Rick Warren recently shared a vision that has tremendous implications for the local church. With half a million of his own Twitter followers, Warren stated, “I want pastors to dominate Twitter. We don’t want celebrities dominating these things; we want pastors using this for the Good News.”
But amidst the thrill of this vision, a note of caution must be sounded. There is a course correction some of us may need to make in order to see Warren’s thrilling vision become reality.
When we tweet, we need to be sure we’re not perceived as “posturing” when we intend to be “proclaiming”.
I’m as guilty as anyone in this regard.
It’s not the intent, but with 140 characters or less, if we’re not careful, our tweets can be misconstrued as posturing.
And ultimately this could diminish our social media impact.
But I believe we can avoid the appearance of posturing if we ask 3 questions when we tweet;
Question #1: Could the “heart” of this tweet be misunderstood?
An example would be when we state something like, “So grateful for the 5,000 new people who showed up at our church last weekend,” or “Humbled to be able to baptize 12,000 people in a single service,” etc.
Even though we may not be intending to grandstand it could be perceived that way. We need to be careful.
Question #2: Does this tweet tell the whole story?
Twitter is not the place to air our church’s dirty laundry. But sometimes it can appear that nothing ever goes wrong in ministry.
Perhaps for every tweet that begins, “Pumped for…”, “Stoked by…” or “Excited to…” we need the occasional tweet that begins, “Concerned about…”
Question #3: Am I tweeting about God’s activity beyond my ministry?
It’s only natural that the front row seat God has granted each one of us will be reflected in our Twitter feed. But without intending to, we can be leaving the impression that we’re not aware of, or enthused about, God’s activity beyond the scope of our own church.
We might get more long-term mileage out of Twitter when we leverage it to tell a broader Kingdom story.
Bottom line? Let’s always be mindful of the limitations of 140 characters, and strive to ensure that our message reflects our intentions.
Because when it comes to Kingdom advancement via social media the potential is huge! So with wisdom, discernment and boldness, let’s go for it!
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