Twitter has ballooned to monstrous proportions in the world wide web and the every corner and segment of the online world has responded, from corporate enterprise businesses, to niche social networks, to non-profits, and of course the evangelicals and ministries.

In addition to the the growth of Twitter, tons (literally) of alternative micro-blogging services have surfaced, each attempting to capitalize on the “140 characters or less” zeitgeist.

Some, like Yammer, are aimed at private tweeting, for business and organizations, while others attempt to engage different portions of culture (both “pop” and certainly “not”).  Some, like Twingr (launched today in Private Alpha), let you create your own Twitter-like environment as well.

But what if you’d like more “control” of your ministry twitterverse?  What if you’d like it hosted on your own ministry domain and not connected to strange-service-names like “Plurk,” “Pownce,” “Yammer,” “Twingr,” etc?  What if you’d like to be able to update your congregation, ministry/org teams, but not the rest of the online world?  What if you’d like to create a ministry-wide/congregation-wide micro-blogging service?

Well, you can.  And it’s easy.  Really easy. And you can do it in 5 minutes or less (proof below)!

All you need are 3 things (2 if you’re keeping it public):

1. Self-hosted Install of WordPress – Download Directly Here!
2. Prologue Theme – Download Directly Here!
3. Members-Only Plugin – Download Directly Here!

Download the 3 things above using the links and then watch this video that I made at 2:00am in the morning on a Friday.

If you’d like to see the finished product, you can go there directly (and you can register and try it out!)

Build Your Own Ministry Twitter in 5 Minutes from ChurchCrunch on Vimeo.

Done and done.

As I mentioned, the sky is really the limit here.  It’s completely Open Source and you’ll be able to change as much as you’d like from a customization perspective and design.

Integrate it with your current website, build content around it, make it public, make it private, make certain content “tagged” or “categorized” public/private, yada yada yada… all in the safety of your own ministry domain and site.

And have fun with it!