Mar
10
Written by:
host
3/10/2009 7:00 AM
In last Tuesday's edition of The Daily Voice, I talked about various text messaging services you might consider using for reaching your congregation. This week, I'll briefly introduce you to the one which is certainly the most popular: Twitter.
Twitter is a free online service for sending short, 140-character text messages ("Tweets") to "followers." Signing up for a Twitter account is very simple, and then you just encourage your friends, congregation members, family members, and 
coworkers to subscribe to your Tweets. These messages can be sent or received both from a cell phone and via the Internet, making it possible for huge numbers of people to get your messages. Avid Twitterers post updates about...well, anything and everything, actually—with messages both utterly inane and highly useful.
In a future week, I plan to post some reflections about the Twitter phenomenon, and how the ability to instantly communicate with others is changing the shape of ministry. Lots of guides to Twitter are available online, but one certainly worth considering is the ebook, Twitter for Churches.
Priced at just $5 (or $15 if you want to share the ebook with your staff or leadership teams), Twitter for Churches is a reasonably-priced introduction to Twitter and how you might use it as a ministry tool. The 63-page ebook (PDF format) is a nice primer on setting up Twitter, with examples of ways it is being used by churches, descriptions of additional tools that are available to enhance Twitter, and more. The clear, concise text can be read in under an hour, and the ebook is truly one of the most beautifully-designed ebooks of the hundreds I have seen or read. I am certain I will return to parts of this text again, and it's definitely a purchase worth considering if you're brand new to Twitter or are wondering how to more effectively use Twitter in your own ministry.
The book is not without its flaws, though. First, the book could just as easily have been entitled, Twitter for Conservative Churches. For example, in the short list of Twittering pastors, there is not a single female or mainline pastor included. Second, the book fails to address the digital divide between the poor and the middle/upper classes. Clearly, the author does not serve a rural area with poor cell and Internet coverage. Third, there is no substantive theological discussion about Twitter and the ways communication and community are changing (in good and not-so-good ways) in our world today. Finally, while Twittering is generally a safe practice for youth leaders, there still should be some discussion about how Twitter fits into a church's overall "Safe Sanctuaries" policy. Still, Twitter for Churches is, for now, the best introduction to the subject I've found.
My Different Voice Twitter account, by the way, is DifferentVoice. You're definitely welcome to follow me, though (for now) I send very infrequent Tweets.
~ Tim Gossett