The voice of God should not be 'tweet'

April 17, 2009 09:40 am

— Some people in Seattle heard the voice of the Holy Spirit on Easter Sunday and it sounded like this: tweet.
Y’all might think I am being sacrilegious but consider this: I am not the one who told his congregants to bring their iPhones and Twitter during the service. It was the pastor of Mars Hill Church, who said it was a good way to spread the message.
I’m not sure if the minister chose Twittering because it was Easter and Twitter’s bird logo looks a little like a chick or if the slang for Twitter’s posts — “tweets” — so closely resembles the name of those colorful little marshmallow Easter treats, Peeps.
Maybe he was tired of all those teenagers texting in church and finally decided to join them, or maybe that egg they cracked in the frying pan for that drug commercial was HIS brain.
Any-hoo.
The fact is, the pastor’s entire congregation Twittered all during the service and it apparently was a big hit.
For those from the dark ages when church was a place where people sang hymns and took short naps during the sermon, Twitter is the latest in online social networking.
But here’s what I’d like to know — and I don’t mean to come across like a cynical journalist-type here — but who was keeping track of whether parishioners were Twittering about “Christ the Lord has risen today ha-a-a-a-allelujah” or making a grocery list?
Oh, like you haven’t done it.
I myself have been known to write on my church bulletin during the sermon a time or two, but of course I limit myself to only comments that are pertinent to the message. On Easter, when our minister said: “Jesus doesn’t love us because we’re lovely. Jesus doesn’t love us because we’re lovable,” I nudged my daughter Shannon and wrote on my bulletin: “I am, though.”
I just need to work on the humility thing a little.
You know someone was Twitterin’ about the woman in front of her who needed an appointment with a stylist because, dang, those roots were deep enough to sustain hurricane-force winds, and another who was tweetin’ the friend behind her to make sure she didn’t have visible panty lines when she stood up to pray for the fortitude to be less concerned about appearances.
I’m not so sure we need to be tweetin’ and twitterin’ in church. For one thing, it sounds just a little obscene. For another, church is all about reverence, a hushed respect, bowed heads and wearing uncomfortable shoes.
It has nothing to do with having fun.
That’s why God created IHOP and those pancakes with the little fruit smiley faces.
I don’t want to go to church at the Last Chance Social Club and Internet Café.
Plus, I’d like to know how Great-grandma is supposed to know when to stand up and sit down if no one is up there announcing it, for Heaven’s sake.
I guess the pastor’s experiment had one side benefit: He had a churchful of sleepless in Seattle that day.

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