If You Twitter Does That Make You a Twit?

Again last night someone asked me, "Just what is Twitter?". And once again, I found myself stumbling around for words. Every time I try to explain Twitter to someone, it seems like a remarkably dumb concept.

Twitter is, in its most basic sense, a communications tool. You have up to 140 characters to get your message across. It might be as simple as declaring "Studying for Sunday's sermon." Or it might be a bit more complex, like communicating a prayer request or a special need within the church. In any event, you have 140 characters (that includes letters, spaces, punctuation, etc) to communicate, so it forces you to be conservative in your word choices.

After that explanation, people are still perplexed. "So, it's like texting?" No, not really. If I text someone, I usually have a specific message that I want delivered to a specific person, like "Kacie, what time will you be home?". However, when I tweat, I am just communicating to a larger audience. Such tweats rarely are profound and generally require no action or follow up by those who might read them.

Or people will ask, "So it's like a blog?". Well, in a way--except you only have a limited ability to communicate, so the message must be straightforward and simple.

To read a tweat, one must be a follower. At the present time, I have 51 followers on Twitter, most of whom I do not know personally. (By comparison, actor Ashton Kutchner has over 1 million followers). However, several of my "followers" are friends, mostly from Life Spring. I follow nearly 70 people on Twitter. Again, most of these folks are people I have never met. Some of them are prominent evangelicals in the church & publishing fields--like Pastor Max Lucado or Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.

I must admit that I found it particularly interesting when Max Lucado was tweating from his recent mission trip in Africa. But I also find it interesting when Ryan Meek tweats about Lily or Stephanie Kotchavar tweats about Hank. I'd love it if more people from Life Spring were twittering. I think it enhances the sense of community that we are all seeking.

There is a recent trend in Twitter-land that bothers me greatly. The media--including the mainstream media--has recently devoted a lot of attention to people who are twittering during worship services. Since you can post tweats from your cell phone as easily as from a computer, twittering "on the go" is pretty popular. But twittering during a worship service just seems wrong to me.

There are enough distractions to keep us from giving God our full and undivided attention. Our minds naturally wander to our troubles and trials. Or a baby cries. Or we can't take our eyes off of Bro. Jones who keeps nodding off and nearly falls out of his seat each time just before he wake up. The last thing we need is one more distraction.

So add Twitter to the list of things that can be good and useful and beneficial to the Kingdom and to our effort to reach out to one another which Satan has found a way to corrupt and defile. It doesn't make Twitter "bad" any more than television is inherently "bad" or books are innately "evil". But it does require us to think about the ways we use such things and whether ultimately they bring us closer to God or take us farther away.