Recently on a whim I, along with a few other members of our church, decided to explore the usefulness of live tweeting during sermons. I had recently participated in general denominational conference where live tweeting was encouraged. There were some really dynamic conversations occurring online while not actually interrupting the message being delivered. Real-time honest discussion and feedback of the information being delivered was likely the biggest gift I was able to take away from the conference.
Naysayers will complain that we were not really paying attention if all we did was tweet back and forth, but live tweeting is no different from bringing a pad and pen and taking notes or whispering to your neighbor (who hasn’t been guilty of that). You are just participating in a collective online note taking effort.
Our implementation was a little different from what occurs on a larger scale. We are a rural Church with what is considered small to medium range attendance.
Five minutes before we started the service I posted on our Church Facebook Group that we would experiment with live tweeting during the service and posted the hash tag to use.
Things we learned from the first week of tweeting:
- Do not start on a whim. Make sure your approach is methodical and well planned. There was a little confusion for those who were new to twitter on how to utilize hash tags. Educate, educate, educate.
- Make sure you have pastoral approval before launching. Our pastor is a very forgiving individual and was able to overlook my presumptuous nature and see the potential for the opportunity. Most pastors will not respond this way. If you are going to be broadcasting his message into the ethos in real-time, make sure he knows it first.
- Select your hash tag wisely. Because of the hasty nature in which I started this project we utilized a hash tag the first week that had a lot of noise in it. The noise being other people who were using the same abbreviation for purposes that had nothing to do with our Church or its message. If we are going to be a vital live tweeting Church we must make sure when our hash tag is searched we will be virtually the only results.
- Make friends with the world. If you twitter account is a who’s who among the Christian world, your message simply preaching to the choir. Not to say they don’t appreciate the message, but wouldn’t the impact be greater if we were able to reach the un-Churched and unsaved?
Things we learned from the second week of tweeting:
- Discover the purpose of your live tweeting. Make sure the motivation is not because we want to be cool or cutting edge. Make sure it has a purpose. We utilize it like a collective, corporate notebook. It allows our congregation to take notes, and share notes with other congregation members. We are able to see how a particular message impacted a person sitting on the other side of the room and react to it without ever speaking a word.
- Educate the congregation as to what live tweeting is. We have already had some parents look at their twenty something children and tell them to quit text messaging during the service. After much assurance as to what they were really doing, the parents are now interested in joining the conversation.
- Make sure the conversation is dynamic and leads back to the original message. We already post all of our sermons online and have recently started using a podcasting service to make the sermons available to ITunes users. So now the goal is to post a link on our twitter account to the message and refer all live tweets from a certain date back to the actual message preached.
- Educate tweeters on what is useful and productive online. Every person has a voice and opinion. We aren’t here to censor anyone’s thoughts but we also need to make sure we aren’t just tweeting the scriptures only or tweeting the same things. Lesson’s on twitter etiquette will likely lead to a more productive environment
- Make sure the target is tweetable and present online. Without an online presence for your Church all of this internet chatter will likely lead to nothing more than a talk box. Intertwine the different forms of social media and online presence to create a real digital ministry.
Things we learned from week three:
- Live tweeting must not be an afterthought. While our original intention was great we are starting to see all of those participators dwindle. A real dynamic conversation should always be the focus, not just something cool our Church is doing.
- Be prepared for questions. I have received a small amount of commentary from people outside our Church that happen to see my tweets. I know this is the purpose, but if I am going to be the one putting the message out there I need to be prepared to answer any and all questions regarding what I am saying. While I may be restating or rephrasing something my pastor says, we have to realize that a person reading my tweet assumes it’s my voice. If I don’t agree with what I wrote then I probably shouldn’t have written it.
- Announce, announce, announce. Make sure that you take the time to remind people about it, the day before, the morning of and minutes before it begins. If you don’t remind people who this is happening how are they to participate?
- Thank your participants. We haven’t done this, but we should have. I’m going to make notes to remind myself of this most important task. If I don’t show them my appreciation for doing what they do, they are less likely to continue to participate. People like to be thanked, even when they are doing something they enjoy.
Our greater hope is to create a message that exists to the social media user that would likely never step foot inside a Church. We have already had positive feedback from un-Churched individuals that appreciate the ability to view in real-time the conversation that is happening in our Church. These are people who will likely never step foot inside our/any Church. We have had one continuous prayer to bring to us or take us to those who truly need the message.
Live tweeting is just another tool to accomplish this God-centered goal.
[Image via pam Morris]
Dale Aceron says
Yes, Educate, Educate, Educate!
BTW, what’s the hashtag? Just wanted to see a real working example and see if we can utilize it/
John Hughes says
Our hashtag is #coldwaterumc. The first week we used #cumc but there is a lot of channel noise on that one. Keep in mind this is a small attendance church. We are still learning the ropes of this.
Amanda Tipton says
Great job John! As a member of Coldwater and someone who has participated in the tweeting a couple of times I can honestly say that I’m not so sure “tweeting” is for me during church. I type slow, lose my train of thought and get lost in the sermon. But, that’s me. I have seen/ heard several positive comments. Our youth pastor, who preaches to out youth during Sunday’s sermon said that just by reading the tweets after church he was able to get basically a summary of the sermon. So for those that miss church….great way to stay connected. Our preacher also commented that he was able to see how his preaching is perceived by others, by reading their tweets. Now he can, address any misunderstandings that may occur. Kuddos to John for taking our congregation into the “tech world”.
Andre' Barnes says
At !mpact Church(impactdcd.org) Live tweeting is great! We have been doing it a couple of years now. In addition, we have expanded to posting live photos of the experience too on Facebook and Twitter. This definitely helps us to stay engage with our community.
John Hughes says
This is our ultimate goal. To expand our community to those who will never step foot in our church and to engage them in a way that meets them in their home. It sounds like you are definitely ahead of us in this. It’s awesome to see other churches participating in these types of internet ministry.
Jo Royal says
Excellent post – really enjoyed reading this! A while ago we did our first ever live tweet during a sermon (which I gave) – I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience – as did those that tweeted during it and even a few that don’t yet have twitter enjoyed watching the tweets come up on screen behind me – and interacted with tweeters afterwards. We have yet to repeat this, mainly because I am not sure that all those that preach at church would be entirely comfortable with it – and I wouldn’t encourage it to go ahead if they weren’t (agree with your comment about ensuring the Pastor is aware of it!) I am excited to give it another go – but will spend longer this time encouraging those that tweet to use it – and educating those that don’t use twitter so they have a better understanding of how twitter works – and perhaps giving them opportunity beforehand to sign up! I guess live tweeting is going to be one of those things that will always receive some negative feedback – quite simply because not everyone uses or understands social media in a way that is positive. We have to accept this.
It was good to read your first, second …etc experience of live tweeting – and recognise that is is a journey that will hopefully gain momentum as people are better educated and gain experience in it!
If you are interested I blogged my experience of live tweeting here: http://www.joroyal.com/2012/05/one-where-i-get-little-heated.html
John Hughes says
I think you are exactly right in the fact that many people do not use social media in a way that is positive. I think partly because they get caught up in the worldly perspective of what it is and partly because they don’t know how powerful of a tool this really could be for the kingdom. I’m going to submit another post for review here that is about the exact concept of educating people within a church on technology and the things it CAN do for ministry. We are actually having a technology “summit” this Saturday at our church.
I think that education is a vital part of this process. How can we expect the members of our congregation to even understand what we are doing if we don’t show them what we are doing. I think my biggest regret is starting live tweeting before education. It may have a benefit because it will give a real life example to how things can benefit us, but I wonder if we would have had more participation if we had reversed the order of things. Thanks for your input.