A while back, a woman in her 80’s come up to me after church to tell me her twitter name. After taking a step back, I asked, “Why are you on Twitter?”

She said, “Hearing your devotional thoughts and about your life each day through Twitter makes me feel like I’ve had a visit with you every day. Everyone should sign up. You should Tweet more!”

The light bulb turned on. From that day on, I have tried to start each day with a devotional first tweet, and have included tweets that will help members connect. The response has amazed me.

Can Twitter be a new way of reaching church members?

I have often said that I forgot to take the class in Seminary titled “How To Be Two Places At Once.” If you have done any church work, you know what I mean….there are too many places to be, too many great people to spend time with, and too few hours in the day.

Now, my friend in her 80’s has made me think “younger” about connecting with members. Go figure.

I timeshare my work week between traveling around helping large churches find staff, and leading Cypress Creek Christian Church. Because I am not on the Cypress campus all the time, I am always looking for ways to connect with our people remotely. Much to my surprise, my “mature” friend was right. Twitter has become invaluable.

I know that Twitter doesn’t have all the answers.

The Word became flesh, not the other way around.

That’s the heart of the Gospel, and nothing will ever replace face to face meetings (that’s a big part of why my search work involves travel). Not everyone in a church will be on twitter or facebook. But as I continue to see the value of pastoral tweets, status updates, and social media, I wonder why more pastors don’t leverage this valuable new means of reaching people.

If you’re hesitant, or just uninspired consider these statistics (read via a post by Joshua Cody):

1. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The Internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.
2. Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.
3. More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day. Combined, more than 5 billion minutes are spent on the site on a daily basis.
4. Over the past 12 months, Twitter’s year-on-year growth rate has broken the 1000% barrier.
5. If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.

Every seminal Kingdom breakthrough has come on the heels of a communication breakthrough. In the wake of the greatest communication breakthrough ever, something is about to change in Church.

So what’s your practice? What should the church be doing with Twitter? What are your thoughts?

To tweet, or not to tweet….that is the question. I’d love to hear your answers.

————————————————————————————————————-

This is the first in a series of the most popular, responded to, and lively discussions that came from posts on my site during 2009. I have pulled out some posts which announce job searches and placements. Those are always near the top in popularity, but wouldn’t add much value to you today.