Will Twitter bring you closer to God?

[Pat Coyle]

Most churches want them turned off, but one North Carolina church encouraged its members to use their cell phones, BlackBerrys and other devices to help spread the word during Easter services.

Next Level church in Union County was alive with Twitter during the Easter Sunday service, The Charlotte Observer reported Monday.

"I hope many of you are tweeting this morning about your experience with God," Pastor Todd Hahn said before his sermon.

Seems several flocks are twittering these days (including Trinity Church in NYC).

Will tweeting in Church help or hurt the spiritual experience? Share your thoughts here

[Amy Stark]

Check out @StanleyAbell , too. He is a pastor for The Garden- @TheGardenOnline -and started a repository of life affirming messages www.endlessdeep.com - @endlessdeep .

[Amy Stark]

CORRECTION -- IT IS @endlesstweet . I was in a marketing meeting today with @Stanleyabell and he corrected me.

[Amy Stark]

Earlier today I asked the twittersphere if anyone had twitter connections in South Bend #Indiana or Notre Dame. Check out this tweet I received at 4:30pmish: From @dszp , To @AmyStark " @JasonPowell @ebuford @mattmetzger @kemmeyer and @wantmoore are all from Granger Community Church near South Bend " ... I thought I would add this to the list of churchy type tweeters you began, Dr. Ho.

[Ed Buford]

There are many of us who are Staff at GCC who tweet, it's also very cool that we're only a small number of the people you'll see tweeting at GCC - we encourage people to engage in things like twitter at church. If church isn't worth tweeting about then it's not worth going to it - IMHO

[Lori Lowe]

It's sort of like asking can books bring you closer to God; it just depends on what you're reading and in what state of mind you are when you're reading it. However, I'm still of the mind that it's not appropriate to be using gadgets while you're trying to contemplate something deep or spiritual. After you've collected your thoughts and heard the message, yes. During a church service? No, thanks.

[Mark A. Anderson]

Well said Lori, Dead on as a direct response to the question!

Beyond answering the question however, the 140 characters is a perfect length to describe the content of the post that is found by clicking on the accompanying link (in most cases). It really serves more to pique the interest of those who are following particular topics of interest. If I were looking for a steady diet of spiritual content, delivered to me daily, I would follow the list above provided by Thomas Ho and many more,then filter what I want to read from the titles and only click on the ones I find most interesting or relevant.

So, while I personally think Tweeting in church is distracting, and irreverent, I think Twitter can be an incredibly targeted distribution tool for churches to use to get their message out to a broader audience, which in the end will HELP the spiritual experience for many!

[Stephen James]

I saw this book mentioned on Church Marketing Sucks today. It's called Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith. I don't much about it, but thought it was applicable to this thread. When I saw the subtitle, I immediately thought of Marshall McLuhan's "the message is the medium" and that rings true on Twitter, too.

[Ed Buford]

what do you think about YouVersion? would you consider using the bible on a phone? - if so would it bother you to do it in church?

[Ben McCann]

I think if more CHRISTIAN messages were TWEETED and then ACTED out, people would listen more... TWITTER forces you to say more with LESS words...
follow me at on twitter @catalist4182

[NealTaflinger]

If your experience with god can be adequately captured in 140 characters or less I don't want to hear about it.

[Ben McCann]

here is my experience with God in only 4 characters: LOVE

[Thomas Ho]

AMEN! :-)