Twitter: Saving Souls? (@asaltbde)

I’m about to try and persuade a congregation, and a bunch of theology students, that using Twitter will save souls and have a big impact in the town.

For one week in March, my town will be buzzing with faith stories. How do you know there is a God? This will be one of the questions answered by hundreds of Christians from eleven churches, of all denominations in the town. ‘Camberley Connections’ is all about local people sharing real faith stories, with local people, to help the un-churched on their journey. I’m rather excited about the project, and have been working on the external communications. Social media is key, because whilst the various events and activities planned across town will reach a cross section of the community, social media will reach far more, on a more frequent basis throughout the event.

So how are we planning to communicate our message? Primarily Twitter, and that’s the challenge. Take a bunch of churches from different denominations and styles of worship, and convince the congregations to use Twitter (with a hashtag) to feed back on happenings at the various events they are part of, throughout the week. Many of these people will never have used social media before, let alone Twitter.

Why Twitter? Because it’s one of the simplest forms of communication, requires the least of resources, and the Twitter feed can be plugged into various destinations, from the website, to Facebook and even email. The only resource required is a mobile phone that can send a text message (at the least), and most of the population can meet that requirement. Really it doesn’t matter what the medium is, the key thing for this week long project is that people communicate faith.

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