Tweeting during a sermon is nothing new, nor is using your smartphone during the sermon (excellent post here). It’s been the center of debate plenty of times and continues to be a hot button in many Churches.
I believe the denomination, demographic and geography of your Church has a lot to do with the overall view of using your smartphone during Church and involving yourself in sermon tweets.
Tyndale’s recent survey on Church and Technology gives us some perspective on smartphones and tweeting during sermons.
Here some of their findings relating to mobile technology in the Church:
- 74% of Church members read an eBible.
- 21% discourage reading eBibles.
- 8.2% say the use of technology goes against tradition.
- 1.4% believe there are theological problems regarding the use of technology.
- 1.9% of Churches have decided to avoid or limit the use of technology.
As for the last three stats, they are low enough to ignore. I believe there will always be a nominal rejection of technology mixed with religion. The 8.2% does seem a little high, but will only get lower in time. Although this is relating to technology in general, I think it’s safe to apply it this specifically. It always cracks me up when people say technology goes against tradition, as they read the Holy Scriptures from a piece of technology (a printed book).
I find the 21% that discourage reading eBibles in Church to be a bit discouraging. Why anyone would discourage the reading of scripture is beyond me. Reading from a smartphone, tablet or e-reader is the same as reading them from the printed page! It looks like we need to work harder at understanding how technology relates to Christian life, just as John Dyer has done in his latest book, From the Garden to the City.
For those Churches in the 74%, I would be curious to know if they would take that support one step further and support tweeting during a sermon. Maybe even include screen-casting tweets like they do at many conferences (more here).
Would this take things to a “new level” or take us where we shouldn’t be going?
Where do we draw the line?
We put our Scripture on the wall screens where we project our music so that if someone forgot their Bible or the pastor is jumping to a Scripture too fast to find it, it’s there.
We do that as well, though often our pastor comes up with scripture he hadn’t planned on sharing and the tech folks can’t pull it up in time — it pays to have your own Bible (in any form) most of the time!
Very true. In any form!
It’s practically become standard, eh!
Our pastor often encourages tweeting during sermons, and he preaches from an iPad. Not sure we’d want something like screen-casted Tweets up there (at least in the foreseeable future), but I love when churches experiment with this kind of stuff.
Agreed. Sounds like you have a really cool Pastor.
I live-tweet every sermon for my church – using the church account. We’re a large predominantly upper-middle-class affluent church and most of our membership does not tweet. I attend a contemporary service and have been live tweeting for probably two years. My husband and daughter occasionally tweet from their own accounts as they sit next to me. We still get some strange looks from the congregation!
It’s been nothing but positive for us; we’ve had many people express appreciation for the live tweets and I think it’s a great way for others to share insights with their followers. And sometimes someone else will catch a point I miss, so I love it.
I love tweeting in church!
Just found your site today. Love it — and love the marriage of church and technology! CRACKING UP — like snorting laughing!! — at your point about reading the Word from a piece of technology such as a printed book. No, since it has been in existence in MY lifetime, it isn’t new. Therefore, it should always be. (Sometimes I see myself tilting that direction and have to catch myself!)
As for the 21% that “discourage reading eBibles” — I would like to know how the question was posed. Sometimes I answer a survey question and think, “Well, I wouldn’t say it THAT way, but… okay…” I have eBibles — on my Kindle app on my phone and downloaded to my phone, etc. — but I PREFER my paper Bible. Does that mean that I discourage reading eBibles? Of course, my 100 year old grandmother can no longer hold a large book — so an ebook of any kind is preferable to her, including the Bible (especially since she would need a large print Bible). But I’m with you — I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading the Bible in any form I could get it to them.
Great point, Sarah, about not considering a print book to be tech since it’s “always” been there. One of my friends does refuse to use an eBible because he feels like its lends itself to skimming rather than really chewing on Scripture.
Phil and Sarah,
Is television technology?
I want to say “of course” but I sense a trap.
It’s a trap!
Well, I guess that makes me a jedi.
I know of one church which uses tweets to allow people to send in questions for when they do a Q&A session at the end of some of their series. I’ve also heard of a few churches encouraging members to tweet key points which the pastor might give during their sermon.
I don’t really believe that there is a “too far” that we can go with technology, so long as we don’t make everything about JUST the tech in our church services.
Amen.
I like the idea of tweeting key points. I think that would be more effective than “filling-in-the-black” sermon notes!
I tweet during sermons all the time. Often it’s tweeting something the speaker has said. That doesn’t exempt me from the occasional stink eye from those giving their disapproval. I even had a fellow church-goer accuse me of texting until I explained myself.
There’s always a stink-eyer
<— not a stink eye.
We use social media pretty good at !mpact. CNN did a segment on us called “Social Media in the Church”. You can check out the video here: http://imptdcd.me/tto0O9
Nice! Thanks for the share, man!
Eric, I tweeted this article to my twitter followers and I posted the question whether people should tweet during sermons or not. The overwhelming majority of responses that I got was, “no.”
Most of the people thought that one should tweet after the service and pay attention to the sermon.
We thought about live tweeting the sermon when our Pastor preaches. The way we were going to do it was that we would have a person at the back of the church tweeting whenever our Pastor says something really cool and we would tweet the Bible verses that he uses.
However, this person who is tweeting would be expected to attend an additional service where he could worship and pay attention to the sermon and then live tweet at another service. This works out at church because we have four morning services with the same message.
Don’t you think if you’re listening for good quotes and typing out the scriptures used that you end up paying more attention?
Yes I do think that you are absolutely right, that one would pay more attention if they were about to tweet a sermon.
For me, unfortunately I’m not a very good multitasker. When I’ve tweeted in the past during a sermon, I ended up concentrating on creating my tweet and zoning out what my Pastor was saying while I was typing. For those who can walk and chew gum at the same time, I’m sure that this would be great
I suppose this varies from person to person.
I’m not sure that tweeting is any different than the note taking my husband often does. The only difference is that my “notes” are published tweets. I don’t see how they detract from my attending to the message; if anything, I’m forced to pay closer attention. If my mind wanders, everyone knows it.
I only attend one worship service; and I never feel as if I’ve lost any comprehension from the tweeting.
I agree.