Ultimately, the medium will always shape the message. Our job as the church is to not damage the gospel. A look through history shows how advances have changed the gospel. The early church was an oral community. They would tell stories to keep things in their minds. They told the same things again and again, sharing collectively all of the information. Then the printing press was invented and it changed everything. Now knowledge could be stored outside of the mind. This allowed people to not need others to learn things. They could simply read by themselves and withdrawal from others. A positive effect was that the letter's of Paul, which were full of abstract ideas not easily accessible in story form, now began to hold more weight. People could intellectually follow his arguments and Paul began to ascend to prominence in the canon. This marked the major shift form the community environment of early Christians to the individualistic ideas that we are still seeing right now.

The irony in the situation is that all the things in Paul's letters were written to communities of believers. All the references to "you" were plural, more like "y'all" or "yous guys."But the medium had effected the way the message was processed. We now see it to be Paul speaking directly to me personally, apply it to you only. That misses the point. Early Christians only thought of how to live out their faith in community. No one is an island.

Now to the challenge. God knows everything. God knew how things would effect Christianity. God used media for His message as well. Things like prophets, Moses, burning bushes; these were God's media. Jesus was God's media. And in continuation of that, we are now that media. The church is the media that God is using to connect people to Him. So, how has this medium changed message? How are we the message? People will make contact with God through the church now. Is their experience a good one? Do they feel judged? Do they have more negative ideas of the church because of me? Ultimately, if you are a Christian, then you are the message. You are the gospel to those you meet. How are you at being the message.

Last night, I wasn't great. I was talking to Tim Peace and Matt Trapp in the church parking lot. A car pulled up and lady asked if we had a few bucks to spare for gas. And none of us had any money. I felt like I failed. What if that was her one contact with church? I want to start carrying cash just for that reason.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are God's chosen medium for reaching our culture, so what are we doing to live out that message as good as we can?

But here's why I am sold on it for churches. Churches run on information. If the information doesn't get out, that's bad. If it's not received in a timely fashion, that's bad. Twitter is a simple and most importantly, free, way to get information right to members cell phones or computers instantly. Let think about this. It's Saturday Night, about 9pm. You realize that the terrible winter storm that is coming is going to be hitting any second. At 11pm you realize the roads are too dangerous for early morning drives. You Twitter an alert out the says, "We are canceling early service due to the weather, but still plan on doing the 10 and 1130." Now any one following that feed has up to the second information sent directly to their cell phone or computer.

Here's the catch. The people that get the information are only people that want it. Oh, and standard text message rates do apply. So don't set too many things to text directly to your phone. It could get pricey. Oh, did I mention it was free. I know on a weekly basis that our church sends out a mass email, probably to many people that visited our church once and haven't been back in years. With Twitter, no managing the huge contact list. If someone wants the info, they decide to follow it. When they don't want it any more, they unfollow it. Simple.

I don't think that Twitter is for everyone. Only people that are relatively tech savvy. But man is it fun.

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter by clicking on the thing on the right bar of this page. The church has one too. Go to twitter.com/mtcarmelchurch. Follow it and get info of what is going on.

Not too deep a blog this time. More of an advertisement.