Clergy on Twitter: A Sermon in 140 Characters

Faced with declining membership and participation, more priests, ministers, rabbis and nuns are on YouTube discussing tattoos and the dangers of gossip, tweeting regularly, and posting podcasts. Some clergy scrutinize Facebook analytics to see if a posting a psalm at 6 a.m. gets more traffic than 7 a.m. and hire consultants to help create an online identity for their church. Rabbi Jason Miller writes a blog called Jewish Techs and created another one called PopJewish.com, where â??Hip Rabbis weigh in on the Zeitgeist.â? Bishop Robert Barron, who founded the media ministry WordOnFire.org, has close to one million followers on Facebook, 85,000 YouTube subscribers and 400 video commentaries on everything from Christian martyrs to â??The Martian.â?