Tweeting the Sermon

Today I stumbled onto “Don’t Tweet that Sermon!” by Tim Challies. I have to admit that when I first read the title I thought “yawn, we’ve discussed this before” but the discussion in the comments turned out to be very thought provoking.

I do want to comment briefly on all of his points, but first I want to point out what this tells me about the power of blogging. Though Tim is a gifted a thinker and writer, the real impact of his blog comes from the engagement around his thoughts. I am not taking credit away from him at all – quite the opposite. He was the one to realize that starting this conversation on his blog so that his readers could contribute, was a smart move indeed. It doesn’t matter that others have weighed in on this. It doesn’t matter that Tim himself might have covered some of this before (I’m not sure he has). The point is that we can all learn something from the discussion about it.

Tweeting suggests that the sermon is as much for the global church as the local church.

There was quite a bit of discussion in the comments about this one and a call for Tim to explain what he meant exactly. I can’t pretend to know what he was thinking entirely, but I know why I tend to agree with this point – so I’ll explain that. I am a big fan of the Internet and the larger communities that introduces for us, but I am also a big believer in local church (and the local community in other areas). My pastor discerns a word from God for my local church (not God inspired – actually working on a post about that too). My responsibility is to listen to that word. If I’m listening to some other pastors message, I might miss “mine.” In order to respect that dynamic, I need to seriously question whether it is smart to tweet my message out to others – especially during the sermon.

Several commenters have asked about how this principal relates to sermon podcasts? Good question, and it leads nicely to where I disagree with this point. While a sermon might be intended for the local church, it certainly will contain truths applicable to the universal one, at least it should.

Tweeting changes your focus from yourself to others.

This is the biggest point, by far, in my opinion. As a matter of fact, this is a major problem with social media in general. We become journalists who simply report the events around them instead of simply learning from them, engaging in them, and/or learning from them. At least one comment points out that social media didn’t create this problem – “my neighbor should hear this sermon” – but it certainly adds to the temptation. This is exactly why I don’t tweet sermons, even though I have been documenting the events of my life and my thoughts on things on and off for more than fifteen years.

Tweeting reduces a sermon to it’s tweetability.

A real danger, to be sure, but I see both sides to this issue. Reducing an idea to 140 characters can be a good exercise to help crystalize an idea.

Tweeting is two-way.

There are several issues at play here …

1. Discussion of the sermon with others – a very good thing in my opinion.
2. Discussion of the sermon with others DURING the sermon – not a good thing.
3. Discussion of other things. This is the reason I only open my email twice a day – there are a lot of distractions in there.

Tweeting distracts people around you.

I’ve always been concerned about this, but the reality is that people learn to live with distractions. I’ve attended churches where children making noise were just the norm. At first it bothers people, but most people learn to adjust to that as part of that community. I have no problem with an environment where we trust our fellow congregants to engage in tweeting or whatever and not be distracted by it.