John Piper on Twitter in Worship

John Piper on Twitter in Worship: Commenting on the issue of Twitter during worship he writes that we should "use Twitter before and after corporate worship to say what you take in and take out. But when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God." Read the full post.

Comments (2)

I agree with you both. It's so hard to focus on the Lord regardless - and anything can distract, so purposefully distracting ourselves is beyond unhelpful: it's pathetically dumb.

Twitter has never been my "thing," but I appreciate its potency. What's more important to me is that people understand that the local, corporate church setting is a safe place to let your hair down during the distractions, the pressures, the temptations, so forth. I think of counseling: it's a safe place to "escape" for a second with someone trained to help you sort through things so that you can know how to live better when you walk out of the door. People ought to feel that safety - in conviction, in encouragement, in mourning, in rejoicing - at church because, while life distracts us all the time, it shall not always be so...

Tweeting, updating one's status, checking facebook, checking the calendar, checking the watch - all those seem harmless enough, but they can easily derail a heart easily unfastened from commitment.

Posted by nathan | May 29, 2009 1:50 PM

I totally agree... although it is easy for me because I don't do Twitter.

This is kind of funny because a couple of weeks ago I was at the Moody Bible Institute Pastors' Conference. John Piper spoke and I sat in the row directly behind him up front. He had a guy with him who I guess was an assistant who had a laptop with him and he was on Twitter most of the time during the music and preaching time with Piper. It didn't offend me at all because it wasn't church and because he was an assistant of Piper. It is cool that Twitter can be a tool that can extend Piper's ministry. I'm not totally sure what people get out of that but I also don't get Twitter.

I get twitter for people following someone famous or important but not for anyone else. It just seems a little vain for me to tell everyone every detail of my life and to have people follow that.

Just my thoughts...

Posted by Rich Shipe | May 29, 2009 11:03 PM

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