The Blogging Pastor
I was listening recently to a well-known Baptist Pastor who asserted that “these bloggers” were overly critical of his ministry. Blogging Pastors have been blamed for a lot of stuff they really haven’t been responsible for. Important issues do have to be raised, however, when handling the responsibility of blogging.
First, let me offer my own definition of what blogging is all about. For many, it seems like an over-used, trendy buzz word designed to communicate that a guy is “with it” and connected to the postmodernized web 2.0 world. If that’s you, more power to you. As a blogging Pastor myself, I define it differently. For me, blogging is writing to the world at large. Period.
One of the areas of web design I am most keenly interested in is blog design, particularly for corporate entities, churches, and other nonprofit organizations. Add to that that I’m a blogging Pastor myself (www.brandonacox.com), and you can probably understand the positive nature of my reflections on this subject. So here are my thoughts…
Practical Uses of Pastoral Blogging
There are some great blogging platforms available today. My own favorite is WordPress. Like most others, WordPress offers some functionality that allows Pastors and churches to offer a diversity of dynamic content on their site while knowing very little about web programming or development. Let me define some basic helpful terms before going into detail.
Categories are used to categorize different types of articles. They have other uses as well, but the benefits of categorizing content are manifold. First, you can list all categories in a menu so that people can browse articles under these general subject headings. Second, each category, for WordPress at least, generates a separate feed. Coupled with some other tools, you can use a single category in different ways.
Tags are kind of like categories, but are usually utilized a little more loosely. When I write an article on my blog, I quickly think of the four or five most relevant words related in the article and I list them as tags for the article. This helps with various search functions and also enables the use of a “tag cloud” that lists my topics in a cloud format with the most-written-about being the boldest in the list.
Timestamp refers to the time an article was posted. The usefulness of the timestamp is that, for WordPress at least, posts with timestamps in the future will not appear on the site until their timestamp has arrived. So for daily devotionals, you can “stack up” your articles in advance and trust that they will post at the appropriate time.
Now on to that list of practical uses of pastoral blogging…
Use a blogging platform for prayer requests. Be careful with online prayer lists. It’s great to inform people of needs, but make sure you are respecting all privacy issues, written and otherwise. Don’t post medical status’ unless you are cleared to do so by the individual or family members. Should you use blogging for prayer requests, make the title the request and use the post body for details. Then, include the rss feed or category widget in your sidebar.
Use a blogging platform for posting sermon notes. Within my church, we use WordPress not only for sermon notes, but also for podcasting audio recordings from Sunday’s sermons (www.biblejourney.org). Be brave and post them before Sunday, or simply allow them to remain on your site as an archive.
Use a blogging platform as photo album. You’ll need to know a little something about plugins to make this nice, but you can style your photos to display inline with pretty borders and use something like a lightbox script to make a nice-looking popup for each image. This is what I’ve done with my portfolio.
Use a blogging platform to reflect and inspire. I think this can definitely be overdone. Don’t become so infatuated with your own opinions that you try to become the “Dear Abby” of the Christian web. Nonetheless, your people want to know what you think about all kinds of issues. When someone else is challenging the historical Jesus, the historicity of Noah’s ark, or is introducing a new cult, you have the opportunity to express your beliefs to your people… by blogging.
Use a blogging platform as a daily devotional. I began doing this through DailyBibleJourney.org but the project became quickly overwhelming because of my schedule. After trips to Missouri, Kentucky, and central Arkansas, and staring down trips to Texas and even Russia, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to be as consistent as I’d hoped. So heed the warning, work ahead if you go down this road. It’s an extremely rewarding exercise for both you and the people whom you lead.
Use a blogging platform to publish “news” about your church. People who are considering attending your church would like to know that actual human beings go there and that they interact on some kind of regular basis like a spiritual family. So use a blogging platform to convey notes about what’s been happening in addition to what’s upcoming.
Don’t be afraid to blog - just do it responsibly. The worst thing you can do is hide behind the anonymity of the internet and hurl insults and accusations at fellow leaders over minor disagreements. It’s rather unfair to attack a colleague when he or she cannot practically offer any rebuttal. There may be times you’ll need to expose error, but be careful about offending others online - it’s kind of a cheap shot.
The internet can be a rather dark place, spiritually speaking. If God has called you to speak to the world on His behalf, why not include the world wide web? You Pastors have been called to communicate, to write, to speak, and to think out loud. So use the technology at your fingertips and publish, blog, and preach electronically! And if you need help getting started or with a custom blog or church web site design, I’m here to help!
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Filed Under: Advice For Ministries, Web Design Articles