Jesus: Greatest Tweeter ever!

Think of the effective "reach" if Jesus had a cell phone and a Twitter account. All the Beatitudes are 140 characters or less!

One example: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"

Can you or your church help spread the word by "Tweeting the Beatitudes"?

Sentence Sermons - part 2

In his book "701 Sentence Sermons", L. James Harvey gives several excellent tips for excellent text for church signs and wherever else the church uses that sentence sermon -- see Sentence Sermons - part 1.

Below are are a few tips based on Volume 1 of Harvey's book.

• Condense the English.
  You don't need to include every word of every saying or quote. You can even rearrange the messages to better fit the sign. Most signs have only 3 to 5 lines for brief text.
• Consider line breaks.
• Decide what wording makes the separate lines read better. Revise the wording as needed, but keep the meaning clear.
• Use a line break for natural speach pauses.
• Use a line break for most commas.
• Consider the speed of passing cars.
Even passengers in a moving car have only a few short seconbds to read and understand the entire message.
• Consider your church's theogical views.
  Don't use sentence sermons that run contrary to your church's views.

Sentence Sermons - part 1

When I cruised through a local Cokesbury store, I noticed a paperback titled, "701 Sentence Sermons" by L. James Harvey. The cover showed a church sign. After a quick skim, I added the book to a small pile for the checkout.

Harvey stresses that the book is about a lot more than just church signage. He coined the phrase "sentence sermons" because he says that church signage should be short sermons. Also, he didn't title the book about church signs because he strongly encourages churches to use the sign "sentence sermons" in several ways, not just on signs.

In our modern multimedia world, some churches give less importance to the non-computer, non-video variety of media that is available. But excellence in communications means that churches need to employ a wide variety of media.

Types of "sentence sermons"

• Advertising of upcoming events (keep to a bare minimum, Harvey says).
• Bible-oriented messages.
• Wisdom messages [a famous quote, for example]. These may reach a currently unchurched person better than quoting scripture.

Places to use "sentence sermons"

• On the church roadside sign (duh!).
• In church staff email sigs.
• In Sunday bulletins.
• In church newsletters.
• In a tweet.
• In a blog entry.
• In sermons!
• As a teaser in an ad.
• [your idea here].

If you have a church sign that allows for messages, you may also want to pull ideas from Volumes 2, 3 and 4 of this Sentence Sermons series by L. James Harvey.

Another book that looks interesting is "Signs for These Times" by Ronald Glusenkamp. That one includes chapters oriented on themes and seasons. The book also includes a topic an scripture index. That could come in very handy for finding a sentence sermon that relates to an upcoming Sunday sermon.

Sermon planning
Sermon planning should include planning sentence sermons. Plant them on the church sign, in email sigs, and in the bulletin. Then watch them bear fruit.

Ask congregation members to suggest a brief "sentence sermon" about the Sunday sermon. Post an accepted idea on the church sign for the next week. Then announce (in church or in the Sunday Bulletin or newsletter or news blog) whose idea it was.

Twittering the Psalms

The Worship area of the General Board of Discipleship has plugged the "Summer Psalms" Twitter project by Providence United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Providence UMC's senior pastor is using Twitter to get followers thinking about the Psalms. A Psalm number (and usually a verse number) is followed by a brief quote or summary.

This is an excellent, innovative use of Twitter. It's not the usual blather about "what I'm doing". It's spiritual. It's short (by necessity). And it's thought-provoking.

Hallelujah!

Blogs were originally journals by individuals. Now they have broadened into everything from photo collections with comments to news to varied types of main web sites.

Twitter too will be going through these birth pains and significant expansion of the original "what I'm going right now" idea. Organizations are discovering new ways to use it to accomplish some of their varied goals. The original premise was pretty ego-centric. New uses such as Summer Psalms is just the tip of the iceberg in better use of this web-based service.

The state and future of Tweets

The Xconomy blog has an informative posting, Tweets from the Edge: The Ups and Downs of Twitter. It talks about current Twitter use and even a potential change to open source.

Some have described tweets as inane. Some see twitter users as people who are very egotistical. Some view most twitter users as addicts. Yet many are using the service. Is there a good use for Twitter by churches without the church becoming an egotistical addict? I say yes, but not necessarily as many use it now.

What I mostly see in Twitter is a series of daily mundane, inane comments that are kind of ridiculous to "follow". Nobody really cares when you'll be home, what baseball game you are watching, or why the Mets stink, let alone, be subjected to unfathomable tweets such as, "Dude!" as an answer to someone specific.

Wouldn't it be great if churches actually avoided bombarding people with mundane tweets and instead gave them less frequents ones that had some genuine religious content? Church webs, blogs, and Twitter accounts are not personal ones -- they need to reflect the spiritual life of that church. They need to have a deliberate spiritual slant. Christians are called to live "in" the world yet not to be "of" the world. Our online presence should reflect that.

None of this is to say that churches should not set up non-religious webs sites, blogs, or Twitter accounts with the aim to address a specific topic (baseball, computers, whatever). Those type sites need to be designed specifically for non-church people, with minimal reference to the church or a religion. Keep that type site separate from your "normal" church ones.

Churches could very productively use a church Twitter account to:

• Remind members about important functions or meetings.
• Advertise upcoming events.
• Give a spiritual message (limited to 140 characters, of course).
• Pass out urgent news (for example, news of a church closure due to impending bad weather).

Pastors and youth leaders could use Twitter to:

• Reflect on an event that day (with spiritual overtones, not just mundane thoughts).
• Pitch an upcoming church event.
• Thank specific people for helping others (but avoid full names to protect privacy).
• Give a short spiritual message.

This runs counter to current Twitter use, but to gain respectability, avoid irritating people, and give more meaning to church and church-related tweets:

• Limit tweets to significant ones. No bursts of "I'm headed to the store" or "Hot Dawgs! Go Georgia!!"
• Limit tweeting frequency. Start with a maximum of one per day unless urgent news needs to get out. If you are tweeting more than once per day, you are probably losing potential "followers".
• Do a reality check. Ask yourself, "What religious or spiritual meaning does my Tweet have?" If the answer is, "None", seriously consider keeping silent. Tweeting too much on unimportant, non-religious topics by church leaders and organizations can viewed as "for the birds".

Is Twitter for churches?

Even Ellen Degeneres now tweets away on Twitter. Can anyone resist the urge to deluge the world with trivia about their mundane life? Who doesn't want to accumulate "followers".

Even that term makes me cringe. Should churches really want people who are "followers" of anyone other than Jesus? Are "followers" just the Greek chorus to the dreary drama of a dismal narcissist?

Jay Leno recently asked if those who use Twitter should be called "Twits". Are tweets for the birds? Is there a valid, spiritual use of Twitter? I think there is, but don't know that anyone is using it (more on this on a future post). Nearly all Twitter use I see is self-aggrandizing egotism. As a church member recently told me, "It's pretty arrogant to think that people really care about what you are doing or thinking all day" -- in 140 character or less bursts of "information".