Floating Sheep conducted a “tweet study” on the words “beer” and “church.”
The results were interesting to say the least, as geotagging was part of the research.
After sorting through 10 million geotagged tweets from June 22nd to June 29th, here were their results:
- 17,686 tweets included the word “church.”
- 14,405 tweets included the word “beer.”
Here’s a look at the geographical breakdown:
As you can see, there’s definitely a tread.
This reminds me of an earlier study, showing that Christian Leaders Dominate Twitter.
Initially, it feels like we’re somehow “winning.”
“Hey everybody! We beat ‘bear’ on Twitter!”
Sounds silly, doesn’t it?
I think it’s important to keep studies like this in perspective.
So What?
Sure. This is cool (I guess.)
But who cares if we dominate Twitter?
I think there’s some value in it. It’s where people are and the Church needs to be present to reach them. But are we beating divorce? Pornography? Poverty? You can see where I’m going with this. It doesn’t mean a thing for us to beat “beer” if we’re losing in areas that are much more important.
The last thing the Church needs to become, is all talk and no action. Maybe we need to be doing something other than “church” to tweet about? What do you think?
So Then?
What this study does show us, is the Church is actively leveraging technology.
That’s awesome!
After decades of being behind the technology curve, we seem to be finally catching up.
This also tells me that the Church has got some volume in its voice. There’s a lot of Christians tweeting, and that’s great. Let’s not waste this opportunity. We seem to have some of the world’s attention, so what are we going to say?
Let’s say something that’s worth hearing. And most of all, let’s make sure that our real lives are worth following, and not just our tweets.
[via CNN]
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