Bill Berkowitz looks at the GodBlogCon held in Las Vegas this year.

The event has been nicknamed the ConGodBlogCon at connexions, and I doubt some of the GodBlogConners find that charming.;^)

Berkowitz doesn’t editorialize, he merely reports. 
I’ve been interested in the development of this conference the past three years, I can  speculate and review past information.
I didn’t get the flack this year that I did the first and second years I posted. There is little organizers and I are able to discuss, and I think that is a shame. 

Al Mohler (President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is looking to be president of the denomination, so one would expect him to use every platform possible to get where he wants to go.  

Accountability is very important. We need to make sure our blogs are accountable to the Christian church. Someone ought to be able to call us on this. Our fellow Christians involved in our local churches ought to be reading our blogs and checking up on us to make sure we are telling the truth in a wholesome, compassionate way.

Oh.
If you read GodBlogCon blurbs and posts you’ll notice there are a lot of shoulds and oughts. There is some truth in Mohler’s statement.  He runs a seminary, is a member of a conservative denomination and is accustomed to people jumping when he says jump.
He intends to get the top job in his denomination he is capable of getting it, and that has little to do with the rest of us.

Other leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention have been virulently ‘anti-blog.’ 
What pro or anti blog church or Christian leaders think about the medium is irrelevant.  Polorizing is counter-productive.

Political organizations such as Family Research Council can set up all the open blogs they want to and they do.
This is not a medium of ‘if you build it they will come.’
Media companies such as Salem will use whatever it has available to stay on the edge of whatever is going on in the free market.  
Smart consumers and blog readers are going to ask what the message is.
As Christians mature in our faith we learn to weigh the medium and most certainly it’s messages.
 
Salem Media is another business targeting a demographic, so Hugh Hewitt’s coining of ’new media’ is an understandable buzz word for the conference to latch on to. Hewitt, along with bringing his political convictions to the conference, had the foresight to write a blogging book in 2005. It’s part of his job. 

Since Hugh Hewitt’s blog site-HughHewitt-was launched in early 2002, more than 10 million people have visited this site. Why does this visitor traffic matter? People’s attentions are up for grabs. If you depend upon the steady trust of others, suddenly you have an audience waiting to hear from you. The race is underway, though, to gain mindspace and to be part of the blogosphere readers’ habits and to position yourself as well as your business or organization at the forefront of this information movement.

(Hewitt blogs at Salem Media’s Townhall.com now as Executive Editor)
The GodBlogCon has attempted to attract US evangelical media stars and this year began to target US evangelical ministers.
  
I wonder if that gets tired quickly for bloggers and especially for minister/priest bloggers, who not only have to deal with the inbox of their church computer, but their own.  
This conference has unfortunately became about who is ’not us’ and to this day I don’t believe that was the original intent of organizers.

Biola University has played a significant role, which also makes sense historically. Biola was formed in the early part of the 20th century to evangelize Hollywood.
The original bloggers that started this conference remain friends. They share the goals and ideals of  conference sponsors. Free labour for the GodBlogCon has been supplied by Biola students. 

The question asked by Pam’s Blend at the end of this piece has been asked in various ways by faith bloggers who have seen the packaging of  evangelical Christianity take many forms online; from leadership networks, to social networking sites, to Christian business networks, Church tv, dating sites and online confessionals. I’m into my sixth year of blogging, all forms of media noticed the trends years ago.

“Does anyone else besides me feel like God and Jesus are being repackaged and marketed for the 18 to 34 demographic?  Are these folk trying to save souls, or are they developing a web enterprise system for soul acquisitions?”

It’s a good question.
I believe motives are very mixed.

3 years ago, questions, interest and criticism I put out here were seen as threatening by most (not all) organizers of this particular blogging conference.
As they have pushed forward, the defensiveness eased, and the demographic they wish to target and tap into has become clear.

This year, emailing the conference leaders or PR people and asking for statistics or answers to questions didn’t even garner a response.
One volunteer who has become known for his graciousness responded to a blog post.
These conferences cost money, and money comes from corporations, be they media, business or para-church organizations. 

Most bloggers don’t see their passion and identity in those terms.
This year the GodBlogCon didn’t get media attention.
Nor did organizers get the grass roots attention they received in past years.

If the last set of statistics I read on faith blogs is correct, we make up about 2 percent of blogs. 
It’s difficult if not next to impossible to gauge what percentage of these are US Republican evangelicals, the sub market for the GodBlogCon set.
Perhaps that is one of the goals, organizing and collecting data on content providers (blogs) in the hopes of getting whatever their message is out.

The faith blog community is no different than any other online community; there are closed and open sections, commerce driven sections and egos of all sizes. 
There will always be organizations and individuals who see a market, and bloggers who see themselves as part of that market.  There will always be people pushing and packaging a political agenda.

I have found the world wide community of faith blogs to be a vibrant, changing and thriving section of the blogosphere.
GodBlogCon organizers are clear about what they want to go.

Lisa Anderson, director of public relations and publicity for Focus on the Family, attended the conference and, according to FotF’s CitizenLink.com, “was impressed by the immense opportunity available to Christians via blogging and social networking.

Other than an informal, unstructured, unsponsored get together of faith bloggers at Greenbelt in the UK, I haven’t seen efforts such as GodBlogCon elsewhere in the world.  
The GodBlogCon is absolutely unique. As organizers continue to put down their economic and political roots, your guess is as good as mine about what their definition of success will be.  It isn’t going to be this:

“Calling and equipping all Christians to engage culture through the new media”