If Twitter is used during worship service to share items from the sermon that stood out, but how different is that from whispering to a friend next to you during the whole sermon? The whole process just seems like it would take something away from the sermon.

Some might say it could add something. OK, what could it add?

Mark

When the tasks are sufficiently different as to require a context-switch I would agree with you. But to say that you can’t do more than one thing at a time is just incorrect.

If that were true, then you really should ban taking notes during the sermon too.

Then again, that’s not quite the same as church. Ban the buggers.

But as I got to thinking about it, I think there are some people who might benefit from tweeting during the sermon (or a professor’s lecture for that matter– same concept). These are the people who would be mentally pondering their checking balance or writing a grocery list or staring at the dust collecting on the potted plant behind the pulpit– and not listening to the sermon at all. If they are tweeting ABOUT the sermon, then they might actually be more engaged than if they were forced to just sit there. I don’t think this is a symptom of our “sound bite culture”. When I was a kid (and no devices back then) I didn’t listen to the sermon either, but I could sure tell you how many ceiling tiles there were or how many pipes there were in the organ. Even as a pre-device adult, I would wind up puzzling over how they forgot a couple of nuts on the bolts holding the pews to the carpet, and pondering why they put a brass plaque on everything in honor of some wealthy donator. Nowadays I’m interested in the sermon on its own merit… but I’m just saying I understand being distracted. As far as tweeting distracting others… unless you have your device on “push” and get an email every time somebody tweets, you won’t know about it unless you are looking for it. In that sense it is less distracting than whispering or sending notes.

What the people are tweeting ABOUT… that’s between them and God. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

That said… tweeting during the WORSHIP part of worship should be verboten. There is nothing to be gained by tweeting out the lyrics to the song or tweeting about what you think of the prayer. Singing and prayers are you talking to and listening to God… if you are talking to everybody else at the same time, that surely dishonors him.

Frankly, it creeps me out.

If, on the other hand, it feeds the insecurities of our lives, if it artificially fills the void that otherwise should be filled with God’s presence, if it further develops the 30 second attention span/immediate gratification society we live in, if it takes you away from listening to God in silence, if it prevents you from reflecting on his glory and pouring into ONE life deeply versus 100 superficially, then that is a whole different subject.

These products all develop out of a need to bring in return on investment, to create dissatisfaction and then have the product to answer that.

Same for your blogging experience. I tried to do something similar once but didn’t even make it through the first two sessions before I discarded doing it that way. Instead, I worked on simply paying close attention and making shorthand notes on it for myself and then wrote out my thoughts afterwards. I think this is usually far more helpful. I know I far prefer reading someone’s analysis.

For this reason I don’t think I’d be ok with the whole tweeting/reading tweets during the service. Most of the time I try to have my phones and pagers as off as I can during Sunday service. Even when I’m oncall I try to limit what I can be paged for to absolute emergencies. I just hate the distraction of having to switch gears. There is a loss during those context switches, and that can make the difference in really understanding what is being said.

(Now – That isn’t to say I don’t see a place for electronic devices in Church. I know a lot of people use them as their bible these days. I personally still prefer to use the dead-tree version, but I don’t hold it against anyone overmuch who wants to use a digital device. Though – it’s probably one more crutch for us. I know some young people can’t find hardly anything in their bible w/out their digital version anymore, and that’s sad.)