The Tweeting Disciple

I can't imagine life without Twitter. I've been microblogging since 2009, and it is an almost hourly connection to the wider world. A case can be made that if not for Twitter, the social fabric of daily life for millions would suffer a mortal blow. Twitter is not just a handy way to tell the world you're headed to Kroger to pick up bread and milk. It is a catalyst for popular uprisings, political movements, the unseating of tyrants, mass demonstrations calling for civil liberties and democracy.

One study found that of all the social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and so forth), tweeters are the most religious. For me, social media stretches far beyond a cultural icon of religiosity. The vehicle for Twitter is, in many ways, the ultimate medium for discipleship. Let me explain the four leading ways that Twitter has changed my life and made me a better follower of Jesus.

1. The art of following

Twitter only knows two categories: whom you follow, and who is following you. Twitter's categorical imperative is one of followership, not the fast track to leadership, which is so inherent in our culture. In Twitterdom, you are who you follow.

Paul said, "Follow me as I follow Christ." In Twitter's ethic of followership, I am constantly reframing reality in ways that are more Jesus-like—more grace-full, more forgiving, more loving, more humorous—and helping my "followers" to better follow Christ. I am constantly on the prowl for things that could encourage, enrich, inspire. In my ongoing battle with self-transcendence over self-absorption, Twitter has helped me become more others-focused. With a new list of followers every day, and an unlimited number of potential followers, I am reminded daily that the most important people in my life are ones I haven't yet met. I also am constantly surprised and consistently blessed by the revealing direction in which followers take my tweets.

2. Sound bytes can bite

Identity is more important than bigness. McDonald's has roughly eighty food items, while In-N-Out Burger has four. In 2010 the average In-N-Out Burger location did $2.25 million in sales, about the same as McDonald's. Kmart went bankrupt. Why? Because it had nothing special that set it apart from high-end Target and low-end Walmart. Linens 'n Things went bankrupt because it cloned Bed, Bath & Beyond, offering nothing unique.

The truth is it takes more work to distill thought into two sentences than two pages. In the best of Twitter, the language is distilled, restrained, made to be sipped rather than quaffed. There is a lot of distilled theology on Twitter, but if the liquor of distillation doesn't taste like Jesus, I don't keep sipping.

Jesus was always tweeting the gospel in pithy, memorable phrases. His followers would be well advised to "retweet" everything he said. Twitter's retweet is viral and will prove to be more powerful than Facebook's "like." What's more, Jesus was the Master at truth simplified, de-codified, de-legalized, communized, intensified. Retweeting is the twenty-first-century equivalent of the parables of yeast and the mustard seed. Retweeting Jesus is spreading the virus of the gospel.

3. Explore the surface

Splashing in the shallows is perhaps the greatest critique of Twitter: it's numbing, crushing banality. Do I really need to know what time you finished brushing your teeth or what brand of toothpaste you used? But life is not just about the depths. Every depth has a surface, and careful-enough attention to what's on or near the surface can reveal depth.

We need both surface and depth, not the surface replacing the depths. When I look for something to tweet about, I find myself paying attention to life in heightened ways. With Twitter every day is an awakening to things that never would have registered before. Twitter gives me openings through which I can dive into newly discovered depths.

There are surface currents and there are deeper currents of God. Both are valid and important. But even in my surface tweets, I try to bring readers to the edge of the depths, and then to tempt and torment them not to leave until they have at least wet their feet in the profound and the deep.

4. There's a new global commons

My social-media mentor challenged me to think of Twitter like a medieval village green. If we were living a millennium ago, our lives would revolve around a village commons. Wireless technology enables the same multiplicity of personal exchanges to take place today, except now it's with people from around the world. Twitter is the new global commons.

When my congregation seems bent on carpet-bombing Twitter with greeting-card aphorisms, I yearn to know what they had for lunch and what they're feeling. Don't give me quashed quotations. Give me the inside scoop, your personal equivalent of what John Franklin recorded in his log during the infamous 1820 voyage through the Coppermine River and the Northwest Passage: "We drank tea and ate some of our shoes for supper."

The questions social media pose give insight into our relationship with the global community: Are the tweets streaming your way ones of plurality and diversity, or uniformity and homogeneity? How many people of different races, classes, continents, and religions are part of your social universe? Are you following people who don't follow you? Have you moved from the stereo of dialogue to the surround sound of pluralogue?

Twitter retooled

Social media such as Twitter can be retooled for discipleship. It can be a transformative vehicle to faith, a powerful spiritual discipline, and a relational connector to God, fellow Christians, and the world. Whatever tools we use in service to Christ (whether words, images, music, audiovisuals, social media), they can be used for our own satisfaction or used to the glory of the Savior.

Be a Twitter-disciple. Use social media and the lessons they teach to strengthen your faith. Twitter can be a truly transformative and evangelistic tool for recognizing God within the world—a virality of meaning. Tweet for Christ? Why not!

Leonard Sweet is an author, speaker, and church semiotician living in Washington State. This is an excerpt from Viral: How Social Networking Is Poised to Ignite Revival (Random House, 2012).