Houston Chronicle: Praise for Technology
Tweeting during church services gets blessing of pastors.
It's Sunday night at Woodlands Church, and Pastor Kerry Shook tells parishioners to pull out their cell phones.
He has pocketed his own iPhone for now, but tells everyone else to turn theirs on.
“OK guys, you can start the twitters,” he tells the crowd of about 250.
The nondenominational church recently started a new service encouraging parishioners to tweet their thoughts, reflections and questions in 140 characters or less via Twitter, the popular microblogging social network.
Using the real-time messaging tool in church is gaining some steam nationwide and in Houston as some pastors look to make church more interactive, draw in new faces and appeal to younger demographics. Some see it as a diversion, but others — especially in contemporary services — are bringing smart phones to the pews and tweeting away.
The trend is likely to grow more among emerging churches still building their traditions and congregations, said Glenn Shuck, a professor in the religion department at Williams College in Massachusetts.
“In a sense it lends itself more to Protestantism than Catholicism,” he said. “At a Catholic church it would be seen as a disruption, just as it would be at any established church, because power flows from the priest to the parishioners. In this case … it certainly allows parishioners to have a great deal more involvement in what one might call ‘doing church.' ”
At Woodlands Church, the tweets are reviewed by church staff and pop up on a screen behind Shook as he preaches.
He ignores them all until he's done speaking, at which point he takes a look and addresses questions selected by a team backstage. …
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