Twitter Worship Follies

From Sunday's Houston Chronicle article Praise for Technology --Tweeting during worship services gets blessing of pastors:

(Pastor Kerry) Shook, of the nondenominational Woodlands Church, is still easing into Twitter. During the first interactive service, his wife, Chris, took questions from the congregation via Twitter, and he contributed a tweet of his own: “Chris Shook looks really hot tonight!”

His son tweeted in response: “please don't broadcast your attraction to mom across Twitter — kind of embarrassing.”

Shook is learning through experience.

“I forgot it went out to the whole twittersphere. I was so embarrassed...,” the pastor said. “But I can see this becoming a real part of the service.”

Gentle Readers, I rest my case.

From those that tweet twitter and text in worship
And cell phones that ring the Aggie War Hymn during silent prayer
Good Lord Protect Us!

Lead Us Not Into Tweet-tation

Over lunch following Tuesday's presbytery meeting we got into a discussion of twittering in worship. Much hilarity ensued as we joked about inappropriate tweets such as:

"What was she thinking when she bought that dress?"
"Sermon's too long...snoozing now"
"Choir off-key"
"Where to for lunch?"

So I can't resist passing on from Michael Kruze of Kruze Kronicle this article from the NY Times about tweeting gone wrong during a Good Friday service. It seems roguish parisioners couldn't resist adding a couple of characters to the proceedings, including a salacious Mary Magdalene.....

Let's Not Twitter in Worship, Please

I'm really going to show my age with this post, but like Martin Luther, here I stand.

The PCUSA Moderator, Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, who is an avid user of all things technological, posted about the responses to an informal quiz he linked to on Facebook which asked if it is okay to twitter during worship. Bruce gives his responses to the arguments against twittering during worship in this post and goes on to say he is going to write a post about the benefits of twittering during worship.

What????

This reminds me of the time when El Jefe was serving as lay leader in worship and got caught BlackBerrying instead of listening to the sermon. Our daughters were mortified and rained judgment down on his head all the way home. What's the difference between responding to emails and twittering during worship? I don't see any difference. Both activities remove your focus from worship of the Almighty God to your own thoughts. Both activities remove your mind and spirit from the gathered community of faith.

And heaven knows that it is hard enough to focus on worship, anyway. We all struggle with fighting the urge to make grocery lists, fret about what we have to do at work or at home, or grieve over problems with relationships during worship. We all struggle to engage with others in our congregations. It seems to me that while twittering may be seen as journaling, or note-taking, it is primarily a tool to communicate with others who twitter. That leaves out those who don't twitter. It also puts your focus back on yourself rather than on worship of God.

Full Disclosure Statement: I have a Facebook account (much to the chagrin of my kids who couldn't believe us oldsters had discovered this) and a Twitter account. While I do find Facebook useful, I confess that Twitter is not interesting to me. My observation is that most tweets are banal and often snarky. (Not yours, Bruce.)

With all due respect to our Moderator, I can't imagine encouraging twittering during worship any more than I can imagine encouraging emailing or playing games on the cellphone. You can include me among those who would say "thou shalt not twitter during worship."