Category: Google

twitter, tech and the church


I’ll admit I’m a newcomer to twitter, but I’ve been on the internet since it was in black and white, so I’m fairly comfortable with technology, and I think that twitter has some interesting possibilities for churches. Soon, I’ll read a copy of Twitter for Churches but first I want to share a brief story that makes me wonder about many ways that this tool, and probably others like it, can be used.

I’m just getting into exploration of twitter, so I like to search for things. I found a local friend who tweets or twitters or whatever the proper verb is by using nearbytweets. Great. I searched for anything mentioning methodist using tweetdeck, though you can also just use twitter search.

When I was doing some searches, I found someone who was not happy with the church near his home. He was unhappy enough that he tweeted about it. This is feedback that the church could never get just by walking around the neighborhood, and it was good info. to have. What other ways might this help us to be better neighbors to the world?

I love facebook, the many apps available from Google and now twitter. Despite the fact that none of them were invented with the church in mind, I hope that churches can figure out the many ways that these tools can be used to strengthen the church, Lord willing.

I love Google.

I know that it may be a problem, but I really love Google. I shouldn’t. It’s the big guy, the heavy-hitter, the Goliath of the internet. But they can do amazing things.

Try it. www.books.google.com.

Play around with it a little while. See what you can find. If you have a google account, you can add books to your library, much like Library Thing (which I also highly recommend) except with bookmarks to full texts of some books.

Do you have a copy of the 1905 Methodist Hymnal? Congratulations, you do now. You can download it, print it, do whatever you want with it. Want to read about Wesleyan conferencing prior to the 100th anniversary of Methodism? Help yourself.

I know, I’m totally geeking out on this, and there are certainly other ways of coming up with these books, but this really is an example of the good things of which the internet is capable.