Calum Henderson

I often Tweet Bible verses that I have read and liked or Tweet about things that I learn from the Bible.

Recently in my quiet times I finished reading the book of Acts.

As I read back through what I have Tweeted it is encouraging to see Paul’s continued courage throughout his life. When God asked something of him he would always do it, and Paul spoke about Jesus relentlessly. He is a great example for us to follow in our own ministry!

Below are some Tweets about what I read.

• “(One day) the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?”" Acts 19:15 http://bit.ly/bL4oyD
• A man died as Paul went on and on. He fell asleep and fell out a window. In God’s mercy he was brought back to life! Acts 20
• Paul didn’t hesitate to preach anything that would be helpful. He was bold, let’s follow his example. Acts 20
• When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” Acts 21:14 http://bit.ly/9thHp7
• “When they heard this, they praised God.” Acts 21:20http://bit.ly/93PehX
• Paul was a witness for what he had seen and heard from Jesus. Jesus Christ is Lord! (Acts 22)
• Paul said “I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead.” Acts 23:6b
• I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. Acts 24:15 All before God.
• Paul was in prison/custody for a long time. Through it he continued to love God through everything! (Acts 25)
• “That the Christ would suffer and,as the first to rise from the dead,would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles.” Acts 26:22
• “So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.” Acts 27:25http://bit.ly/ahanIB
• “Boldly and without hindrance he [Paul] preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.” Acts 28:31 http://bit.ly/cFedhR

Yesterday I submitted a guest post to twitip.com, and it was accepted!

This is pretty exciting as twitip.com has over 30, 000 subscribers and the post has already been tweeted 115 times.

The post is titled “Use Posterous to Easily Enhance Your Tweeting“. You should go read it now (if your into Twitter at all, if not, read this instead).

Continue reading

Should churches have active Twitter accounts?

Over at communicatejesus.com, Steve Kryger and I have been chatting about which churches use Twitter.

This was started by his blog post, 15 WAYS FOR CHURCHES TO USE TWITTER. It’s a great list inspired by 17 ways to use Twitter – a Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business owners, and has some great ideas for personal Twitter accounts as well. You should go check it out now.

I had the question afterwards, is it worth churches investing time into a Twitter stream?

Australia’s Twitter penetration is not that great, yet. And the majority of people don’t have a Twitter account, yet. But it does still appear to be on the rise, and Twitter poses some unique advantages over Facebook (5 Reasons to Tweet).

So how many churches use Twitter? Here is a short list of the ones I am following

• Church By The Bridge, Kirribilli (@cbtbkirribilli)
• Christ Church Inner West (@cciw)
• Grace Point Sydney (@gracepointsyd)
• Hillsong (@hillsong)

Do you know of any other churches that use Twitter?

Continue reading

So you joined up and now you have a Twitter account (yay). But what happens next.

Get Tweeting!

Easy enough. I’m sure you have already Tweeted (posted) something along the lines of “Setting up my Twitter account” or “First post on Twitter”, now to tweet a few more times…

Maybe consider using Twitter in serving God, and be active about it from the start. Tweets about what you read in the bible, or what you learnt at church are awesome! As are tweets about going to bible study, and tweets about what you are looking forward to in the day are pretty cool as well. But as you tweet, consider how it is serving God.

You have probably seen some weird lingo being used, things like @ symbols, or the letters RT. Don’t worry, here’s what they mean.

• An @ symbol before someone’s username just means that the tweet is directed at them. It is also the common way to refer to someone in a tweet. They will get a specific notification that they were mentioned somewhere.
• RT simply stands for Re-Tweet. Which means that you could find something like this showing up: “RT @calumhenderson How awesome it is to be assured of salvation! Romans 8″. This just means that someone else has Tweeted (posted) what I had already said.
• #(something) just means that it is specifically tagged, if multiple people tag the same word or letters, then it will come up as a trending topic (#mhc is a good example).
• You may also see OH (but barely ever), this just means over heard, as in real world over heard.

Continue using Twitter to serve God friends!

It’s time to Tweet.

Tweeting is the act of posting updates on Twitter. Twitter is a growing social network and is massively increasing it’s user base, all over the world. It now has over 32 million monthly viewers, which is more than the NY Times (from here). Both Dave Miers and Steve Kryger have posted on the growth of Twitter.

So here’s how Twitter works.

• You sign up for an account
• You follow people
• You tweet (140 character posts, or “microblogs”)
• People follow you and they receive your tweets
• You receive the tweets of those whom you follow

It is catching on, and I think it has reached a point where it is valuable to be using Twitter. Here are 5 great reasons to get tweeting.

Continue reading