Texting in Church

For people in my generation, I was one of the last to conform to the fad of texting. I’m still not a big fan of it as a primary means of communication but I suppose that if my friends want to communicate this way, I will too.

Sunday at church, our pastor encouraged us to send text messages during the service. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. He wasn’t saying it’s good to chat with friends, thereby ignoring the sermon. He was making the service interactive. He had us text in what we thought about certain things and display the results of a poll on the screen for everyone to see. The band had us text in what we wanted them to play for the closing song. It looked like about half, maybe a little more than half, were participating. It was kind of neat. This was the 9:45 contemporary service at Forest Hills UMC, by the way, which has a more technologically advanced and much younger crowd than most other services. This certainly wouldn’t fly in the 8am service.

Only recently did I get an unlimited texting plan. Well, 1500 per month, which for many 20-somethings and late teens might not be enough, but this is still more than enough for me. I still have a tendency to call people, leave a message, but get a text in response. This trend has increased tremendously over the last few years. Texting is too short and impersonal to suit me.

Yes, I know it is strange that I feel this way because I am generally kind of frugal with words and don’t like to be close to many people. Somehow, I like the formality of calling someone and talking on the phone, at least for personal things, and until the relationship becomes so informal that you communicate through whatever medium happens to be most convenient at that time, whether it be phone, text, email, face to face visit. For business things and things that might require extensive thought, email is probably best because it is easy to maintain a record and review things later. Texting should be reserved for urgent communication when one person is in a situation where talking on the phone is not convenient.