"God Tweeted"

I continue to enjoy preaching on issues that seem pertinent to our lives as Christians in the 21st century. I saw lots of heads nodding yesterday as we reflected on Twitter. I hope the nodding heads were not because people were hearing me say that Twitter or technology is bad. I absolutely do not believe Twitter is bad. But, we need to recognize how the church is called to respond and minister in the world of Twitter.

As I look to the future, I see the church's calling to be a place where people can find both community and a place for theological exploration becoming more essential. In a world where it seems that we get all the choices, we need to hear God's claim on our lives and submit to the sense of calling in which God sends us, rather than we choose. I also want to announce to the world that we believe God is at work and that God's work is a little more complicated than can be described in a Tweet or contained in a bumper sticker slogan.

Here are my sermon notes from yesterday.


Introduction: Confession – I do not Tweet. Most of what I know about Twitter (the name for the process in which people Tweet or follow Tweets) I have read or heard from those who do Tweet. But, I know that it is becoming the rage in the world of instant communication.

The way it works is something like this. There are two sides to Twitter communication. One person creates a Twitter account (anyone can do it with computer access). Then, they can begin posting Tweets. Short, less that 140 characters, comments about whatever they want.
Then, other people sign up to follow someone's Twitter account. They then have access to all the tweets (the short messages) that someone puts out.

Concrete example – Mario has a Twitter account. If I wanted to, and I don't think I do, I could become a follower of Mario's Twitter account, and then I would have access to all the messages that Mario would post.

I also know that Twitter is now a big deal. In the first quarter of 2010, 4 billion tweets were posted.[citation needed] As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets are posted each day, equalling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.[24]

Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the 30 second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on 14 June 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets a second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on 17 June 2010.[25] When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, the Twitter server crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.[26]

 over a 2-week period in August 2009 from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and separated them into six categories:[39]
Pointless babble — 41%
Conversational — 38%
Pass-along value — 9%
Self-promotion — 6%
Spam — 4%
News — 4%[39] (Information taken from Wikipedia, 10/8/10)

God spoke through a burning bush; God spoke through prophets; God spoke through a donkey.
If God were to create again in today's context, the Genesis story might read: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God Tweeted, "Let there be light"; and there was light. (Genesis 1:1-3 NRSV)

I want to reflect on what it means to be a Christian in a world of Twitter. Not to say Twitter is good or bad, but to think about how we live with Twitter.

Move 1: Tweeting exemplifies the me, me, me approach to life.
a. When a person creates a Twitter account, they being using it to share about himself or herself.
1. What did she eat for breakfast
1.where is he?
2.What is she doing?
3.Basically, when a person tweets, they show something of an obsession about themselves.

b. Likewise, if you sign up to follow someone, you are signing up to hear all about that one person.
1. What do they think about something.
2. What are they doing?
3. Let's say you wanted to know more about Lindsay Lohan – you could sign up to follow her on Twitter, and you could learn all about her life, her struggles and the world as she sees it.
c. Into this context, the church has an obligation to remind people of our connectedness to people and the world beyond ourselves.
1.To notice others, even those we would not choose to follow.
2.From our Christian perspective, community is the place to which God calls you, sometimes not even of our choosing, but a place we find ourselves sent to live out our calling as disciples of Christ.
3.And we are called to notice and minister to people with whom we might not choose to connect.
4.In the world of Twitter – we choose the people we want to follow and we focus on that person.
5.In the world of discipleship, God chooses where we are sent and we focus on those people who need to know the love of Christ.

d. We remember as we read the opening verses of Genesis that when God spoke, God had a purpose.
1. God saw chaos, and spoke to create.
2. God created for the purpose of being in relationship with us and for putting us into relationship with one another.
3.God spoke to create as an expression of God's love.

In a world of Twitter, we need to stand as a reminder that God calls us beyond ourselves into loving relationships..

move 2: Tweeting makes things short and sweet.
a. Limited to 140 characters
1.I read an article recently where someone described how he loves Twitter because it forces him to be creative as he figures out how to express himself in such a limited way.
2.Twitter is sort of like a bumper sticker.
3.In some ways, maybe that is good. Sometimes we make things to complex. I have certainly been in meetings when the conversation goes on and on without resolution. A 140 character limit might be helpful at times.
b. but, God demands more from us than a bumper sticker theology and faith.
1.Hard to describe the mystery and majesty of God in 140 characters.
2.When we face the challenging questions of our faith – where was God on 9/11? or why is my 35 yr old brother dying while my 95 yr. Old great grandmother still lives? Or how a God whose ways often seems hidden, yet a God who still searches us out -- 140 characters will not cut it.
3. Don’t Eat Alone, blog by Milton Brasher-Cunningham, 12/8/09 Shane Claiborne wrote an article for Esquire magazine and said something that connects here, I think: “The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus”
4. I believe as God's people we are compelled to resist the temptation reduce God to a bumper sticker. Instead, we need to invite others to explore and discover God in meaningful ways that cannot be found on a bumper sticker or in 140 characters.

Move 3: Twitter does not encourage engagement.
a. Basically, Twitter is a passive from of communication.
1.One person writes.
2.Another person reads.
3.It might be entertaining – I have heard, for instance, that Chad Ocho Cinco the wide receiver for the Bengals makes really entertaining comments for those who follow his Twitter account – but it does not engage the persons with each other

b. The Biblical story tells of a God who engages us.
1. Prayer may seem at times like one-way communication, but then we have these thoughts, or we focus on hearing from God and we have these insights.
2. Discipleship calls us to engage God – to be in relationship with the one who challenges us, who nurtures us, who sends us.
3. We have this dynamic, relational God to share with the world, which becomes even more important in a world of passive communication like Twitter.

Conclusion: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Tweeting may be a great tool for communication.
God could tweet if God wanted to.
Instead, God sent the Word to become flesh.