Comments on: Scot McKnight and the Theology of Twitter

By: markalves

markalves — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:39:31 +0000

Rex's prayer for the busy geek comes to mind: http://www.rexblog.com/2009/11/07/20124

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:18:52 +0000

i think it's a good idea to have a descriptive theology with insights…however…i wouldn't go so far as to develop a prescriptive theology…where we say "as Christians this is how we should be tweeting" …
i use twitter for networking, humor, sharing intel, blogging, and i manage a bunch of twitter accounts for clients. my twitter acount is personal , but includes ministry, business, and other stuff. i do business and ministry with friends and a lot of them are on social networks. i have a lot of non-christian contacts,clients, and friends as well on social networks.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:13:15 +0000

good point

By: dannyjbixby

dannyjbixby — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:27:10 +0000

Agreed

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:26:30 +0000

I don't think the absence of prayer or scripture means that tweets aren't spiritual but at the same time I would say that it is okay to tweet just for fun – even for Pastors. Sometimes having fun is the best way to be salt and light.

By: Elaine Butler

Elaine Butler — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:14:05 +0000

Our goal in life is to glorify God, which is to reveal his character. We are each uniquely designed, and travel a personal path of faith, to accomplish this goal. That means that my process is more important to God's glory than the product (whatever I deem worthy of publishing, doing or promoting of myself). I don't have a problem with people being human in their tweets, as long as we can function in real community, and confess our sins as broadly as we tweet them.

By: austinklee

austinklee — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:10:38 +0000

My dad is a pastor. He doesn't tweet, but if he did he would probably sprinkle some Jesus tweets because being a Christian is a part of who he is. But, I also know he would probably tweet about some new gadget he wants to get because he loves new toys and that is a part of who he is.

The danger is in the motivation, as has been previously mentioned. When you read in the Bible about those who are praying on the street corner for all to hear, the focus is their intention not their words.

I will say that some times…innocent tweets can be misread or taken the wrong way. 140 characters is not very much space to provide complete context. The other day I went to the Atlanta Falcons football game. During the game they played music to keep the crowd pumped up.

One of the breaks they played a slow Kenny G saxophone song and I tweeted that it sounded like the Falcons were playing some porn music. I did get one question about the tweet. I didn't mean to imply that I am a porn watcher, in fact I have never seen a porn. However, enough jokes in movies and in daily life about the type of cheesy music in a porn have been told that it was an easy comparison to those jokes.

With only 140 characters…I am sure some people thought I was going off the deep end and started to pray that i would be released from a porn addiction.

Lesson learned. So, care should be taken, but not so much care that you lose the essence of who you are. The point of social media is to enjoy the conversation. Sometimes when you talk to others you mis-speak, have a bad day, tell a joke that flops, don't take it so seriously that you lose yourself and become a PR drone.

By: Kyle Reed

Kyle Reed — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:05:08 +0000

well according to Mr. Bell, everything is spiritual…I digress though

I actually wrote a post yesterday about twitter strategy ( I had no clue that Scott was writing that post which is really weird because we kind of talked about the same thing on the same day)
Here is the post if interested: http://thoughtsaboutnothing.com/twitter-strategy/

But you are right, I get frustrated reading the holy tweets over and over and people expecting you to be holy tweeter.

I do not think we can define a twitter strategy. If we truly believe that twitter is an extension of who we are (I know sounds cheesy) then there is no strategy, we are just being ourselves. Sure there are times when i give links out to my blog because I want people to go and read my post. But most of the time my twitter strategy is to be me, to link to stuff that i am reading, to ask questions that I am asking, to talk to people when I have a question, and to one day be followed by human3rror.

By: Tweets that mention Scot McKnight and the Theology of Twitter - ChurchCrunch -- Topsy.com

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:47:45 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Saddington and John Saddington, kidshine. kidshine said: Extremely interesting post. RT @human3rror: Scot McKnight and the Theology of Twitter – http://bit.ly/4kppr6 <~ (cont) http://tl.gd/t3u1 [...]

By: Bill Whitt

Bill Whitt — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:36:51 +0000

I think it's a powerful way that believers can be salt and light in the world, but like John said, that doesn't mean every single post has to be marinated in Christianese. Check out my posts on it here: http://www.billwhitt.com/blog/?p=1500 http://www.billwhitt.com/blog/?p=1725 http://www.billwhitt.com/blog/?p=1779