I was recently talking with my 22 year old son about twittering and I began to wonder if Paul would have had a Twitter account and if so, whom would he be following and who would be following him.
Let’s face it, Paul lived a very focused life. Every action was prayerfully calculated with a specific outcome in mind. If you were to ascribe a personality type to him, I’m sure he’d be a melancholy/choleric, type “A”, hedgehog. But would he be a twitterer?
He told the church in Corinth that he had become all things to all men that by some means, he might win some. Look at how the Message translates 1 Cor 9:19, “Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”
Twitter…oh, yeah…Paul would definitely twitter. I know I can’t prove it, but I think he would not only twitter, but he’d probably facebook and blog too. Can you imagine how excited he would be to think that he had the capacity to reach untold thousands with the Gospel and to minister to body of Christ with the touch of a keyboard?
It wouldn’t be random meaningless thoughts as he waited in line at the local market; it would be a well thought out message to reach and teach his followers. And I think his list of followers would be much different than we might expect. I can see him meeting with Luke and Timothy strategically developing a plan to find a way to get unbelievers to follow him so that he would have a chance to share the life-changing, eternity-altering message of salvation to as many as possible.
Would he twitter to teach the church and encourage believers? Sure he would. Would his followers be limited to the Christian community? I seriously doubt it! Would he only follow those who know Christ? Maybe, but I think he would be interested in knowing what was going on in the lives of those on his list so he would know how to reach them where they were.
Yes, the heightened use of social networking has changed the way we communicate. In some ways it has allowed many to disconnect from reality, but it also enlarges our borders and allows us to impact people we most likely would never meet.
Twittering, Facebooking and blogging can definitely be big time wasters, but they can also be big soul chasers. We each have to make that choice. We each have to determine if we will be purposeful in the time we take using the social networking options that are available or will we get lost in the surreal world of cyberspace.
If we can eat and drink to the glory of God, we can also twitter to the glory of God. Would Paul twitter? Oh yeah! What do you think?
By all means, YES Paul would twitter. He would harness the power of social media to touch the world for Christ… I wish more people would. What an opportunity today to reach more people for Christ then ever before in history!
I pray that God will use my facebooking to point my lost “friends” to Christ. I'm careful to be a good witness for them. I know I'm accountable for every idle word; I don't want any typed over the internet! I agree that facebook, twitter, blogging can be used to further the Kingdom of God or send people to hell.
Glad to have found your blog through twitter!
I agree that Paul would be twittering. I think we would see a great example of what humility looks like on twitter and facebook. Paul would follow more people than were following him!
I wrote a blog post about twittering Philippians.
http://spacious4him.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/shine-like-stars/