As Christians, we are called to engage the culture- using what is good for the kingdom and rejecting that which is bad. In light of this, Christians should take notice of the increase of interest in social media- aspects of the internet that are used to build community (whether perceived as real or not). This should give us notice as one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is that of community and the unbelieving world is essentially crying out for a communal need, attempting to find it wherever they can. One of the biggest examples of social media is what you are reading right now: blogs. Other examples include link aggregation sites such as delicious.com, and social sites such as facebook.com. [if you are a member of facbook, you can join my blog's network.] One of the social media sites that has risen to popularity is the site twitter.com. This blog post will look at ways Christians can engage twitter for the kingdom.

Twitter is a microblogging site where users answer the question, “what are you doing?” It gives access (to those who want it) to information as it happens, all in 140 characters or less at a time. As people update what they are doing, those who are following them can receive their updates via twitter’s site, text message, stand alone programs, and various other ways. The question before us as Christians is, “can we use twitter for the kingdom?” If you come to this site, and have noticed my twitter updates in the side column, you probably already know my answer.

The overarching reason for using twitter (and I am not going to say that you must use it) is transparency. This can be broken down into two categories: transparency with believers, and transparency with unbelievers. We’ll tackle transparency with believers first, since it is the most multi-faceted.

With Believers. There are a few ways that twitter helps us connect with other believers. The first, and most obvious, is prayer requests. Through traveling and the internet I have made a lot of friends all over the world. The internet has proven a great tool in keeping in contact with them. It simply isn’t feasible to keep up with all of them strictly by means of phone or letters. When a pressing need arises that I need prayer for, letters may prove to slow for emergencies, and phone calls would cause sky rocketing bills. However, with twitter, I am able to type out my request and everyone who follows me can be instantly updated. This is true even when the prayer request is implicit. I’ve been writing a lot of papers lately, and have received messages from people following me on twitter who have said that they have been praying for me (and believe me, it is much appreciated!).

Second, it allows missionaries to update friends and family. The best example of this I can give is my good friend and dear brother Aaron Marshall and his wonderful wife Nichole. Aaron and Nichole are about embark to South Africa to join a church-planting movement for the next 3.5 years. Aaron does an excellent job of making the case for kingdom use of social media, and has promised to keep us up to date through the use of his blog, email, and twitter. Because I can set twitter to send his updates to my phone via text messaging (SMS), I get up-to-the-minute information to see how God is working in south africa, as well as prayer requests from Aaron and his Wife. This is an exciting way to stay connected to my good friend and fellow Sojourn member.

Third and Fourth, it allows us to weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. This command from Paul (Romans 12:15) is simply a necessary part of community life, or living in harmony with one another (16). This is particularly true of the local expression of the church, but also necessarily true of the church universal. Paul also tells us that when one member of the body suffers, the whole body suffers, and when one member is honored, all are honored (1 Corinthians 12:14-26). Again, contextually this is in the local expression, but also necessarily true of the entire church. With updates on twitter, fellow members of the local church, as well as members of the universal church, can be updated to mourn with you or rejoice with you. This gives us further transparency in our lives, and allows each of us to get to know each other better. [In the local context, this can be of no use, however, if it doesn't spill out into how we do life together].

Fifth, it can keep us accountable. As our brothers and sisters see into our lives through this transparency, they will begin to see patterns of whether we are honoring God with how we choose to spend our time or not. We must be careful with this, though, as not everything we do gets updated on twitter. So just because you see someone is “playing a video game” doesn’t mean necessarily that they are not doing other things throughout the day as well. However, if I have a paper do, and I’m constantly updating with “doing x so I don’t have to write my paper” where x changes to something else all day long, then I am not being a good steward of where God has placed me; I am not glorifying God in my academics.

Twitter can be used in each of these ways to help build authentic community- but only if it is used rightly. As with all good things, the value of twitter can be twisted. For example, it could be used to replace actual community with one another. Instead of being involved with each other in the dirty and the glorious, our lives can be delegated to each of us sitting behind our computer screens. This is not community. This doesn’t mean that we should just ditch social media like twitter, but only serves to reinforce the fact that we must discipline ourselves- as we must do with all things, e.g. food, sex, money, etc.

With unbelievers. Really, everything that was said above can apply here, but in a different way. The transparency that twitter allows with unbelievers allows them to see us at our best and worst. They can see that Christians aren’t ‘perfect,’ (albeit, hypocritically defined), but that we still sin. They can also see repentance in action. They are able to see us as we rejoice and glorify God for the good things in life… and also for the hard times. They can see our hearts for the poor and downcast. And hopefully, it can help start conversations. Aaron (see above) has mentioned several times where twitter updates have brought unbelieving coworkers to him to discuss matters of faith. Again, we cannot simply rely on twitter to do this- we should go out and build relationships and discuss these issues on our own account- but neither should we reject the opportunity twitter affords us.

This all seems good so far, but isn’t twitter limited only to itself? If someone isn’t following you on twitter what good does it do?

The great thing about social media, is that each aspect of it tends to sync with one another. For example, I have set up facebook to update my “status” every time I update twitter. Not only does this mean less time having to update sites, but it brings my updates to a wider audience. Where I only have 85 people receiving my updates on twitter [find me here], I have over 500 on facebook that are mostly old friends from high school and undergrad that I have been reacquainted with. I have received several messages from friends who knew me in high school, when I was mostly anti-theistic, who are amazed at the change, and have gotten in to many good conversations that I would not have been in otherwise. So yes, while twitter is limited to people who use it normally, the ability to sync it to other social media such as this blog and facebook allows for a wider audience.