We doubt that either the Pope or President Obama are pulling out their smartphones and drafting every tweet. But it is smart of them to use their available resources to harness the power of the Twitter platform.
TechCrunch reported that “it makes sense that some of the people with the most serious of occupations are finally starting to come around to the value of the platform.”
2×2’s Twitter Experiment
2×2 is running an experiment using Twitter. We began in December. We have learned that we barely have our feet wet in its potential and we are still learning how to use it within the church. We will continue our experiment indefinitely, so that we can advise other congregations.
Our end of December observations:
Using Twitter is a mental discipline more than anything else. We must always be thinking of short and meaningful ways to connect. There is a reward and focus in doing so.
It takes a while to develop a following. Just how long? Too soon to say. We have 17 followers on two Twitter accounts after our first month.
We don’t know if there is a correlation, but our web site traffic doubled in the first half of December, slowed over the holidays, but shows signs that the holiday dip was temporary.
Twitter is fun. There is value to being part of both sides of the Twitter conversation.
Twitter is a great way to grow insight and understanding as we meet thought leaders with interesting viewpoints. While we currently have 17 followers, we have found 40 or more people on Twitter who regularly add to our knowledge and interests—and make daily blogging a lot easier. We believe this feature of Twitter is the answer to a major challenge for churches who want to use social media.
Our last post on Twitter talked about the Hashtag. The more I use it the more possibility I see with this marvelous little tool.
We all know how to use a search engine. A simple search for one thing can soon have you discovering all kinds of other things.
The hashtag is even more powerful. Go to your Twitter account and position your cursor in the search box at the top of the page. Type in a hashtag (#) directly in front of a key word. You are one click away to not only exploring the topic but having a direct connection to the most prominent thinkers on that particular subject.
This will link you to the best web sites and will allow you to eavesdrop on powerful discussions. Follow them. Bet that they will follow you (most do!) and you will soon be part of the discussion.
Keep at it and you will be a thought leader on that topic.
Wow!
Give it a try. Think of a topic that interests you. Guess at a good key word for that topic. Remember to type # directly in front of that word or phrase. Try a few possible key words.
For example if you are interested in travel, try #travel or #safari or #cruise. See what happens.
Again, I say Wow!
Did you feel that? The world just got a lot smaller!
One of the first things you will encounter when you join Twitter is the self-serving tweeter who bombards followers with sales pitches ten times a day. A real turn-off for the whole platform.
No one likes to be sold. Especially in matters of faith.
Your tweets should be a gentle and welcome presence in your followers’ online life.
My early experience on Twitter was negative. I followed a couple of local people I know. Every time I opened my Twitter account there was a sea of invitations to seminars from these two people. No business tips. No inspiration. I stopped opening my Twitter account. I’m still working to overcome that aversion.
Approach Twitter with the intention of helping other people. Ask yourself what kind of message you would welcome. Peruse the messages of the people Twitter forced you to follow to get going. Which are fun and helpful? Which are shamelessly self-promotional.
I followed National Geographic as a neo-Twitter user. They don’t overdo it and their tweets link to fascinating articles that have impacted my thinking.
Inc., on the other hand, bombarded me with pop-up ads—so many that I wanted to quit the whole program. I couldn’t even see what they were about for all the ads. I will be glad to “unfollow” them, no matter how great they may be.
Some others have linked me to blogs that have been inspiring, providing plenty of fuel for my own writing. I will enjoy following them and when the relationship is built, I may do business with them.
Use your experience to imagine how your tweets will be received. If you don’t care about your readers beyond the numbers, if you don’t mind tricking and manipulating them, then copy the techniques of those that treat their followers as targets. If you want to build long-term relationships that are two-way, craft your tweets to enrich the lives of your followers — not your pocketbook.
In our Twitter experiment I started researching the power of the #-tag.
The # is a way of finding people who share your interests — long-term interests or passing fancies.
I started by plugging #church into the search box at the top of the twitter page.
Tons of tweets followed, a few of them of interest.
Here is a link to one of them. It addresses church polity and how church polity can go against church law depending on the faddish thinking of church leaders or members at the time.
It is precisely the same problem Redeemer faces with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA). Church polity can go against its own written laws and the courts will not uphold church law. In our case, they won’t even hear the case.
The lesson to be learned is that church members must be vigilant about enforcing their own laws or it will take years and unmeasurable embarrassment to correct mistakes of wayward leadership.
I wouldn’t have found this interesting vignette without Twitter.
Use the #-tag to find topics of interest to you and follow the voices which are most interesting to you.
That’s today’s Twitter assignment! I’ll add the #-tag to a few more topics and see what surfaces.
Guaranteed, the first response when a congregation pushes for an online preaching presence will be the offer to post transcripts of Sunday sermons. There. Done. Let’s move on.
Also guaranteed, no one will read them. The style does not fit the habits of online readers.
People don’t read online sermons. Post them for reference if you like, but they won’t find readers, new or old.
Effective online preaching is not what the Church wants to hear about. They want people in the pews, listening to 20-minute sermons and sticking around at least until the offering plate is passed. Pastors have worked hard at their 20-minute preaching skills. They’ve studied with the best 20-minute preachers.
The effectiveness of the sermon as compared to any other form of communication is rarely discussed between pastors and congregants. The formula is so old that questioning it seems to fly in the face of the oft-heard demand for change. “We didn’t mean this kind of change!” So the 20-minute sermon is what people in the pew expect. It is what pastors are trained to do. What’s the problem?
There are very few people in the pew. The 20-minute sermon is reaching practically no ears.
It is not the first time preaching styles have changed. Decades ago people thought nothing of settling in on a wooden plank pew to listen to a preacher for two or three hours. No more. A century ago a weekend revival was a big attraction. In Jesus’ day people would sit on a hillside all day to listen to a good speaker. And now our cultural expectations are shifting again.
As a life-long church goer, I enjoy a good sermon. I am also very aware that even great sermons are ephemeral. They are forgotten in less time than it takes to deliver them.
Recently, our Ambassadors listened to a sermon in which the preacher made five points. He illustrated the points well. He even used visual props and interspersed some music. It grabbed my interest. I thought as he was speaking, I really ought to write some of this down. When we left church, one of our Ambassadors who is also a retired pastor commented that he thought the sermon was really good. A few hours later I sat down to write a few words about the sermon. I could remember three of the five points. I contacted the pastor who was with us and who had gushed about the sermon. “What were the five points the pastor made? I asked. “I can remember only three of them.” The pastor paused for a moment and finally said, “That’s three more than I can remember.”
And that’s the problem preachers have in relating to modern listeners. They are not connecting with the modern attention span and sensibility. People are wired differently today. That difference is going to grow as today’s younger generations reach church leadership age—if they stay involved long enough to serve.
People today process much more information from many more sources than did our ancestors. Our most valued skill sets are dominated by multi-tasking. We want the same information. We need for it to bedelivered in ways we can process while we do a dozen other things.
Online preaching is suited for this. Twitter is ideal. There is no reason to bemoan the decline of the Church in this regard. It is a new opportunity for the Church.
There are several online pastors I follow. One is Jon Swanson who writes a blog, 300 words a day with a second daily email blast to subscribers called 7×7 or 7 minutes with God. 7×7 is nothing more than a link to a short scripture passage and usually just one sentence to help you think about the passage. For those wanting to read more he offers a 14-minute option. In recent months, by virtue of his email links, I have read several epistles in their entirety, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Esther, Ezra and most notably the book of Nehemiah.
Pastor Swanson has effectively communicated his passion for Nehemiah in ongoing posts, supporting the daily reading. This chronicle of an unlikely building contractor is pretty easy to skip over for the average Bible reader. Nehemiah is sad to hear the temple is destroyed and sets out to rebuild it. He recruits help. He records long lists ancient names of contributors, complete with geneological references that contribute even more unusual names that haven’t been pronounced in centuries. He fights off the high and mighty who want to see him fail. As he nears completion in 52 days he recruits the people to staff the temple and returns a whole people to God. It is anything but boring when read with the gentle prods of Pastor Swanson.
In fact, it is amazingly similar to the experience of 2×2 — rebuilding a church after (or during) an attempt to totally destroy us. Nehemiah faced the the same behind-the-scenes conniving and intrigue, the same obstacles of human nature. Nehemiah, under the gentle guidance of Pastor Swanson, empowers us.
Recently, through our Twitter account, I’ve discovered Bishop T.D. Jakes. I’ve seen this guy on TV as a frequent talk show guest, but I never paid much attention to him. I won’t point you to his website. It’s easy enough to find and heavily monetized. That’s not what I admire about his ministry. His Twitter ministry is very effective. He tweets just one inspiring thought a day — just what a lot of us hunkered in the Christian trenches need. A sample:
God sees your tears! God sees your circumstances! God sees your situation! God sees your faith and perseverance! WAIT ON HIM!
These Christian leaders are mastering the 21st century art of preaching.
How do you present yourself, your church, on Twitter?
The best advice is to be yourself. But individuals tweet, not organizations. How does your congregation represent itself as a community?
When you sign up for Twitter, you will be asked to upload an Avatar — a photo or image that represents you. Avatars are more important in Twitter than anywhere. They help you scan the long list of tweets you will receive to help you sort out the ones that most interest you.
Experts advise us to use a photo of a person. People relate to people not logos, they tell us.
Churches include many people and focusing on one is a recipe for cult-building.
The most likely candidate for a one-person Twitter persona is a pastor. There are plusses and minuses to this.
The plusses
The pastor knows the congregation’s mission.
We assume he or she is working all week on profound interpretations of scripture that will make good tweets.
You can use a photo of the pastor as an Avatar.
We assume he or she knows the community and can relate church life to what is happening community-wide.
We assume a similar knowledge of individual church members, so messages that resonate with members should be easy.
The minuses
Pastors are often resistant to social media and would need to be brought “on board.” This could stall your entry into social media for years.
Pastors are leaders but they are not the church. You must make sure that a tweeting pastor is doing so on behalf of the congregation and not building a personal “tribe.”
Pastors come and go. If people follow your congregation’s Twitter presence centered on a pastor, you will lose followers and have to start over when that pastor moves on, which statistically is something like every three to seven years.
Analysis of social media efforts when focused on the efforts of one person, could be devisive and spill into other aspects of a congregation’s relationship with a pastor.
We are all new at this so we are looking for solutions along with everyone else. Perhaps two Twitter entities are needed. The pastor can have one which can follow him or her wherever they plan to go. Equal attention should be given to the Twitter voice of the people.
Talk it out in your congregation. Perhaps you can have a team of tweeters, voicing for the congregation. A worship voice once a day. A social ministry voice. An education voice. A fellowship voice. And a pastor’s evangelical voice. Maybe there is a way to indicate via your Avatar that your Twitter account is a team effort. A tight team photo?
This is one of many things to think through. It is worth the effort. Please, let us know how you solve this problem.
We tweeted a link to this compelling advice from one of social media’s leading voices.
Since we are just starting with Twitter and have a small following, we are providing a link on this post. His arguments are on target. Church leaders need only substitute the ecclesiastic equivalent to the business world to understand the analogy. His advice applies to any church serious about mission.
Here’s the link. Please, TWEET it as part of our experiment.
Google Twitter. The Twitter site will come up first in Google results and you will see the sub-option SIGN UP. Click on that and follow the instructions.
You will need to supply your name and an email address. You can use your current email or open a free account dedicated to Twitter — it’s up to you. We did not have a dedicated 2×2 email address before. We opened a free G-mail account with Google.
You will have some options in creating a profile. Twitter will guide you through the start-up steps. Don’t be alarmed that you are asked to choose some people or organizations to follow right from the start. Twitter will present lists of celebrities who might appeal to your interests. You may have no interest in any of them. (We followed Lady Gaga, Steve Carrell and National Geographic. How’s that for eclectic!)
All of this is just to get you going. Twitter is all about following and being followed and they are trying to teach you good Twitter habits from the start. You can unfollow (stop following) any person or organization at any time. Stick with the ones that are fun. Click “unfollow” if they annoy you (there will be some that bombard you with self-promotion). By taking note of what annoys us, we will be able to figure out how we want to be perceived on Twitter.
So what should we tweet about? That IS the question.
We noticed that South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America began their Advent season by tweeting the first verse of a popular Advent hymn:
Light one candle to watch for Messiah. Let the light banish darkness.
That’s a nice thought. We will retweet it. (More on retweeting later).
But we are also remembering the advice from the pros: social media is about connecting with others. If we want followers, our tweets have to appeal to others or people will just gloss over them. So we are going to work on a mix of material to use in our tweets. We won’t avoid the message of the Gospel but we will talk about things that might appeal to an even broader audience. In addition we will write about things happening here in our neighborhood (roughly East Falls, Germantown, Wissahickon, Manayunk and Roxborough and the tail end of City Line Avenue in Philadelphia).
We are going to start with something just for fun. It’s a riddle. We’ll pose the question in the first tweet and an hour or so later, we will tweet the answer.
Remember, we are new at this, too. This is a process of discovery for all of us.
So today’s task won’t take more than 10 minutes and half of that will be first time jitters.
Retweet the South Dakota Synod’s tweet.
Tweet our own riddle.
Tweet the answer to our riddle.
If you want to take part in the experiment. Start your Twitter account and start following us! We will follow you back! Let’s see if Twitter is as powerful as they say it is!
Join Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she visits small churches "under cover" to learn what people would never share if they knew they were talking to their bishop.
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Contact Info
You can reach
Judy Gotwald,
the moderator of 2x2,
at
creation@dca.net
or 215 605 8774
Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
2×2 Sections
Where in the World is 2×2?
On Isaiah 30:15b
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
2×2 is running an experiment using Twitter. We began in December. We have learned that we barely have our feet wet in its potential and we are still learning how to use it within the church. We will continue our experiment indefinitely, so that we can advise other congregations.
