I read Social Media: 40 things your ministry can do and for some reason (maybe it's obvious), I am amused. Hence my own (very silly) list of 10 things a church can communicate in 140 characters or less:
1. Send emoticons to depict the ‘mood’ of the church at that moment – for those who keep track of such things and even for those who don’t.
2. Tweet who to vote for on American Idol (and all the other singing realities) based on scriptural analysis of the ‘best’ candidate.
3. Tweet a flash mob time and place for something really cool that turns out to be . . . well . . . a sermon. It’ll only work once, but every preacher deserves to have an audience of thousands of young people at least once in her life . . . doesn’t she?
4. A popularity poll for the preacher – yeah, that’ll be great.
5. A contest for those actually in church that week, to see who can do the pithiest, most clever distillation of Sunday’s sermon (140 characters or less, of course). For the brave, might even make that the church’s sign for the week – connecting various media is always a good thing.
6. (I don’t tweet with any regularity and then only from my computer, so I don’t know if this can be done, but if type size can be adjusted . . .) Weekly message from very tiny type, larger until it fills the screen . . . Jesus is coming! (Going from whisper to shout with type size is always fun).
7. Preview Sunday’s sermon theme as if it were gossip using the looked-for abbreviations . . . “ICYMI” [in case you missed it . . .] “OH” [overheard], etc. – might look something like this: ICYMI I OH @ JC bout u! Ck out Sundy my plc (“In case you missed it, I overheard at Jesus’ web site [something] about you! Check it out Sunday at my place.”
8. Just to see who’s paying attention, tweet a scripture that doesn’t exist – might actually get a conversation going.
9. And to drive everyone to distraction, tweet your entire sermon in twitter speak, one message after another – it’ll take a lot of time, but it might be fun. And not to worry – tweet death messages are just symbols of words, so you should be okay.
10. And even for those (like me) who don’t believe in it, tweet like the rapture’s already here, just falling off in the middle of your message.
Remember: we of the larger social media world are bombarded daily with messages from friends and strangers and only a very few have the time, stamina and interest, to go the distance. The rest of us tune out in defense against the sheer volume of it all. So here is my serious recommendation for tweeting, fb’ing, etc., etc, etc.: Only say something if you really have something to say that someone else might actually want or need to hear.
Now there’s a thought.
1. Send emoticons to depict the ‘mood’ of the church at that moment – for those who keep track of such things and even for those who don’t.
2. Tweet who to vote for on American Idol (and all the other singing realities) based on scriptural analysis of the ‘best’ candidate.
3. Tweet a flash mob time and place for something really cool that turns out to be . . . well . . . a sermon. It’ll only work once, but every preacher deserves to have an audience of thousands of young people at least once in her life . . . doesn’t she?
4. A popularity poll for the preacher – yeah, that’ll be great.
5. A contest for those actually in church that week, to see who can do the pithiest, most clever distillation of Sunday’s sermon (140 characters or less, of course). For the brave, might even make that the church’s sign for the week – connecting various media is always a good thing.
6. (I don’t tweet with any regularity and then only from my computer, so I don’t know if this can be done, but if type size can be adjusted . . .) Weekly message from very tiny type, larger until it fills the screen . . . Jesus is coming! (Going from whisper to shout with type size is always fun).
7. Preview Sunday’s sermon theme as if it were gossip using the looked-for abbreviations . . . “ICYMI” [in case you missed it . . .] “OH” [overheard], etc. – might look something like this: ICYMI I OH @ JC bout u! Ck out Sundy my plc (“In case you missed it, I overheard at Jesus’ web site [something] about you! Check it out Sunday at my place.”
8. Just to see who’s paying attention, tweet a scripture that doesn’t exist – might actually get a conversation going.
9. And to drive everyone to distraction, tweet your entire sermon in twitter speak, one message after another – it’ll take a lot of time, but it might be fun. And not to worry – tweet death messages are just symbols of words, so you should be okay.
10. And even for those (like me) who don’t believe in it, tweet like the rapture’s already here, just falling off in the middle of your message.
Remember: we of the larger social media world are bombarded daily with messages from friends and strangers and only a very few have the time, stamina and interest, to go the distance. The rest of us tune out in defense against the sheer volume of it all. So here is my serious recommendation for tweeting, fb’ing, etc., etc, etc.: Only say something if you really have something to say that someone else might actually want or need to hear.
Now there’s a thought.
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