him: Twitter.
That's some devotion to his religion he's got there.
Voelz and David McDonald, the other senior pastor at Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Mich., spent two weeks educating their congregation about Twitter, the microblogging site that challenges users to communicate in 140 characters or less. They held training sessions where congregants brought in their laptops, iPhones and Blackberrys. They upped the bandwidth in the auditorium.
As expected, banter flourished. Tweets like "Nice shirt JVo" and "So glad they are doing Lenny Kravitz" flashed across three large video screens. But there was heartfelt stuff, too.
"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"
"Hey nice shirt! Being a Christian is hard, sometimes I feel my spirit is going to burn in a dark pit for eternity, and I know everyone who's not a christian will burn anyway, but damn if you're not stylin' today pastor!" That was way more than 140 characters.
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."
No, they're talking about that Wife Swap show or Nascar or something.
No comments:
Post a Comment