The Future of Christian Blogging
I've had a very interesting day of thinking about blogging. I recently spoke to a friend who is in the pursuit of increasing his blogging community. He is blogging more, evangelizing his blog through twitter and facebook, and making a number strategic moves to increase traffic through his blog. I got somehow caught up in the excitement of what he shared with me and begin researching last night about how I might increase the effectiveness of my blog and evangelize it more.
Then I read this post from one of my favorite Christian bloggers. He has come to the decision to turn off all of his social networking sites. No more facebook, twitter, or blogging (Ohhhh the humanity!). All of this for deeply spiritual reasons. It seems he has been convicted that he has a limited resource of time. It seems he has struggled with the overall spirituality of his life and the time spent on electronic forms of networking have become, to him, a interference.
I think there is a challenge here for each of us to consider. Are our electronic connections distracting us from our more personal connections? Are they disengaging us from our realistic obligations? Are we misfocused on perpetual electronic communication?
The real question is, what is the cost of all of these electronic connections? What are we taking out of our schedules for the sake of these media? Are we substituting reading about someone else's quiet time for having one of our own? Are we living vicariously through someone else's evangelism instead of sharing our faith with our own neighbors? Are we missing our own chance to feed the poor, serve the sick, visit the prisoner, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, encourage our fellow believers... and on and on so we can read about what others are doing?
Has the conversation about faith actually replaced the living out of faith?
What is the cost:
to our families,
to our churches,
to our neighbors,
to our God?
I don't want to propose the answer here. I'm just struck by the idea.
Read YSMarko's post here.
Let me know what you think.
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3 comments:
I have been saying something similar about facebook and twitter. I am O.K. with blogging, for now anyways. But I know and have seen facebook and to some extent twitter actually hurt relationships.
I know, I know... they allow you to connect with old high school pals. Certainly, facebook is better than the phone book. But I think other than using it to find someone, it can be a dangerous place that makes relations less, not more, intimate... I could go on, but then I'd be neglecting my family!
I think that all these things are useful if:
1) they fit in with your ministry objectives
2) You can avoid the addiction and don't get sucked into the power trip.
Michael Hyatt wrote about making a 90 day plan. I think if we all had a focus on what we are trying to achieve, what our calling is, we would be better positioned to decide whether or not we should use faceboog, twitter etc. Thus we would also know HOW we should be using them.
This is Aaron not Tiffany (I'm setting up her new computer). It's funny that you wrote this because I already closed my blog, facebook, and twitter accounts. I also removed a bunch of my feeds. I felt over connected I guess.
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