Turning a Sermon into a Tweet

The pain is not pointless.

Blessed doesn’t mean you are happy, it means you aren’t alone.

Those are one-liners from two of my last sermons.  As I have prepared to preach lately I have tried to distill the sermon into a few thoughts or phrases. Someone wiser than me has a helpful thought of being able to tell my sermon in 30 minutes, 3 minutes, or 3 sentences. A helpful practice for preparation, but I worry how it affects the delivery.

I have seen that people are resonating with these somewhat memorable phrases, but they are weak and lack context. Like reading a singular verse from the Bible we find obvious value but it lacks the deeper meaning of the full narrative.

Essentially I have turned a sermon into a tweet.

The strength of Twitter is brevity, which is also its weakness. With 140 characters you leave plenty of room for interpretation. In that regard Twitter is the ultimate social media for postmoderns.

My question (and concern) is: in reducing the sermon to one phrase am I doing a disservice to the truth I am attempting to communicate?