the on-line church: #tworship (visited)

This past Saturday I was somewhat part of #Tworship (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-line-church-tworship.html). I made three comments and one or two people liked them. I'm including them below in response to the video below.

first comment: Ever since I heard Sara Evans for the first time, I could hear that her songs had lots of Christian overtones. #Tworship

second comment: (pt 2) It's good to know that country music is a form of religious music sometimes even if u don't say GOD 1000 times. #Tworship

final comment: thanks all for this new experience #Tworship

the on-line church: ministries on Twitter

I'm following 358 people and/or organizations in Twitter as of 10/22/2010 09:32AM. Most of the time you can learn from other laymen and women. Some of these people have their own ministries like @gritandglory, @devotionaldiva, @hodatay (Ukraine) and @mcProdigal. It's a joy to know this people even from afar and in some cases being friends with. I just hope all I write and publish can help someone spiritually or at least make that person think.

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.

43 Presbyterians in Congress

Since I go to a Presbyterian church, I thought this was an interesting report from PC(USA) Research Services -- as posted on its Twitter account (@PCUSAResearch).

"There are 43 Presbyterians in Congress, 8% of total; by comparison, Presbyterians are only 3% of the U.S. population.
http://bit.ly/bmM3uk
about 1 hour ago via web"
http://twitter.com/PCUSAResearch/status/22632017023

Just as I've mentioned several times, it's important for a politician to be a theist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism).

another good quote...

another good quote that I got via Twitter (from Facebook)... so good that I had to "borrow" it!

"You won't ever find a perfect church...
perfect worship...
a perfect christian..
or perfect teaching...
you will only ever find a PERFECT GOD"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Radiant-Life-Church/106332962748338

politics & God, pt 2

In the past couple of months, I've joined The Tea Party (http://www.teapartypatriots.org/). I've also started to follow more conservative media.



Maybe there's a much stronger relation between conservative/republican politics and Christianity than I originally though (http://project05952381.blogspot.com/2010/07/politics-god.html). Then again I might have joined this conservative/religion bandwagon without noticing it.

Anyway I've noticed that politics is getting crazy as of late with the increasing disapproval of this president that we have right now. I'm glad I didn't vote for this guy. Just look at Twitter and the hash tag #TPP, for example.

hash tag #Christianity

I've been playing around with Twitter (http://twitter.com/culteducassette) for a while now. In Twitter, one can search posts based on content (Christianity), key words (#Christianity) or user names (@project05952381).

Said this, some users including myself use the hash tag #Christianity to indicate that a given post deals with Christianity. Hence it's displayed when the word "Christianity" is searched for (Christianity).

So far in Twitter, I've found 87 religious users (people or organizations, as of 07/12/2010 12:06pm) that I'm interested in following (http://twitter.com/project05952381/christianity).

promised suffering

There are many religious writers. One of favorites is C. S. Lewis and enjoy reading his quotes at http://twitter.com/CSLewisDaily. As a matter of fact, I'm including a quote that I like and that seems very true every day of my life.

"We were promised sufferings, they were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed Are They That Mourn'" - C.S.Lewis
http://twitter.com/CSLewisDaily/status/15111158466

religion in a technological world

Technology is a great way (maybe the best way after the Gutenberg press and the publishing the Bible for common people to read and study, circa 1450, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible) to propagate the name of God. For example, if a church or congregation leader wants to communicate with others for any reason whatsoever, he/she can send an email, post a quick note on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) and/or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/) aside from posting such information on the church website.

In a real life example, the pastor at FAPC (http://www.fapc.org/) sent an urgent email this past winter during a heavy storm indicating that many children activities and the 9:30 service were canceled for that Sunday. This way the congregation knew that the church would open late and Sunday school was canceled for that Sunday only.

Groups like Geeks and God (http://www.geeksandgod.com/) promote open source technologies to create websites, forums, email systems and other services that a church can use to reach its congregation and others. For example, some churches have a live feed of their service for those who can't go to church for whatever reason (handicapped, elderly, etc) or excuse.

At the same time, some companies offer their services for free for non-profit organizations (churches included, of course not using the words "church" or "religion" to be politically correct). In this latter case, Google (http://www.google.com/) fits perfectly providing some services for free to promote other or the same services in a larger scale for a fee.

I will stop here 'cause I can write for hours about technology. I might continue later.

a joke as such...

I normally write here and promote what I write on Twitter (http://twitter.com/project05952381). This time I did it backwards (in chronological order).

"so uptight for nothing, JC (#Jesus #Christ) on @ComedyCentral, good idea http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1850 @CatholicLeague"

"how about the #Jesus #Christ character in Tripping the Rift http://www.trippingtherift.tv/ @Syfy"

"#Jesus #Christ as a cartoon merely a way to remind people of the Son of #Jesus #God with some humor -- thanks for understanding @CatholicLeague"

So take a joke as such. Laughing is good for you.