Recently in Blogging Category

Scott thanks for all your comments and push back. Always appreciated.

Clearly we're playing with semantics here. I don't say that
dismissively. Semantics matter--some times more than other times. I'll
let others judge whether it matters here. It may be that we agree
after all.

First, my language in the video was less nuanced than it might have
been in written form. That is my tendency in a spontaneous oral
interview. I will try to be more precise here.

Some of you -- like us -- have both a blog and a Facebook account. Some suggest the future blog will be on Facebook while others say Facebook is so much more for networking and interpersonal stuff and e-mailing that it will never replace the more content- or conversation-shaped blog. What do you think? What are the advantages of Facebook? Of a blog?

For about six months we have been in communication with a large website that has expressed an interest in hosting the Jesus Creed conversation. At first I had no interest, but I want to lay out for you today why we have made the decision to shift the site over to Beliefnet.com.

This is the header they've got ready to go:

Over the 3.5 years of hosting this blog I think we have established a way to communicate in a civil manner that is simply not found in many places in the Christian internet. We'd like to expand the community and we'd like to extend the kind of community we have here at Jesus Creed to the Beliefnet.com community. Furthermore, very few blogs have the mix of folks that we have -- and we think moving to Beliefnet.com will not only expand the community but will give you -- the Jesus Creed community -- the opportunity to extend what we have done here to others.

No need to worry: the address will stay the same and it will be redirected from "www.jesuscreed.org" to the new address. So, you need not do anything to your link address.

Yes, we know change is not fun. In fact, we said no to Beliefnet.com for several months just because we like our color scheme and our community. Giving up that color scheme wasn't easy for me, though it is the least important of what the blog is about. Furthermore, we didn't want to "go corporate" and have ads, but we thought the expansion to new readers and the extension of this community to some new folks was more important than what the blog looked like. I think most of us have gotten used to ads, even though they can be annoying.

In essence, then, though the site will "look different" it will be the same community. I will be doing the same kinds of posts, the same kinds of series, and we'll have guest bloggers and I hope we'll have the same humor and the same internal ribbing of one another that we've had all along. I will continue to monitor all comments and have control over the conversations. That will not change.

As many of you know, Beliefnet.com is the biggest religious website in the world and we were honored they wanted to host this blog. By moving over to Beliefnet.com we will find ourselves engaging new folks, confronting new points of view, and take this civil conversation into a more public forum. Frankly, one of the most important considerations was whether or not our committed conversation partners would go with us. I'm convinced you will and I wouldn't have thought of this had I not thought we could take this conversation to Beliefnet.com. I've talked to more than a dozen folks and almost everyone thought this was a good idea.

Let me explain something about this blog: it takes time. I get somewhere between 100 and 200 e-mails/comments per day and it is not always easy to keep up with it. On top of this, spammers are after us and I have to remove their attempts to get to the site. Beliefnet.com has more sophisticated stuff to counter this; they will provide technicians who look after this kind of thing, and it will save me time. Recently I spent the evening with a few people who helped me deal with someone who had hacked into this blog and messed up the capacity to upload images. Beliefnet.com has more sophisticated awareness of this sort of thing.

So, friends, I'm hoping you will join us on November 1st.

As always, I welcome your comments.

If you're interested in my take, this is an example of how not to write for a blog. I don't know Chad Hall, and I'm sure if I met him in a different setting it would be different, but this post is like entering into a room and asking for a fight just for the sake of a fight. I see no attempt to understand, to sympathize, to empathize -- and out of understanding, sympathy and empathy, to engage in a critical conversation. Sorry, but this didn't do it for me. In my opinion, Hall was unfair both to Mark Driscoll and Tony Jones.

Helmut Thielicke, in what has to be one of the finest little (absolutely must-have) books ever written for those in school and considering pastoring or a teaching ministry, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, said something like this some where in that book: "During the period when the voice is changing we do not sing."

Bloggers pastors or students or theologians, especially young ones, need to listen to the wisdom of this little word by Thielicke. Why? Let me begin with this: what you say on your blog is international, permanent, and universally accessible. It's not that I think you need to hide your ideas; it is that some of your ideas are not wise to be aired in public. Keep them to your closer friends and give them time to dig roots. Some of them you may toss into the bucket before too long.

Recognize that you will change: I'm asking our pastor readers today to weigh in on this one. Here it is: Did you change your mind on something that, when you were a young pastor, you thought was absolutely important? What was that? Had I been blogging 25 years ago, I would have been harsh on the grace emphasis of a writer like Yancey.

The passions of young pastors are important, as is their enthusiasm. But some passions and some enthusiasm go too far when you are young, and when you get older and wiser those passions will be moderated into lasting wisdom. To use Thielicke's image, passions make the voice screechy.

You are working out your ideas and your theology -- at least I hope you are. It is indeed disappointing to me when someone thinks they've mastered theology as a result of a class in seminary or after having read an author or two. Especially when they haven't earned the ideas themselves but are simply borrowing someone else's ideas; we call this 3d person theology. Theology takes a lifetime to engage responsibly and wisely. So, hold your ideas a bit more tentatively when you are young. You'll grow into moderated, confident wisdom. That's the best time to chat about theology.

So, my suggestion to young pastors: blog with an open hand and an open mind.

Today we've already had some record-length comments. Here's what we need to remind ourselves of: 1. If you write a long, long comment, conversation slows down; many will stop because they don't want to read that long, long comment. 2....