Impacting culture, creating community

LA MIRADA, Calif. — Blogs are revolutionizing the church and culture, and they’re creating community in the process. Speakers at the first-ever GodBlogCon agreed that by putting the power of the press into the hands of common people, blogging has the potential to transform society.

Short for “web log,” a blog resembles a website, but is more easily and quickly updated, and many blogs allow readers to post comments or responses. People use blogs as a personal diary, a daily pulpit, a political soapbox, a news outlet, a collaborative space, a collection of links…. Just about anything. And Christians are on the cutting edge.

Dr. Andrew Jackson, a seminary professor and pastor of Word of Grace Church in Mesa, Ariz., likened the blogosphere to the Protestant Reformation.

“Luther wanted to have an academic discussion, but it tapped into something bigger in the society,” he said.

As Christians harness the power of the blogosphere, Jackson said he believes we have the potential to influence culture for the Kingdom of God.

“We need to interpret the culture correctly,” Jackson said.

He suggested that blogs offer the church an opportunity to have an institutional impact on worldview and the issues affecting western civilization. Stating that there is presently, for example, no ideology in the mainstream media to combat the intrusion of Islam, he challenged Christian bloggers to be “a voice of salt and light, not just to culture abstractly, but to civilization.”

Dr. Mark D. Roberts, senior pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church, in Irvine, Calif., said that the blogosphere needs Christian voices, even though it takes time to maintain a meaningful blog.

“A blog is a harsh mistress, but it’s important for there to be Christian voices out there,” he said. “Comment on stuff. Contribute something that matters. A little person in dialogue with people makes a difference.”

Joe Carter, managing editor of World Magazine blogs, suggested that blogging is like a farm club, allowing people who might not have access to the mainstream media to earn a voice in the marketplace of ideas.

There must be something to this. Clearly, blogging is serious business. Christians use the blogosphere for commentaries on theology, culture, politics, and life in general. While many blogs are embryonic or trite, some Christians are grabbing this new form of communication and running with it in innovative ways that are already shaping the way Americans, and even the world, think.

Creating community
But how can blogs create community? Bloggers who encourage comments find that they develop a following and that their own thinking is challenged by the ongoing interaction with others. No longer is communication only one way.

Jackson uses his blog “for connection, community, conversation about what God is doing, and spiritual formation. I approach it as a place for me to grow, to be influenced by what others are saying.”

David Wayne, pastor of Glen Burnie Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Glen Burnie, MD, agreed.

“It’s a spiritual discipline,” he said. “Iron sharpens iron through feedback with brothers and sisters. The cream rises to the top. The interaction we have with one another helps us, refines us.”

Barbara Nicolosi, executive director of Act One, which trains Christian screenwriters, said about 800 people per day drop by her blog.

“They don’t know each other, but they meet and communicate,” she said, adding that 40 to 50 of her bloggers are regulars. “It’s a community for me, not based on how I look or how I talk. I now become an expert and part of a worldwide community.”

Dr. John Mark Reynolds, director of the sponsoring Torrey Honors Institute, kicked off GodBlogCon with “A Playful Amusement Concerning God Blogging,” a mind-tingling analysis of the role of the Christian blog.

“Blogging will right the imbalance between live and preserved performance,” he said. “And that should excite us.”

Citing the interaction between bloggers and commenters, Reynolds suggested that at last we have a medium where discussion can be simultaneously live and preserved. Unlike verbal conversation, blogging is permanent, allowing an argument to be built over time. But it’s also live as comments and links “allow a community of experts to interact and create amazing works that are potentially greater than the sum of their parts.”

Truth in a politically correct world
Hugh Hewitt, nationally syndicated talk radio host and author of “Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World,” tackled the question of how blogging, which demands truth and accountability, can thrive in a world of relativism and political correctness. He countered that, although these traits may dominate the mainstream media, “our culture is (comprised of) a majority who believe in absolute truth. These blogs actually reflect the majority.”

With blogs, speakers agreed, we can take back objective journalism.

As an example of this phenomenon, Hewitt credits the “blog swarm” with bringing down Dan Rather, Trent Lott, John Kerry, and even Harriet Miers.

A blog swarm forms when bloggers across the nation and world, each with a small bit of expertise or information, a question or an opinion, converge on a topic. As opinions and evidence flow through the blogosphere, with each blog linking to others, a story that has been ignored or deemed unimportant by the mainstream media gains momentum until it can no longer be avoided. A blog swarm, like a locust swarm, has the potential to devour everything in sight. It also has the potential to make positive changes in the culture.

Rapid growth
Blogging is developing beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

In 1999, there were only 23 known web logs; by June 2003, there were 2.4 million. On Dec. 15, Technorati, a Google for blogs, had catalogued more than 23 million sites and 1.8 billion links.

The number of web logs they track continues to double every five months, a trend that has been consistent for more than 36 months. In other words, the blogosphere has doubled more than five times in the past three years.

A new web log is created every 1.2 seconds, representing an astounding 70,000 new blogs per day. Bloggers update their web logs regularly; there are about 700,000 posts daily, or about 29,100 blog updates an hour. A Pew Internet study estimated that about 27 percent, or about 32 million, of Internet users were regular blog readers at the end of 2004.

Nuts and bolts
Hewitt moderated a panel at GodBlogCon where Reynolds, Roberts, and Dr. Ted Bolsinger, pastor of San Clemente Presbyterian Church, discussed some nuts and bolts of blogging. Hewitt suggested that a blogger can build traffic by “becoming an expert of a subject and obsessively cover it. Own the turf.”

The panelists agreed that they must carefully limit the time they devote so that blogging doesn’t detract from family or work time. They each have given up something: TV, personal time, football.…

Perhaps the most compelling question of the evening was, “who shouldn’t blog.”

“The people who shouldn’t blog are those who are absolutely convinced they have something that world needs to hear (in a bad sense),” Reynolds said. “Those who don’t want to engage in the dialectic, but simply want to pontificate; and those who can’t make a strong statement about anything for fear people won’t like them.”

Mark Roberts added to the list those who are dealing with difficult things in life and who are using a blog as an escape. Those whose families need attention or someone who has a hard time dealing with anger should refrain, Roberts said.

“It will splatter,” he said.

Will blogging affect the average American? It already has. Attendees and speakers agreed. It’s up to Christian bloggers to work with integrity and use the power wisely.

Published by Keener Communications Group, January 2006

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