Ben Williams
1. Microblogging Your Spiritual Life
Twitter provides an outlet to let everyone know what God is doing in your life in an immediate fashion. This is especially cool because you instantly become a minute-by-minute testimony of the Grace of God. When God radically teaches you something, you can relay it to others while it is fresh on your mind. It also helps you document these thoughts and moments.
2. Following Important Resources
Twitter allows you to “follow” not only friends and associates but also people that are not tangibly present in your life. I get a glimpse into the lives of great leaders and influential people and learn about what they are learning about. It is a way of obtaining information that you would otherwise have no access to. I find it extremely valuable to be able to indulge into the same resources that men like John Piper and Mark Driscoll are reading.
3. Passing Along Resources
The internet is full of online resources that you can simply pass along instantaneously to the numerous amounts of followers you might have. I have a host of evangelical preachers that I follow online and I love being able to promote my favorite articles, blogs, video interviews and sermons. But this doesn’t have to be limited to “Christian” resources as I have found myself passing along interesting news-related articles and statistics that are interesting for people to read and think about. Finally, as we should be aware of by now, twitter is where most news breaks first anyway.
4. Communicating with your Church
We should never desire to replace face-to-face communication, but when you wish to communicate to a large number of people on a comprehensive level – Twitter provides the means. It is a less evasive and an informal way to consistently keep up with people. It is also short and concise to keep from being supremely overwhelmed. Why is this type of communicating relevant? Once again, read the top 3 reasons!
5. Hearing and Learning from other Churches and Ministries
I, for one, am interested in what’s happening in other churches locally and globally. Twitter makes this process easy and prompt. It is encouraging to celebrate with other church members and pastors about what God is doing through their ministries. Why not take advantage of the ability of keeping up with other churches?
6. Promoting your Church for Free.
The more you use twitter, the more followers you will likely obtain. Know that others are reading your information. Let others know what’s happening in the church. For example you can promote your church’s website, blogs, mission projects, small group activities, fellowships, music, videos, sermons, lessons, opportunities to serve, etc. Twitter produces a free audience to promote to.
7. Obtaining Feedback
Social media has introduced a way to get quick and thorough feedback. The main critique of twitter is the narcissistic nature involved in it, but I would say that wanting a response and feedback from relaying information to people isn’t necessarily narcissistic. Twitter can be thought of as an ongoing conversation about whatever is important to you. This is highly beneficial for Christians.
8. Crowd-sourcing
Have a question about something? Or want to see what people are saying about certain issues? Twitter is an ever-increasing library of information at your fingertips. Use twitter as a resource for statistics and knowledge about culture. You can pretty much use twitter to categorize information and people if you so choose. Topical searches are extremely easy on twitter.
9. Connecting without Connecting
During a 24-hour day, it is hard to connect with everyone you desire to connect with. Twitter lets people know a little bit about who you are, what is important to you, and how you spend some of your time. I’m not saying it is an accountability source, but I am saying that people can relate (or not relate) to you through your presence on twitter. It allows you to be somewhat real and accessible to many people.
10. Having Fun
Lastly, when something funny happens, share it. I love laughing with or at people who tells funny stories on twitter. It is a great outlet for humor.
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