Why God called pastors to preach, not to Twitter

Posted: April 22nd, 2009 | Author: | Tags: , | 3 Comments »

Twitter is a fine tool for diaries, but it’s not designed for preaching.

Check this little sermon, which quotes Oswald Chambers (of My Utmost fame).

id you become a necessity to someone elses life, you are out of God’s will. -chambers

You can’t just leave a statement hanging like that because it’s so obviously incorrect.

  1. Are my wife and I out of God’s will?
  2. Am I out of God’s will for caring for my child?
  3. Was David out of God’s will by helping Jonathan’s lame son, Mephibosheth?
  4. Was Paul out of God’s will when he found it necessary to have someone help him pen his letters?
  5. etc.

Wait, you say, I’m taking it out of context. Exactly yes, and exactly no. My point it that Twitter gives no context. I’m not picking on the preacher here (I think Chambers got it wrong in the first place). What I’m saying is that 140 characters is not really enough for anyone to accurately tell us what God’s will is. 66 books is more like it.

Similar Posts:

3 Comments on “Why God called pastors to preach, not to Twitter”

  1. 1 Twit Conway said on April 22nd, 2009:

    Ahh yes.

    Btw, I just love how much easier it is to follow God now. I can ‘fellowship’ without having to fellowship ( your post: For some, this is a bug). I expect I’ll be able to become a follower of his when he ‘Tweets’ with me. It’s also very easy to become his friend now, thanks to Facebook. Yep, God is on Facebook. Imagine how many more followers and friends he would have had if God had used Twitter and Facebook during the Great Awakening!!

  2. 2 James Duncan said on April 22nd, 2009:

    I want to beat Tommy to a new bumper sticker line: Tweet’s for Twits.

    No offense intended, Mr Conway.

  3. 3 Tommy F. said on April 22nd, 2009:

    I thought God invented Twitter and Facebook for evangelism. I’m confident AGore didn’t so I figured it must have been God. And now we have JDuncan – gasp – attacking it.

    So, JDuncan relax on the twitter/context issue. Context? That takes work, patience, and actual reading of pages, rather than 140 characters. I like the twitter version of reading books: One quote at a time.

    Twitter’s genius is only realized by a true person of “today,” and certainly not yesterday. It’s so much easier to read the highlights, which twitter enables. Who wants to read an entire book, when BCoop summarizes all of his readings through twitter? Recently, I stopped visiting reading entire books. I just wait until BCoop offers up a nice catchy phrase from SKierkegaard or OChambers. I’m positive that whatever quote is lifted can be applied correctly. And Ace gives reviews every now and then, too. They’ve really helped me reach my full potential of not spending so much time reading, and now I just read what they tell me about a book that they want me to read. Why would I return to reading full books now?

    Yes – I know – it’s a tad ironic that my defense of twitter has taken longer than 140 characters, which is why it’s put here rather than on twitter. Twitter really ought to rethink that model and allow its users 140,000 characters. Of course, then, I wouldn’t like it. Someone might actually write something long, requiring me to read it.

    My frustration with twitter is simple: people think I care about what they’re doing. I don’t care when people go to bed or what they eat for dinner or whether they’re on their way home. What an odd exercise in self-worship. I’d better post something … people are waiting on me to inform them of some menial, typical event in my life. So, please twitter fans. Just stop. Stop using and stop reading. Go outside and play.