I came to Twitter reluctantly. The benefits of 'micro-blogging' my oft drudged daily routine to solicited followers seemed...narcissistic. Maybe there's still truism in that initial feeling, but I'm also sold on the fact that social networking mediums are a powerful force in our world today.When I originally wrote this piece, the future course of Iran was playing out in the streets of Tehran...history in the making. With the media blackout imposed by the reigning power, news was finding it's way to the rest of the world via Twitter, Facebook and other such mediums. The U.S. State Department requested that Twitter delay a scheduled maintenance outage mid-week so the flow of information would continue. Just typing State Department and Twitter in the same sentence would have been completely incomprehensible to me a year ago.
For those of you resisting the fad, Twitter is a web-based social networking service that allows users to 'tweet' 140 characters at a time to their followers. According to a recent front page Time magazine article, Twitter is changing the way we look at our world. Some would say it already has... Most of you know I try to stay on top of the latest trends in internet innovation. My motivation is really quite simple, if it draws the interest of people...Christians need to be there with WWJD bracelets on representing Christ. As I've stated in numerous blog post, the internet is only evil because evil people are there. Evil people who need to know about the love of God...even for them.
So now, like my fellow blogging buddy Katdish and Matt among others, I'm a Twitterer (?). Katdish just calls us Twitter ho's, but I don't think that's a sanctioned title by Twitter. I'm tweeting about daily task and thoughts, prayer request, good articles or blogs I've read...any number of things each day. I must say it's quite liberating in the fact that I have yet another daily opportunity to witness for God. I receive prayer request daily from people which I add to my daily prayer list...sometimes taking a moment to stop and pray the minute they're received.
At the risk of sounding Pharisee-like, I think it's important for Christians to acknowledge our piousness to the rest of the world. After all, Christ hung on a cross in a public spectacle that changed the world as it had never been changed. I'm not trying to undermine the importance of humility by any means, but people need to know they are loved and cared about by Christ and Christ Followers. If one tweet can show that love and bring another soul to heaven...color me there.
Twitter or Facebook may not be your thing and that's perfectly okay. Just don't avoid them because of the negative stigma we often place on internet based application as Christians. God needs to be all over the world wide web too...
