I would like to say a word against preachers tweeting. But before I do, I have two things that I need to disclose. 1.) I occasionally preach at Denton Community Church. 2.) I am on Twitter as @bwdaskam. I make no claim as to the quality of the sermons, but my tweets are indisputably of the highest order.
Given my tendency to both tweet and preach, I might seem like a surprising source for this argument. But I’ll ask you to reserve your accusations of hypocrisy for just a moment. It’s a particular kind of tweet that I’m against, and one of which I believe myself to be innocent. Yet I think this argument is worth making, even if I am skewered by it.
Preachers are often the source of ridiculous tweets. On such occasions, rather than instantly publishing their inner thoughts, these pastors would do better to write them in a small notebook and then cast that notebook into a live volcano.
I don’t know much about the author of this tweet. From his profile I glean that he is a pastor and the author of a book. For all I know, he composed this tweet as the result of losing a bet.
There are some preacher tweets that are simply baffling. Just brief, confusing statements that make you wish there was some kind of context to explain them.
It is no longer sufficient?
I wish someone could “explain” those quote marks to me and then rewrite that sentence.
I do know a little bit about the authors of the above tweets. For one thing, they are both significantly smarter than I am. Also, they could come out with a line of asbestos cigarettes marketed toward babies and still be more pious than me. But those positive qualities don’t seem to help them much once they log onto www.twitter.com.
Other preacher tweets are, well, just look…
Forgiveness Man, a little-known super hero with zero fighting skills, has the power of absorbing pain
I want Coach Taylor to yell this at me so that I can be inspired and confused at the same time.
Honestly, I’m just glad that hashtag was outside of the quotation.
It’s easy enough to find a few cringe-worthy tweets from pastors, but there’s a problem here that goes beyond the quality of the composition. It isn’t just bad preacher tweets that deserve opprobrium, I believe. It’s this whole class of newly-minted spiritual maxims that have been released upon the world.
Note that I’m not saying preachers should all delete their accounts. By all means, I hope they’ll tell us jokes, recommend albums, and point us to articles. The problems start when they try to give pastoral guidance via Twitter. Here, in under 140 characters, is my thesis: Preachers who tweet in this way degrade themselves, their audience, and the venerable tradition of short writings.
The tweeting preacher is engaged in a sort of shotgun discipleship wherein random bits of advice and insight are sent forth to no one in particular. I think we’ve failed to notice the oddity of this situation. Consider, for instance, the word, “follow.”
Following a preacher on Twitter requires much less commitment than that term normally implies. Sancho Panza put up with many indignities to follow Don Quixote. Yet, the modern Christian can “follow” all of their favorite preachers without the slightest difficulty. Having done so, they get to enjoy an endless stream of pithy insights. In a reversal of the normal order, followers sit in judgement of leaders. They show approval through likes and retweets; disapproval through muting, unfollowing, or simply ignoring.
Meanwhile, the daily exhortations that were once the province of the community have been outsourced to a group of self-styled thought leaders. The resulting unemployment is barely noticed. Instead of breaking bread with a fellow churchman, the follower can subsist on the intravenous drip of advice coming from his or her phone.
Perhaps I seem to be overstating things. After all, it’s true that readily-accessible opinions are as old as the Reformation. The success of that movement depended on the printing press and the pamphlets it could produce. Is Twitter really any different than books, blogs, podcasts, and recorded sermons? Since there’s nothing new under the sun, is Twitter particularly worthy of criticism?
Indeed it is, just as each of those other forms of communication deserve thoughtful critique. One difficulty that Twitter introduces is a lack of context. For instance, when Luther is quoted as saying that, “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe,” we understand that quote in light of a context that is indispensable to understanding its meaning. This isn’t some koan that’s offered to the world apropos nothing.
Of course, Twitter did not invent short writings. The book of Proverbs is a canonical collection of pithy sayings. The first century stoics were fond of aphorisms. Pascal had his pensees, Nicolás Gómez Dávila his scholia, and Nietzsche his aphorismen. And contemporary gnomists such as Nassim Taleb and Sarah Manguso continue to work within the genre.
It would be charitable to imagine that the clamorous din of preacher tweets signals a great renewal of aphoristic writing. Yet, the evidence leaves little room for optimism. As Manguso put it, “The brevity of fragments, scraps, the collective brain lint of the internet, is one thing; the brevity of the best aphorisms, which are complete in themselves, quite another.”
My wish is that preachers who have conceived of a brilliant little apercu would do one of two things. Either share it with some particular individual who is in need of its specific message, or jot it down in a notebook away from public view. Doing so may not bolster the preacher’s personal brand, but it’s a small step towards greater dignity.