Pastoring My Twitter Community

Being a pastor on Twitter has a couple of very important things in common with being a pastor in my community. 1) Christian love is of the utmost importance. 2) It still takes boldness and faith to reach out to others

Let me tell you a story. Yesterday morning, as is my custom, I checked my Twitter feed just to see what was going on. I follow a lot of different people, including athletes. One of the athletes I follow is Chris Spielman. If you don't know who he is, I'm not sure why we're friends, but he was a great linebacker for the Buckeyes, as well as in the pros, and is an incredible man of faith.

I saw a retweet from him from a guy asking him to let others know about a website where they can donate to help raise money for his son who is in the hospital with stage 4 cancer.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link and read the short story about this boy, 1 of 6 siblings, who two weeks ago was diagnosed with neuroplastoma. He's only 2. I noticed that in the original tweet, this man had his location service turned on, which shows a map of where he tweeted from. He was only a couple of miles from my church.

I decided to reach out, and I sent a tweet to this guy letting him know that I was about to head to the children's hospital where his son was for another visit, and could I visit him.

He replied quickly and asked if I had left yet, because he needed a ride. In trying to pay for his son's medical care, he had lost his job and his car and had no way of getting to him. So I went and picked him up. What ensued was a 20 minute car ride of sharing and ministry.

His son was surrounded by family in his room, and so I left them to themselves, making my own visit, and praying for the family.

Later, I gave him and the boy's mother and one of his brothers a ride back home. We talked about church, about parenting, about struggles that we go through.

They thanked me as we pulled into their driveway and they exited the car.

I pulled out and said my own prayer of thanks. Thank you God for allowing our paths to cross. Thank you Chris Spielman for the retweet that brought us together. Thank you Twitter for allowing us new ways to connect. Thank you Jesus for never ceasing to amaze me in how your work in our lives.