A friend asked me this evening what I thought about churches having Twitter accounts. They were worried about questions like:
- Do you follow everyone back?
- Does it look bad if you follow someone that posts inappropriate stuff?
- Or follow someone that has an inappropriate profile photo?
- Does it turn people off if you don’t follow back?
- Should the account be for information purposes only or should it try to get involved in people’s lives?
My first thought was that church Twitter accounts don’t follow anyone. People follow people. It’s not much of a step to quickly make the jump and understand that the “church” is the people in the first place. If there was ever a Twitter account that should have a human quality to it, it should be the church.
Do you follow everyone back? I’m not sure. I’m not a church account and I don’t follow everyone back. I follow the accounts back that I’m interested in hearing what they have to say. I un-follow and re-follow people as they appear more and or less interesting through their updates. I believe the same could be true of a church account.
If the church is made up of people, the question of “Does it look bad if someone you follow posts inappropriate stuff”? Do you feel bad as an individual if someone you follow posts inappropriate stuff? Are you ashamed to follow them? Should you be? Why or why not? Do you un-follow them? All the same questions regarding profile photos.
I keep thinking that Jesus hung out with the sinners and scorned the Pharisees. If Jesus were on Twitter, who do you think he’d follow? And more importantly, who would actually follow him?
