This Sunday we’re going to try an experiment with a 10 minute Q & A time near the end of the sermon. The way we’re going to do this is via the communications platform Twitter. Twitter uses 140-character ‘tweets’ to relay information from computers, smart-phones and tablets. It’s a free, very popular service and the second most used social media platform in the world. By using a hash tag (a # symbol followed by a phrase) our presentation software can find your tweets and display them live for me to (attempt to) answer. We’re enabling the software to hide your twitter handle so that the whole room doesn’t know who’s asking the question (only our projection technician will be aware of where the tweets come from). I’m really excited about the level of interactivity and expression this technology will enable in our service and think it will be a fun experiment. If you have a cell phone, I encourage you to use it during the service to tweet your questions, as well as take notes with our new Sermon Notes App (sn.westheights.org).
To send a question on Sunday, simply tweet the content of the question followed by the hash tag. For this series our hash tag will be #whqa
For example:
What is the meaning of life? #whqa
If you’re not a twitter user but want to try it out, head over to Twitter.com and sign up for an account. It’s free!
One of the hardest things about when I speak on Sunday mornings (as opposed to Thursday nights with the Sr. Highs) is the lack of two-way communication. I miss out of hearing questions, and don’t get a chance to clarify things and see where we as a group are tracking the ideas I’m trying to communicate. Understandably, when there are 200+ people in a room, most people are too shy or scared to stick up their hand in the air and ask a question. Luckily, technology has filled in the gap.
See you Sunday!