‘Tweet Vicar’ Striving To Make Religion Relevant to Younger Crowd

by Mary C. Long

Andrew Aiden is not your typical reverend. He dresses casually, wears a headset while he preaches and encourages his congregation to tweet questions to him during sermons. Looks like the Church is becoming more tech savvy than some businesses . . .

​We told you about the rumored social media component to selecting the next Archbishop of Canterbury the other day – and now we bring you the Reverend Andrew Aiden, the ‘Tweet Vicar.’ He’s bringing sermons from the Church to the tweeple in an attempt to encourage young people to find a place for religion in their lives.

There’s a wifi code pasted on the pillars when you enter the Church and congregants are encouraged to tweet out comments about the sermon, during the sermon. 

Reverend Aiden’s twitter stream is as informal as his jeans. He shares religious tidbits, but mostly appears to keep the conversation light and not overly preachy.

It’s not uncommon to hear about spiritual leaders participating in social media. The Dalai Lama has nearly 4 million followers and tweets pretty consistently each month and Pope Benedict XVIhas 51k followers, though he’s only tweeted six times. What is uncommon though, is to find a member of the clergy who has so enthusiastically adapted to the microblogging platform.

The reverend has even started an ongoing #hashtag chat for his Church. If you want to check it out, you’ll find it at #stpwsm (St. Paul’s Church, Weston-Super-Mare).

What do you think of this? Would this encourage you to go to Church?


This post originally appeared on AdWeek Social Times