There is increasing evidence that laughter can contribute to both your physical and emotional health. Of course there is hurtful & even hateful forms of humor. Like every good gift, wrongly used laughter can be harmful and hurtful to others. But from those who practice Laughter Yoga, we learn that laughter, even when you are just going through the practice of laughing, can have beneficial results. Especially when we can laugh at ourselves, it gives us perspective and some distance from being so serious that we lose perspective.
With that in mind, I want to experiment with forming a list on Twitter that we will name Twitter theology. If you are on twitter, you know that each post can only be 140 characters long. The very brevity forces us to pare down what we want to say. I want to invite any clergy who are interested in exploring a Friday morning list of tweet theology. That usually is right when the pressure of the weekend begins to build. What if we paused, even if for a few seconds, and looked for some humor in what was happening before we proceeded to face the weekend.
Since this is mostly shared among clergy, we can even let our moments of frustration out with sardonic, even cynical humor at the demands of ministry, the state of the church, clergy temptations, and even ways in which the Bible can cause us to pause in our own journey. Each Friday, as we begin that day, we can look and see who has posted in the list, perhaps get a chuckle or even be confronted by an uncomfortable truth, but also to get a bit of distance that allows us to remember that it is God on whom we depend. Maybe we can relax a little and remember that even when it looks difficult, there is reason to look for saving hope.
I hope that you will join me, either in reading the tweets or in contributing your own. Maybe we can all contribute to healthy of ministry. Join the list or look for the hashtag, #TwitTheo and let us support each other.
Jesus said to the rich young ruler, go sell what you have, give to the poor, and come and follow me. The rich man said “That’s no way to build a successful church.” Jesus responded, “Successful?”
