My Husband's Hand: To Tweet or not to Tweet?

I have been looking into all the different social media outlets and trying to discover the benefits of each one.

This week I will be looking at Facebook and twitter. A lot of the older people they may be wondering, what is twitter? The truth of the matter is that social media is here to stay, you could hand a three year old a mobile device and they could probably do a better job of navigating and using it than most older people.

The things that can be done on these two social media platforms are huge. As a pastor the simple things that we can do with twitter and Facebook alone are huge! Just say you have half of your congregation on facebook, and a quarter of them on twitter. Realistically you can reach 75% of your church in matter of minutes.

If, for example, you hear of a family who could use some help moving into a new house, bam throw it out there in social media, and see how fast you get some people to come help you.

As a pastor you only get to spend a few hours a week with different individuals. But, thanks to social media, a pastor can know follow, everyone in his church (everyone with social media), and in a way be with them all week knowing what is going on in there lives. You can get reminders from Facebook of when peoples birthdays are and you can see if they are doing something that may need some help with, the list goes on.

I think one thing that is so great about twitter, Facebook and Instagram is the fact that we get to know people better.

A Quick example:

I just this morning saw that one of my Facebook friends loves nascar and that they are having a baby. Just in one morning found out two different things that are pretty big in this individuals life.

That alone is one of the biggest things about social networks like these that I really like from a pastor's position.

Like I said, you can quickly reach everyone in the church, or other people you know. The power of prayer is huge. The good, old prayer chain is great but can take awhile to call everyone up, and to catch everyone by phone. Now being able to send out a message, or tweet about a prayer request can be so fast. In matter of minutes you can have hundreds of people praying for something.

 Social media can be such a huge task in ministry if we allow it to be. Like I have said many times though, it is a tool, and shouldn’t be our main focus when comes to ministry. We need to spend time face to face with people, and not allow social networking to be the only connection we have with people.

So tweet or not to tweet?

I think as people in ministry we need to take advantage of any of these things, and figure out best ways to use them to help expand God’s Kingdom.