the on-line church: #tworship

Last night I found people praising God on Twitter with hash tag #tworship. This was fairly different from other religious experiences. I even asked what #tworship is to make sure that I didn't misunderstand these group of people. These are my question and the response I received.

my question: Can anyone tell me what #tworship is (thanks)?

response: http://mcprodigal.prodigalreturns.com/tworship/ #jesustweeters

Some of these people used words like "brother" and "sister" when referring to another. Someone even said that he loved his on-line friends (perhaps real friends, yet doubtful). These words are rather hard for me to digest. I don't call anyone "brother" or "sister" except for my brother, my two sisters, at times my best friend of 25 years and two other good friends of mine (one for 35 and another for 23 years) have called me "brother" at times.

Nonetheless, what makes a church after all? It's supposed to be a building of worship and most importantly a group of people worshiping God. Understanding this concept, could an on-line service used as a forum be a church? Nowadays I guess so (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-line-church-cyber-christ.html).

Maybe on-line real-time worshiping could be the same as mass on TV was when I was growing up -- although one-directional. It tried to give the church experience on a two-dimensional boring format through a cheap TV broadcast. Of course, this might have been the only way some people could have "attended" church -- especially the sick, the handicapped or simply the home-bound.

In the other hand, watching The 700 Club (http://www.cbn.com/700club/) was a different feeling when I was a kid. It was praising and worshiping while shown facts and stories followed by prayer. This was and still is what I now understand as a ministry.

too much for my own good

Maybe I analyze religion, its beliefs and practices too much for my own good (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2010/06/nietzsche-vs-gott.html). Maybe my faith is based on the philosophy and sociology of Christianity more than just what my grandmother taught me as a child (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2010/05/remembering-my-grandmother.html). In the past almost two years that I've gone to church non-stop (08/2008 to now), I've been reading many more papers on Christianity much more than how much I used to (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2009/01/beginning-before-experiment-circa-2006.html). It makes me wonder if I'm a "real" Christian or merely a reader of theology or simple fool lying to myself. Well only time would tell.

my purpose of going to church

My decision to go to a church or temple for a sermon or prayer is to simply find peace for my tortured soul (as a friend once called me). It's the same reason I watch the 700 Club (http://www.cbn.com/700club/) and listen to Joel Osteen (http://www.joelosteen.com/). It's not for the salvation of my soul though, but rather for my sanity.

BEGINNING, BEFORE EXPERIMENT (circa 2006)

0. Understanding and reading about other religions including islam and krishna (my own books) for several years
1. Installing 'Bible Time' (http://www.bibletime.info/) for the 'Sword' project (http://www.crosswire.org/), on Kubuntu at home and a Java application on Windows at work, visiting several on-line Bibles
  1.1. Also as a Java application, BibleDesktop (http://www.crosswire.org/bibledesktop/).
2. Listening to Joel Osteen, podcast subscription
3. Listening to 'Geeks for God' (technology to make a better church), podcast subscription
4. Watching 700 Club, subscriptions to CBN emails and my own account, podcast subscription and TV
5. Reading 'Charisma' and 'Ministry Today