Some weeks ago, I posted about the recent trend among evangelical Twitter users to tweet the gospel. A couple of days ago, Anthony Bradley, associate professor of theology and ethics at King's College, discussed the same thing at the WORLD magazine blog, garnering a lot of attention and prompting Jared Wilson, who pastors a church in Vermont, to issue a lengthy response defending the practice. By no means am I a big player in the blogosphere, but since both of them linked to my original post on the subject, I wanted to offer a few additional thoughts in response to Wilson's post in particular. You will need to read both for the background to this post.

First, both Bradley and I argued that one of the problem with the gospel tweets is their lack of context, a point Wilson takes issue with. He argues that all tweets, regardless of content, assume a context and that to understand what a person is tweeting about, you need to know this context. This is a logical point, of course, but there is a difference of degree in the contexts needed. For example, let's say that I tweet something like, "Heading to Sanford to have dinner with some folks from the church." You will need to understand a few things to make sense of this: clearly, I don't live in Sanford as I need to travel to get there, but obviously I live close enough that I can go there to have dinner with people. You will not know where Sanford is unless you know that I live in the Orlando area, and so it must be in that area as well. Also, you will need to know that I am a member of a church, and quite involved to the point that I'd share a meal with some of the people who belong to it. But these are all things that are easily deduced.

As another example, recently I tweeted a link to a blog post discussing the problems of consumerism and poverty in America. The tweet contained a brief quote from the post, "While iPad sales show no sign of slowing, one in five children in America are living in poverty," and was followed by the link. What context do you need to understand this tweet? You need to understand that what the iPad is and that it is being sold in large quantities, and you need to understand that there is a significant portion of the American population living in poverty. Further, you need to understand that a comparison is being made between the two statistics in order to demonstrate that our culture values consumerism more than it does justice. Again, though, this is not difficult to figure out.

Now, let's take one of the examples of a gospel tweet I originally cited, which both Bradley and Wilson reproduce in their posts: "Legalism says achievement leads to approval, the gospel says that approval leads to achievement" (and by the way, Mr. Wilson, if I recall correctly this one belongs to Tullian Tchividjian. I didn't see the need to cite the authors of these sample tweets originally because it wasn't important for the purpose of making a general observation). What context will you need to understand this? In the first place, you will need some of the terms defined, particularly legalism and gospel, because the extent of the definition of gospel at this point is, "not legalism," and vice versa. Then, what is the achievement spoken of? Approval by or from whom? Unless you have some sort of theological foundation, these questions are not so easily answered.

Interestingly, Wilson also points to John 3:16 as an example of a presentation of the gospel in tweet-sized form (he notes that the verse is 126 characters long). It is true that this is a concise expression of the gospel—and indeed, much clearer than many of the gospel tweets out there—but again, it is not understood by everyone without further explanation; Nicodemus himself needed the entire discussion with Jesus in John 3 to make sense of what he was talking about. The point is simply that there is a much greater context needed to understand a gospel tweet. Now, while this in and of itself is insufficient reason to abandon the practice altogether, it should raise some questions about the how and why of tweeting the gospel.

If you do the gospel-tweet thing with the purpose of trying to evangelize, hoping that it might plant seeds, I cannot imagine this practice bearing much fruit. I certainly would not deny that in some cases it might, but I do not think that something like, "Only the gospel glow of the New Jerusalem can make the city lights of Tarshish appear as bling bling," (this one belongs to Scotty Smith, by the way) is going to bring people to their knees. It surprises me, too, that many of these who engage in the gospel-tweeting practice are the same people who emphasize the need for building relationships in the process of proclaiming the gospel to the world. If, instead, you do it as a means of discipleship, what level of depth are you bringing to that relationship? These are just some of the questions this practice raises in my mind.

Second, Wilson makes a big deal over the discussion of the simplicity of the gospel. I am not sure what the problem is here. Bradley is right to say that there are times where gospel-tweeters attempt to say something profound or clever and in doing so, "frustrate the simplicity of the message." There is a sense in which the gospel is profoundly simple, and trying to dress it up with a slew of over-the-top adjectives only obscures that. But this does not, as Wilson insists, contradict the fact that the gospel is also far bigger than any tweet can encompass. I simply don't see the tension here.

Third—and this is the biggest issue I have with Wilson's post—at one point, he mentions that gospel-tweeters understand that the gospel is a "big deal" and later goes on to say that because he believes in the Lordship of Christ over all of life (the title of his blog is a reference to that oft-quoted statement of Abraham Kuyper), he can't help but use his Twitter stream for proclaiming the gospel. What comes across in these statements is an implication that those who don't use Twitter for this purpose—myself and Bradley included—don't get how big the gospel is and don't believe in the Lordship of Christ. Now, I am sure that Wilson would not want to say this (his words could have been more carefully chosen at this point), and indeed it is not true.

In fact, I think that if you really believe in the Lordship of Christ, you will tweet more than your clever comparisons of the gospel and legalism or the gospel and religion (the latter of which, by the way, are not antithetical to each other). Your tweets will talk about all spheres of life because Christ is Lord over all of life. The gospel is not just about individual salvation (which is what receives the most emphasis in the gospel-tweets). It is about the transformation of all of life, and God's act of redeeming his whole creation. It is about the Kingdom of God that has come and the sovereign rule of Christ over all. I would think that your tweets would reflect that by going beyond the implications of the gospel for individual salvation and piety. Perhaps you might link to articles discussing how to think about politics, education, and justice from a Christian perspective. Maybe you would share some quotes from books you are reading on creativity and the arts. Even something more mundane, like mentioning that you are going to spend a quiet night at home with your family is not outside of this because it demonstrates that you understand the value of the family. What's more, it seems to me that this sort of thing would be a lot more effective if you want to reach non-Christians, because it gets them thinking about things they deal with on a regular basis. A good article on how to deal with the problem of poverty prompts your followers to ask questions: "Why does he think about poverty from this perspective?" That point of contact lays a greater foundation for a relationship instead of blasting them with the ills of legalism.

In the end, I think Bradley is right to say that this practice, in some ways, keeps believers on "spiritual milk." If the gospel doesn't go beyond the usual fare of the Twitter-gospel, it is not helping to transform all of life. 

Do I think the gospel-tweeting should stop altogether? No. I've seen some genuinely good tweets out there. Do you need to only tweet stuff that everyone will understand? Of course not. My main objection, and I think Bradley would concur, is when it totally consumes a user. As Bradley says, there are times when it is hard to imagine that this is all nothing more than a popularity contest, just like those who only tweet things like "how to grow your business" or "how to get more hits for your website." Perhaps Wilson is right that part of our dislike for the practice is because we find it annoying, but that is the least concern here. It is the glut of overblown adjectives, often-bizarre comparisons, and in many cases, banality, that makes us wonder what the point of it all is.