So, as troubling as this may be, this is what we are working with in the blogging community. Bloggers have a strange mix of independence and interdependence. Bloggers long for community and interdependence but they want to do this independently of existing traditional ecclesiastical structures.
Almost everyone who reads me knows I’m a pastor and if you are new hear and didn’t know that now you do. But being a pastor carries little if any weight in the blogging community, except maybe to a few members of my own church and others who are very traditional in their outlook.
Jollyblogger looks at Tim Bednar’s White Paper. Everything old is new again online. Worth a read. I think blogging ministers might find some level ground.
Published 3 years, 5 months agoIn my church there are only a handful of people who know what a blog is. More and more are learning because we now have a few bloggers. We have several college age kids and youth who blog who probably understand these things better than most. Then we have an older generation, and I would put that older generation as anyone over the age of about 25, for whom all of this stuff Tim wrote would be foreign. These older folks probably wouldn’t see too much evidence of these mindsets and so there are many who would think this is not an issue we are facing. Still others might acknowledge that this stuff is out there, but it doesn’t really affect them.
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Tim’s paper is going to be very troubling for ministers in traditional churches. But, I was talking with some folks today and we agreed that this whole idea of “participatory church” has the potential to raise the bar in a lot of ways and pastors shouldn’t feel threatened by it.
I enjoyed your post…god-blogs are such a small part of the 60 million or so online I’ve not considered why or why they would/wouldn’t be on denominational radar screens.
And as one of those rebellious bloggers:^) the ability to find information online and be participatory hasn’t undermined my orthodoxy.
It’s strengthened it.
Point well taken, it might well make some ministers and priests nervous.
Maybe because I’m not in the US and I’m not a minister I hadn’t considered what Tim said as revolutionary.
Blog on!
As a pastor, I’ve gotten into some conflicts with some members who’ve read my blog. Nothing serious, but it has shown me that my writing as a pastor is taken seriously by those in my congregation who read it.
But, I’ve also gotten positive responses (from many of the same folks with whom I had disagreements). This is a great medium, and keeps me in touch with folks in ways that weren’t available to me before I started blogging.
kgp
Huh, people are still reading that paper. Seems like ages ago that I wrote it. I think JollyBlogger wrote one of the best reponses to it I’ve read.