by J. Randal Matheny, editor
WINONA, Miss. (BNc) — We’re getting the gospel into the tightest spots … like 140-character posts.
Twitter is one of the most popular social network and microblogging services on the Internet.* It’s so influential that Venezuela’s president Chavez has targeted it for state control. The US president’s press secretary has been releasing some White House news first through the service.
“I would say Twitter is a quick medium to get information out, and we’ll probably use it more often,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said March 12.
In that spirit of a quick medium to get information out, Quick Bible Truths (QBT) uses the 140-character limit of the mini-posts to get information out about the Bible’s truths, commands, principles and facts.
The objective of QBT is to use the medium of Twitter to broadcast Bible truths in the condensed format appropriate for Internet messages, so that curiosity may be aroused and interest created to discover more about the gospel of Christ.
A recent sample of a tweet, as the posts are called, is this one posted March 14:
Don’t let the timid keep the church from doing God’s will. “Afraid or worried? … go home before you frighten anyone else.” Dt 20.8 NLT
Denominational and Catholic efforts that publish Bible verses and readings are popular on Twitter. QBT takes advantage of this trend to share the truths of the gospel through this medium.
The usual QBT format, as illustrated in the sample above, is to have a short statement of a principle or truth, backed up with a quotation from a Bible passage.
The Twitter Grader gives QBT a 95.6 rating, out of a possible 100, the best ranking of all our Twitter accounts.
QBT uses the NRSV or NLT Bible versions as part of the effort to reach people who might not otherwise be reached through other means.
The format of QBT also makes its tweets ideal for use as church bulletin fillers, thought-provoking discussion points and sermon zingers.
If governments see Twitter as a powerful instrument, Christians should consider it as yet another tool for the gospel of Christ.
*Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. –Webanalysis
Editor’s Note: Reprinted from GoSpeak.
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