At 8:32 PM Saturday night, professional golfer Bubba Watson tweeted to his 275,000 followers:
Twenty-four hours later Bubba was wearing the most prestigious threads in all of sports – A Green Jacket – having won the Masters in a playoff. In his acceptance speech, he thanked his “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” That was captured and shared in the YouTube video below.
Tuesday, the Huffington Post published an article about it: Bubba Watson Shares His Christian Faith After Masters Win (VIDEO)
And as I write this on Friday, @BubbaWatson has gained a quarter million new followers since that tweet Saturday night (at 526k and counting).
Since we’re focusing on the topic of sharing our faith online in the weeks leading up to Internet Evangelism Day (April 29), what can we learn from all this?
5 Lessons About Sharing Your Faith Online
1) Bubba didn’t wait until he was a Masters champion to start using Twitter. He’s been tweeting since October 2009. You don’t need to wait to connect with people on Twitter either.
2) Bubba isn’t a pastor. As far as I know he doesn’t have a theology degree. He’s not an evangelist. He simply lives out his faith offline and online. You can do the same. You’re plenty qualified.
3) Bubba didn’t wait until he was a Masters champion to express his faith online. He didn’t just thank Jesus when he won. He expressed his faith regularly before then. And when the opportunity came and all the world’s eyes and ears were focused on him he did not have to come up with a strategy to share his faith, he simply did what he’s been doing for years.
4) Bubba didn’t film and upload the YouTube video. He didn’t ask the Huffington Post to write about him. He didn’t ask me to write this post. When you’re using social media, you never know how your message might get amplified by others you’re connected with.
5) Bubba doesn’t broadcast, he engages. Look at his tweets. He actually listens and replies to people. That tells me that he gets it. That he cares about people. More importantly, that tells the people he @replies to that he cares too.
What do you think about Bubba Watson, his Masters win, sharing his faith online and off, his use of Twitter?
What learning points do you come away with?
I love how Masters Sunday was the last thing on Bubba Watson’s list of why his day was going to be awesome. That really shows that he understands what’s truly important and chooses to focus on those things first. It seems to me that the right person won the Masters this year. Thank you for sharing this post.