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LDS (Mormon) Conference and Twitter
October 6, 2009 by Giuseppe Martinengo 1 Comment | Filed in General Conference, Internet & Media
According to an article in the Daily Herald, tweets (posts on Twitter) were “coming fast and furious” during the recent LDS general conference. In spite of thousands of members stuffing the LDS conference center in Salt Lake City and hundreds of thousands more watching the conference broadcast, other members were pushing the event to the forefront of social media. The search term “#ldsconf” remained among the most popular on Twitter over the weekend.
There were tweets almost about every topic, but Elder Jeffery R. Holland’s direct and emotional testimony about the veracity of the church’s Book of Mormon was followed by thousands of tweets about how powerful it was.
The article on the Daily Herald ends by stating that
even as the church’s members streamed, tweeted, IM’d, listened and watched conference on every piece of media at their disposal, Elder Russell M. Nelson said the best kind of communication doesn’t come with a cost. ‘Even more amazing that modern technology is our opportunity to access information directly from heaven, without hardware, software or monthly service fees,’ he said.
I recognize that it is a nice way of closing an article, but it may leave us with a false impression about using the Internet to spread the Gospel. Elder Nelson was trying to direct our attention to the importance of prayer, but if prayer is a great form of communication with God, it is someway limited when we try to talk to mortals. In fact, in spite of the fact that missionaries usually prepare themselves for their service through fervent prayer and fasting, and that prayer may open doors, missionaries still need to communicate directly with the people, if they want to make an effect. Angelic visitations as a consequence of prayers, such in the case of Alma praying for his son Alma the Younger, usually only come after the missionaries, or the parents, have done all they could to communicate with the people they were trying to reach.
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I had the same impression when I read the article, and yet I knew that I understood the importance of online missionary work. Thank you for addressing what may be a misunderstanding in the message, by many who do not understand or see the significance in what many good LDS members are doing, using the Internet.
tDMg
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