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Is Blogging Just for Self-Centred Nerds?

By Dave Faulkner.

“I’m not interested in blogging,” typed a friend in an email, “I can’t help thinking of Ian Hislop’s comment that blogging is just ‘me, me, me.’”

That is certainly a popular perception of blogging in some circles. It has some credence. Trawl through some teenage blogs on MySpace or Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces and that is just what you will find: narcissistic ramblings with a few photos of the family pet thrown in.

So Paul Beasley-Murray asked me to address the question, ‘Why blog?’ from a Christian perspective (‘How to blog’ would be a separate article). I put out a public appeal on my own blog, and surfed a few places for some thoughts. In what follows, I hope to show that it is possible for blogging to be a spiritual practice.

I posed the question on my own blog in February 2008[1], and received a handful of replies. Dave Warnock, whose blog title (“42: My Life, the Universe and Everything’, http://42.blogs.warnock.me.uk/) sounds suspect in the light of the question, and Pam Garrud (http://pambg.blogspot.com/) are both Methodist ministers in the UK. They agreed that blogging at its best need not be self-centred, nor even for nerds, especially now blogging platforms have become available that require far less technical knowledge. Blogs at their best are interactive. They promote conversation. This can be valuable as together we pursue the truth that is Jesus Christ. Certainly, a number of strands in the contemporary church have found this valuable - not least the ‘emerging church’, which often styles itself as a conversation.

Olive Morgan, a Methodist laywoman in her eighties (http://octomusings.blogspot.com/), also chipped in. She said, “I see blogging as the best way to spread important information of all kinds and it is also good to lift people's spirits by sharing laughter.”

Kim Matthews, an American Methodist, blogs at http://sandpipersthoughts.blogspot.com. She responded to an appeal that Richard Hall (http://theconnexion.net/), a British Methodist minister, kindly posted on his blog for me[2]. Kim writes:

I blog, daily. I do it because the habit of daily writing requires that I keep my eyes open to God. I have to watch for Him - to be aware of Him in the world around me, or I have nothing about which to write. I consider blogging to be a discipline, as much as my morning devotional time is a discipline. My hope is that by blogging, I’m moving away from being self-centered towards being more God-centered.

Am I a nerd? Maybe, but with the ease of blogging, it is certainly not a requirement! If you can email, you can blog.

For Kim, then, it is a spiritual discipline of attentiveness to God. This sounds like a contrast to the self-centred examples that have given blogging a bad name, and with which I began this piece.

One other person responded to Richard’s post on my behalf. Beth blogs not so much in words as in cartoons and animations at http://batsflewin.blogspot.com/ and http://evilspacepenguins.blogspot.com/. Her reason for blogging was rather more melancholy:

I usually blog when I’m unhappy and/or can’t sleep. It helps an awful lot with both sadness and insomnia! I actually don’t care whether anyone reads it, and I don’t think pretty much any of my friends have the address for the blog.

Her reason for blogging therefore centres on a need for some personal therapy. I would be loath to call that self-centred.

I conducted further research beyond my own circles. Andrew Jones is a prolific Christian blogger known as Tall Skinny Kiwi. He can be found at http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com. A New Zealander - as you may have guessed from the title of the blog - he is involved in missional living on Orkney. In a blog on 7th July 2008 entitled ‘Wikinomics and Mission’[3] he outlines the book ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything’ by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. This book advocates the deconstruction of hierarchical businesses in favour of trust, transparency, collaboration and co-creation. He talks about Rob McEwan, the CEO of the company GoldCorp Inc., which put a considerable quantity of data about gold in the public domain so that people would help find the next six million ounces of gold. The results shaved three years off exploration time.

Jones then takes this and other examples of transparency and generosity (which are supremely modelled in the life of Jesus) and applies it to blogging. He says,

For me, blogging is a way of sharing my thoughts freely, without finding an immediate connection with how I might be paid or get better off. If a good name is better than riches, then reputation trumps remuneration. I have always been inspired by musician Keith Green who gave away his records to me and thousands of others without knowing how it would come back to him, or if what he cast on the waters would ever come back. But it always does.

As Andrew Jones gives away, so he receives. That ought to sound familiar to those steeped in the Gospels.

Two years ago, the United Methodist Reporter, the journal connected to the United Methodist Church in the USA, published an article that surveyed why members of their denomination took up blogging[4]. This major article identifies a number of additional reasons why Christians, including church leaders, find it valuable to blog.

Beth Quick, the young pastor of a congregation in New Jersey (http://bethquick.blogspot.com/), says that blogging enables her to gain a greater connection with all sorts of people. She has networked with other leaders who have provided advice for her. She has surveyed people for opinion. She has been able to follow developments in her denomination and opinions more closely.

This sense of networking is certainly something with which I would identify. One consequence of my own blogging encountering other Methodist ministers whom I otherwise would not have met. As a result, five or six of us have set up a mutual support email group.

Billy Reeder is a consultant for a web solutions company and a youth leader at his church in Arkansas. He ran a blog (which I will not list, as it seems not to have been updated for over a year) which he specifically designed to make contact with the young people he served in the church. He knew they were more likely to interact through such a medium than even email. Social networks like Facebook can function in a similar way, as I have found with some of my younger church members. Thus, blogging can be about targeting your desired audience.

Theresa Coleman is listed in the article as a pioneer of women’s support, particularly female clergy. Known on the web as Reverend Mommy and blogging at http://reverendmommy.blogspot.com/, she saw a particular need to support female church leaders. They are ordained at a later age and drop out faster, she says. In July 2005, she helped set up a ‘web ring’ (like a network of independent websites) called RevGalBlogPals (http://revgalblogpals.blogspot.com/). When I accessed it for this article[5], I counted three hundred and forty-nine separate blogs listed as part of the ring. They pray for each other, ask questions and have fun - all the things you might do if you met in person and wanted to support each other, apart from physical touch.

Wes Magruder illustrates the fact that blogging is a tool that can be used to facilitate and increase missionary ties. He and his family are missionaries in Cameroon, and set up their blog at http://preachpeace.blogspot.com/ as a way of keeping in touch with church supporters back home. Unusually for a blogger, he does not allow people to post comments on his blog. In his case, it could be sensitive if someone posted an obscene note[6]. Instead, he enters into dialogue by email with people who contact him.

A final point from the article would be about the hope that blogs can influence the future of the church. In American Methodism, bloggers such as the previously mentioned Theresa Coleman, John the Methodist (http://locustsandhoney.blogspot.com/), Gavin Richardson (‘Hit The Back Button To Move Fwd’, http://www.gavoweb.com/) and Jay Voorhees (‘Only Wonder Understands’, http://onlywonder.com/) all hope they can encourage free discussion about the future of their denomination across theological differences. They even hope to hold a conference on blogging and the future of the church.

The article, then, covers a wide range of blogging benefits. However, I have barely mentioned my own reasons, apart from the odd comment in passing. I had a sabbatical in 2003, during which I set up a personal website. One of my hopes for that site was that it would engender conversation and debate. To do that, I set up on it something that now seems quite old-fashioned on the web: a discussion board. However, it was rarely used and when it was, I had no indication it had been unless I regularly checked up. The final straw came when a friend emailed me, saying, ‘Did you know that Uruguayan porn is being posted on your site?’ I took down the discussion board immediately, and looked for a longer-term solution.

That solution proved to be blogging. Initially I landed upon a now defunct service called ModBlog (although some of my early posts are copied at http://bigcircumstance.blogspot.com/), but in 2005 I followed a friend’s advice. I moved to Typepad and began blogging at http://davefaulkner.typepad.com. Over time, I have developed the conversation and debate I first longed for in 2003. It ebbs and flows, but is rewarding, not least when my sixteen years of ministry mean I can encourage a younger minister, and vice-versa, when younger and also more experienced church leaders can encourage me. Sometimes it breaks out in unexpected directions: such surprises are among the joys of blogging.

Naturally, as a Methodist minister, many of my examples above have been from people in my tradition - although blogging also facilitates dialogue across boundaries. However, one of the documents John Wesley is known for is his Journal. He was by no means the only person of his day to keep a journal: George Whitefield and others did, too. Yet what is often not appreciated about Wesley is that he wrote his journal for public consumption. When described like that, Wesley’s Journal, in all its eight volumes, is rather like the eighteenth century version of a twenty first century blog. Blogging is not necessarily entirely a novelty.

Wesley had reasons for publishing a journal. It was a way of disseminating his thoughts and another method of propagating his message. None of us may be of his spiritual stature, but we are engaged in the ministry of the word. We have an interest in that word reaching out, whether it is a pastoral, evangelistic or prophetic word. In the communications revolution, blogging is one way of making a public journal available.

Perhaps you have not tried blogging. You might like to explore some of the links I have given in this article. See what you think. If you are interested in starting a blog, then as I said at the beginning, the ‘how’ of blogging is a separate article. However, I would be very happy to give informal advice by email. Contact me on david.faulkner@methodist.org.uk.

 

 

[1] ‘Is Blogging For Self-Centred Nerds?’ 26th February 2008. Accessed 5th August 2008.

[2] http://theconnexion.net/wp/?p=3461 Accessed 4th August 2008.

[3] http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2008/07/wikinomics-and.html Accessed 4th August 2008.

[4] ‘United Methodist blogs give laity greater voice’. Posted at http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=990 on 1st June 2006. Accessed 5th August 2008.

[5] On 5th August 2008.

[6] This concern can be overcome on most blogging platforms by the imposition of comment moderation.