Editorials
A Record Attempt: Twittering the Bible
A condensed version of the Bible expected by Pentecost
May 18, 2009
Now Twitter is going to be used to make the Bible known in the world of the Internet. To achieve this, a record attempt of a special sort will be made at the Kirchentag in Bremen, 20-24 May. The aim is to transmit the whole Bible via the virtual pathways of Web 2.0 during the Kirchentag and in the following days up to Pentecost.
According to the initiative's theological adviser, Rev. Christoph Römhild from Hamburg, the main participants will be lay people joining in discussions on the Bible: "This is a Protestant activity in the best sense of the word."
A team led by Melanie Huber, which is setting up the new Internet portal evangelisch.de due to go online 24 September, is coordinating the record attempt. Their task has been first to divide the Bible into 3,000 sections and print them as fliers. The fliers are then being given out by helpers during the Kirchentag.
Each individual and team receiving one of the fliers will read the Bible passage on it, look at its context in the Bible, and discuss its core message. The teams are to summarize their Bible passage with their own words and then either hand in their version to the helpers so that it can be posted on Twitter, or themselves key it in directly via their own PC.
However, those not attending the Kirchentag are invited to take part in the Twitter project as well. Interested persons can register online and have a Bible passage sent to them.
Römhild commends the initiative as superbly appropriate to the Kirchentag as a gathering of lay people. "In this way we are entrusting lay people to engage the Bible." He adds, "If Twitter had been available to the Reformer Martin Luther, he would certainly have used it." In this way, people read the Bible with new eyes and pass on the message in a new way.
At the Kirchentag, small groups of two to four people will sit together, discuss a Bible passage and together decide what the core message is. An exercise that is, of course, subjective, but one that encourages the study of God's Word, and results in a well-considered summary of specific passages. In that way, people get fresh insights into the Bible and pass them on in a new way.
Everyone is warmly invited to join the project and send their own tweets.