Top REAP Retreat Tweet Retweets of 2011

Try to say the title of this blog three times fast.  If you can, email me an audio file of your tongue-twisting excellence, and I will send you a sticker!  (To enjoy my tongue-twisting prowess, by the way, you just gotta see this). But I have digressed quite enough already, even for me.

I am a big fan of social media – not only because it can be so fun, but also because of the impact it can make for God.  My favorite social media quote of all time is from our current Pope, who has told the church (that’s you & me, folks!) to evangelize the “digital continent.” If you don’t believe me, you can check it out yourself, here.

And I sure don’t want to be called out by the Pope for disobeying his orders, do I?  (Romans 5:19).

Since I’m such a big fan of the Holy Father, for Christmas, I have asked for a t-shirt that says “I’m Tweeting This.” I know I’m gonna get it, not because I made Santa’s ‘nice’ list (is it okay to mention Santa and the Holy Father in the same blog post?), but because I just ordered it online.

I look forward to wearing it on retreats, not only because it is awesome, but also because I love tweeting from retreats (@reapteam) and from my personal account (@clasekmasek). The REAP Team currently has over 800 followers on Twitter!  I’m not bragging.  I’m just saying.

As we begin every retreat, we always send out a tweet asking for prayers.  And, since prayer is the foundation of all we do, we believe that our presence on Twitter makes our retreats more powerful than ever as it amplifies the prayer support we so desperately need.

Because we love to laugh, and we know that joy is an integral part of the Christian life, we also like to send out tweets of things that make us laugh – everything from our ‘One Smart Feller’ video, linked above, to funny things students say on retreats (Us: “Is it okay if we leave you guys unsupervised?” Eighth grader: “Yeah, you already gave us chastity cards!”), to crazy things we see in our travels (like signs that say “Do not put garbage in this garbage disposal”).

Also, throughout the course of our retreats, we regularly post inspirational thoughts that are spoken by our staff members and volunteers.  We know that these digital messages are having an impact because Twitter alerts us when one of our tweets has been retweeted. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, a retweet is when someone appreciates your posting so much that they share it with all of their followers - thus, instantaneously spreading the good news to people that we may not even know. Here are a couple of examples of Twitter posts from @reapteam that have been retweeted by others:

"Jesus is thinking about you right now..." was retweeted by five of our followers to 198 people.

"Being nice to people that you don't like isn't being fake; it's called growing up and becoming a more mature & loving person" was retweeted by five of our followers to 357 people.

"I've never met anyone who's regretted being chaste, though I've met many who regret their unchaste choices" was retweeted by two of our followers to 1,081 people.

…and our most retweeted REAP retreat tweet of 2011:

"When we refuse to accept a compliment we are insulting God, who created us awesomely and wants us to know it" was retweeted by five of our followers to a whopping 1,957 people.

I hope that sharing these retweets will inspire you in three ways:

1)   to let you know the impact that the REAP Team is making through Twitter

2)   to make you aware of the kinds of things that are speaking to the hearts of this generation of digital disciples, and

3)   to encourage you to evangelize the digital continent through your favorite social media outlets.

Oh, and by the way… we also post all of our tweets to Facebook, and there they probably reach even more people.  But let’s be real: talking about top REAP retreat retweets on Twitter made for a much more funner blog title…