Twittering Christianity

Last Sunday afternoon, Max Lucado, famous Christian writer and former preacher at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, sent out a Twitter tweet to the world that he was on his way to a river baptism service. As one of Max's followers on Twitter, I always enjoy his spiritual messages that are summed up in less that 140 characters, but I was especially fascinated by this tweet. A river baptism service? I didn't know we still did those. Immediately, my mind bounced to the scene in O, Brother, Where Art Thou? when George Clooney and his fellow escaped convicts are interrupted by hundreds of people dressed in white robes singing "As I Went down to the River to Pray."

When I think of baptisms, I typically think of those that happen only in the church. When I was baptized, my church was under construction, so we didn't have a "normal" baptistry. I was baptized in a glorified bathtub, but it counted. The thought of river baptisms sounds old school, but it also intrigues me.

Sunday night, Max sent out a follow-up tweet: "We spent 2 hours in the river. 257 baptisms! Glorious!" For those of you keeping score at home, 257 is a pretty spectacular number for two reasons. First, 257 people had their sins washed away in one day. That just shows the power of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of those people. Second, that is just a huge number. It might take some churches four years to have that many baptisms. While no one really "keeps score" based on the number of baptisms that they have, I am amazed that something like that happened.

Max also tweeted that Bruce Bowen, who plays for the San Antonio Spurs, was down at the river baptizing people. I have heard a lot of great thing about Bowen as a strong Christian leader, a philanthropist, and a role model to young kids, but I was quite impressed that he was a part of the action last Sunday. Typically, we assume that professional athletes are egocentric millionaires that act like children when things don't go their way, but Bowen took a break from the NBA play-off atmosphere to impact the lives of hundreds of people down at that river.

The popularity of Twitter over the past four months has been astounding, and it is also pretty cool to see celebrities like Shaq, Ashton Kutcher, Barry Zitto, Lance Armstrong, and Max Lucado using it as a way to connect with non-celebrities. While Max may not consider himself a celebrity, his tweet last week was read by thousands of people. Max does write about some random things he does during the day, and with posts like the ones regarding the river baptism, he is able to use Twitter as a way to connect Christianity and culture.