rebuke thy brother, in 140 characters or less

Right now I’m surfing the Internet while my students are taking their exam, because turnabout is fair play. I see that Christianity Today has a story about Andy Stanley’s disturbingly ambiguous sermon illustration on homosexuality, which ends with a link to Rick Warren tweeting at Al Mohler to apologize for the over-generalizing title of his blogpost on Stanley’s sermon. Mohler tweeted back at Warren (quite well, in my opinion), and Warren retweeted his concern.

I understand that Mohler’s blog was a public document, so Warren doesn’t have to confront him in private. But on Twitter? I don’t think the medium fits the message. Can you have a dialogue about important matters on something called “Twitter”? I know, I’m trying to have this conversation on something called a “blog.” Fair enough.

But I think the terseness of Twitter makes this especially difficult. If you look at the Warren and Mohler exchange, each one has only 140 characters to make his point. It’s hard to look pastoral or presidential in a flurry of short bursts.

I’m not sure if I can put my finger on it exactly, but I feel that something important has been lost. Our leaders seem diminished by the medium, and I don’t like it. But my last student turned in his exam, so I’ll post this and go home to think some more.