Friday, May 15, 2009

Can you Tweet the gospel?

First of all I would be the last person you should ask about twitter. I'm not in that 18 - 34 age bracket. But the topic sure has raised a buzz. I had an earlier post on the starting point of this discussion when Rob Bell in an interview said "you can't really tweet the gospel." The 9marks blog asked readers how they would present the gospel on twitter and they received many, many suggestions. They picked a couple of winners but the champion winner reads: "God made us 2 show His greatness. We rebelled & desrve His wrath but Jesus died as a sub 4 snnrs &rose again. Repnt &Blieve da good news." Our local paper, The Grand Rapids Press, has picked up on the controversy with the religion editor, Charles Honey, agreeing with Bell and a guest commentary by Rick Wilson who says we can tweet the gospel. So as I said I'm not the person to ask about twitter but if the question is simply can you present the gospel in 140 characters or less I'm not sure what the problem would be. Certainly the gospel has ramifications and implications which go far beyond 140 characters but is the gospel itself that hard to present? It seems to me that to say we "can't" tweet the gospel is to say we can't present it in a shortened form. But why would that be? It appears the fear is that the gospel will appear too narrow in its focus if we don't spell it out in all its grandeur. Might it appear too individualistic? Might it appear that it's just about going to heaven? I can't speak for those who say we can't tweet the gospel so until I better understand twitter I say tweet to your heart's delight and most certainly include the gospel.

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