Can you take a deep and complex theological truth or spiritual application and package it in 280 characters or less? The ability to be succinct and concise is worth gold when communicating truth in today’s culture. And Twitter helps. Here are seven ways Twitter can improve your preaching, teaching and public speaking. It can:
1. Concentrate Your Message
To remove unnecessary words, you’ll have to ask questions like: How will this be understood with no surrounding context? How will this reflect on my own values and beliefs? Is this valuable enough to be shared in the first place?
2. Create Collaboration
Ask a question on Twitter and you’ll wind up with a variety of opinions and perspectives. Don’t rely on the crowd to prepare messages for you, but allow the crowd to help you brainstorm, refine and pare down your message to its essential core.
3. Provide Immediate Feedback
How will this idea sound on Sunday? How will people react? Throw it out to the Twittersphere and see if it sticks or bounces back to hurt you. The feedback can be painful, but helpful.
4. Help You Research
Gauge culture’s understanding of a concept, measure a trend or find a relevant application.
5. Introduce You to Better Communicators
Twitter can provide a lifeline back to sources of learning and inspiration. You can discover great communicators and be mentored by them.
6. Expand Your Influence
Your audience will grow as you forge new relationships across social platforms. Discover new listeners and readers as you build bridges with people you never would have known otherwise.
7. Extend the Life of Your Message
Scatter the sound bites from a message for a long time to come.