Worship with a Capital “T” (Tworship)

Richard — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:48:07 +0000

According to John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, worship is the one thing that Christians can do hedonistically (Desiring God). We can indulge and overindulge ourselves in worship. I do this at every opportunity and can be seen on Twitter and Facebook every week night at 9pm Eastern leading Tworship. Why? I know God’s in it because I cannot NOT do it, it’s not in me to stop. I surround myself with worshipful YouTube videos and some of my favorite worshiping friends and we listen together to the same video started at the same time. All participants comment online to the lyrics of the song as inspired and sometimes just make comments like “I love this song.”

What EXACTLY must you do to participate in Tworship?

1. Watch for the Tworship songs to be tweeted. Generally two YouTube worship video links are tweeted 30 minutes before Tworship begins; Tworship begins Monday-Friday at 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central, 6pm Pacific. We tweet the songs early for those who need to listen early or late due to schedule conflicts and to build some anticipation for those who will participate live. Another tip off that we’re nearing a start is you’ll see me tweeting Bible verses about worship followed by prayer about worship.

2. Start the first video on the hour exactly or wait for a tweet from myself or co-leader Marie @spreadingJoy that says “GO!!!” followed by the song name and artist. Either way you are off to a successful start.

3. Wait for our “GO!!!” tweet for song 2. Both “GO!!!” tweets include the link of the song everyone is doing next.

4. Praise away … make any comments that seem appropriate … let the Spirit lead you to worship.

5. Be encouraged by reading the tweets of the other Tworship participants. We use the hashtag (the thing in red) #Tworship in our tweets. This means that you can click on that and open a column just for Tworship in Tweetdeck. This makes it easy to watch and you can interact at will. If you prefer, lean back in your chair and watch #Tworship without leaving this screen by scrolling down to the green “Get your praise on … Tworship on Twitter” just below. It updates automatically, there’s no need to refresh the screen. You can even reply from right here.

6. Watch the thank you’s done by me and/or @spreadingJoy when the two songs are over. Follow the tweeps in this list and you will find yourself surrounded by an amazing group.

Tworship began by accident. I had a habit of rallying tweeps to pray for people in crisis, nothing unusual there, but I would synchronize the prayers by telling them to begin their prayer at a certain time. One night I was discussing worship music with fellow worship music-lover Marie Wikle @SpreadingJoy and she suggested that I listen to How Great is Our God by Chris Tomlin. I suggested that we could listen to it together by beginning it at exactly 9pm Eastern. There was a flood of comments and retweets due to the popularity of the song and the idea that we could worship together by synchronizing the start time, so we did it again … and again and Tworship was born. Marie @spreadingJoy of Spreading Joy Corporation, continues to co-lead this with me; we are joined each

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night by 50-150 worshipful spirits from Facebook and Twitter for each of the two songs. These loyal worshipers click on the two links between 500 and 1,000 times per night and represent a total reach of more than 71,000 tweeps (per TweetReach), all building a throne of praise for our Lord, one praise at a time.

I not surprised that God would use Twitter, Facebook and Tworship in this way. God appears to be completely comfortable with technology. He’s waiting for us to catch up!

I was recently interviewed by The Worship Journals, read that interview here.

Richard Mayhan
Tworship™
Pastoral Counsel, The Potter’s Workshop
ProdigalReturns.com

If you’d like to follow me or the Tworship YouTube Channel, use the Follow Me button to the far right.

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Worship with a Capital “T” (Tworship)