Every so often a comment comes along that really makes me stop and think. This was such a comment. Unusually for me (!) I didnt know what I wanted to say immediately. The question came from Matthew Self who writes gaddabout. It made me think of Davids recent post which raised the question in my mind "is it wise for every christian to blog about theology?" Anyway, before I get into attempting to answer the question let me reproduce it here for you:

Adrian, if I confess I do not have a purpose-driven blog, does that make me a lazy Christian? (This is a serious question, not a glib remark)

I'm generally a creative person, but I've yet discovered any kind of broad vision for what I have to offer the Church on the Internet. Like most everyone else, my blog is my personal space and it has a random objective. I draw a small handful of people who already agree with me, and am ignored wholesale by the rest of the world. (That's probably a good thing considering what I've contributed so far, but I'm trying to avoid that folly in this post).

Do you have more than a general vision for the Church in the blogosphere? What kind of applications would you suggest for the uneducated laypeople such as myself? What kind of content should our blogs focus on?

I'm certainly engaged by your affectionate enthusiasm for the topic. I just wonder if your vision is really for Church leadership and not the Church as a whole. Not all of us are teachers or thinkers.

The first part of this question is easy to dispatch. Firstly, because I think Gaddabouts blog is very worthy and have been most impressed by his honesty such as for example in his smoking post. But secondly because as I have argued in my posts on "success" in blogging, no one tells you what you should accomplish with your blogging. It really is up to you. There is no law that says this is what you should blog about nor this is why you should blog. It really isnt for me to tell anyone what they should blog about- with the advent of aggregators I can quickly tell from a headline what I am interested in reading, let me be the judge of whether what you say is of use to me, you simply post what is on your mind.

Unless someone is paying you, blogging works best when the writer communicates from what is of interest to him at that time. I think that my blog has helped me become a better person to know in real life as it provides an outlet for the latest idea that is burning in me. Instead of annoying everyone I know about my latest fad I can inflict it on you lot! Perhaps it is the preacher in me that means that I often have a burning zeal about my latest issue. I can relate to the notion that lay behind Phils choice of the title pyromaniac for his blog.

I think that there is definitely room for many different kinds of blogs in the blogosphere. Not everyone will burn with the desire to teach in the way so many of the preacher's blogs that I love do. Indeed, not many of us should presume to teach, and there are many times when I stop to think about the frightening responsibility of hundreds of people reading my latest witterings.

It is definitely the case that some bloggers should not make definitive statements about what they believe the bible to be saying. If nothing else it can be embarrassing if your views change the following week. Indeed there are issues that I deliberately avoid getting drawn into and sometimes I ask a question of the blogosphere rather than giving an answer. I have found that blogging can be very helpful for exploring an idea and learning different perspectives. I believe my preaching has improved as a direct result. But, it is a fool who takes blogs as his primary source of teaching. They can help you explore ideas for sure, but they should NEVER take the place of the church. As I said in a post a while back, "dont listen to me what do i know!"

Matthew has served a very useful purpose already with his blog in my view. His smoking post sparked me off to write on the subject and led to an interesting debate. He also honestly shared his view of his own theology as one that is incomplete and listed the questions he has. His questions do not reveal an uneducated person.

Blogs can fulfill many different functions. Some will express a question or struggle in such a way that the preachers cant resist trying to answer. Others will simply point to others posts that interest them without really stating there own view very much. Some will become popular beyond their wildest dreams, others will only be read by friends and family.

I do believe that blogging as a whole can serve the church in a number of ways-

1. Blogging has the potential to bring people of like mind together and enable them to discuss and firm up their views.
2. Blogging has the potential to allow people of different backgrounds to come together discuss and discover that they have more in common than they thought and by an interactive process redefine their view of the truth
3. Blogging has the potential to be an evangelistic tool.
4. Blogging has the potential to give great influence to some bloggers both inside and outside the church. I already have far more readers of my blog than congregation for my sermons.
5. Like the invention of the printing press, blogging gives the potential for ideas to spread quickly. Ideas can also flow and form organically accross many different sites. The potential for blogs to be part of a pyromarketing campaign has yet to be fully explored. There is great power in blogging because there is great power in words and in communication, especially in communication that interacts.
6. Blogging can also just be plain fun!

I would love to see christian bloggers linking to each other more and working to increase the coherrance of the group as a whole and the emergance of an online christian mind. I can actually imagine that blogging may have the potential to be a great tool used by God in his end time purpose of bringing the church to unity BEFORE he comes. People may say "impossible" but in my lifetime I have already seen such a bridging of the emnity felt by many denominations for each other and a movement towards more understanding.

I do believe that the church can and will change the world and am in the middle of what will become a substantial series on what kind of churches will do this. This series is an expansion of a sermon I preached recently which is available online to listen to.

Essential to my view of church is the notion of teams or networks of people working together. The blogosphere may not have the face-to-face relationships that are crucial to the church but the way we can sometimes swarm together around issues and help one another and little communities coallese to me is a rather lovely picture of what I want local churches to be like. Blogging does allow a level of relationship and working together accross continents that will serve the church well in the future.

It is my prayer that God will use blogging as one tool to fulfill his purposes for the church to become a united and mature bride. I passionately believe in the restoration of the church. I believe that preaching is the tool that God will predominantly use for this purpose but am convinced that blogging can really serve and help preachers, and indeed all Christians.


Ephesians 4: 11-16 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.