What Would Jesus Tweet?

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I'm going to steal some words from Leonard Sweet today:  It's not a question of whether Jesus would have tweeted or not.  It's a question of what Jesus would tweet.

You see, Jesus engaged in the community of the day and, I believe, continues to engage.  It's not a question of whether God would use twitter.  God is using Twitter and Facebook and Google...the church may not be, but God is present and active in community and our community is ever-shifting to the internet.

Today we have to ask ourselves a lot of questions about how we are going to communicate as a church.  We seem to think, these days, that the goal is to get our church on the internet and that will be 'good enough.' Maybe a website or a facebook page will get more people to come to us...where the real church is (behind a big stone wall).  No.  Not good enough.  We have to take our experiences of Christ into our online communities if we are to live out our faith authentically.

Do we remind people not just to "like" the church (which, btw, is waaayyy luke-warm) with our bulletin or do we ask people to check-in to show their friends they were at church.  Do we put an informational announcement out on our facebook page or do we RT (re-tweet) the pastor or church friend so that our followers become her or his followers?

What the "Googler" generation has grown up in (and what us older people may never catch onto) is a culture about relationships.  It is not just about what we say, but, just as importantly, how  we say it.  The church needs to delve into the relationship-building connections of the web.  We need to become more social and less institutional...and we need to find authentic ways to share God's love with the people of this world.

Just What Is Needed

   Like I’ve already written, people, today, don’t need to sift through large amounts of information.  If I want to find out the top news stories of the day I can just bring up my personalized igoogle page and I can see the top viewed news stories according to the search engine, I also have a module that shows me the featured CNN stories and Al Jezeera.  I no longer have to go to multiple websites, not to mention a newsstand.  I also no longer need to leaf through all the pages of a newspaper or watch an entire news program at 6 or 10.  This may make me lazy, but it also makes me a twenty-first century young man.

    Hulu has further developed this trend with entertainment programming.  I no longer need to be at home at a particular time during the week to see my favorite show, nor do I need to worry about missing an episode.  I simply login to Hulu and all of my favorite shows are queued up and ready to go.  It doesn’t matter if it is CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, Comedy Central, etc.  It also doesn’t matter if it is a Monday night or Thursday night show.  I get what I want, when I want it.

    The newspaper industry is floundering because they are still operating on the old paradigm that people will pay 75 cents to get the news from their paper.  Many people, of course, have subscriptions that the paper would come directly to them, but in our information age news the next morning it is already old.  More importantly, people have to seek that information through a subscription or going to a newsstand.  And it is only from one source for each purchase or subscription.

    As a church we still see the world through this old paradigm.  We think people will seek out a particular church and only be concerned for what that church’s materials and perspectives.  Even more peculiarly we, as churches, still seem to think that people will tack up the calendar from the bulletin or newsletter on their fridge; will surf to the web calendar several clicks into the church site; or, more surprisingly, think that people have a paper calendar they are writing everything on.  What people really have in their pockets -many at least- are PDA’s, or more likely internet connected cell phones.  What people are beginning to really value is calendars that are delivered directly to them.  Our church offices should be using calendars that can be subscribed to directly by our congregants so that our calendars are sitting side-by-side with theirs (such as google calendar)....but I’ve partly digressed from my point.  And the whole staff and leadership, more importantly, has to buy into this system.

    The church needs to stop using proprietary website stuff.  No more calendars that can only be viewed online or need to be updated by one particular person with web design expertise.  Videos should not be put on the site in such a way that people must go to the website to see it.  Youtube (or vimeo), google calendar and other avenues of communication that people are already using should be implemented, instead.  If we do this then, yes, the website can be more dynamic and more up-to-date for people who go there, but more importantly the stories and content are out on the web for people to stumble across, to subscribe to, and to share on social media with friends.  Why not setup the church website with “share” buttons so that stories, photos and videos can easily be shared to their facebook, youtube, twitter and email friends?

    The church has to get outside of the old paradigm.  We have to take our story outside of the new boundaries of church:  the church website.  ...and don’t forget we’re taking stories and faith, not information!