I’ve been on Twitter for a few years now (@kenhensley, if you care to join the conversation). Over time, I’ve come to appreciate a few things regarding Twitter and preaching. Here are just a few observations:
- Using Twitter forces me to be concise in communicating a thought. With only 140 characters at your disposal — including spaces — you have to trim the fat. In some ways, it reminds me of Fred Craddock’s approach to preaching: you should be able to summarize every sermon in one sentence.
- Using Twitter allows me to follow thought leaders in various fields. On any given day, I am getting Tweets from Guy Kawasaki, Max Lucado, Dave Ferguson, Leo Laporte, Ed Stetzer, Don Miller, and many others. These tweets give me a real-time perspective into what they are thinking, reading, and doing.
- Using Twitter allows me to easily extend my own influence. Granted, I only have 234 “followers” who signed up to receive my tweets. Even still, using Twitter has allowed me to interact with people in our church and community in a way I couldn’t have otherwise.
Even if you choose to lurk on Twitter, you’ll benefit from receiving thoughts, ideas, links, articles, and more from people who are much smarter than me. And if you’re really brave, you can follow me, too.