Blogs are the new congregations
18 Oct 2006
Now I love blogs, but never want to overestimate their reach. So tongue in cheek, but with some alacrity for a critique of blogging, I offer these observations of the simulacra of blogging for congregations.
1. Attendance:We used to measure church by how many people attend, now it’s about how many hits, and unique visits.
2. Giving:We also checked how much was in the offering, but now we look for who has signed up for my newsletter/updates (or clicked through my ads).
3. Monologue:We declared the monologue was dead and replaced it with the er….blog monologue.
4. Participation:Frustrated by congregations as spaces where only the few participated, we now have thousands of visitors where just a few people comment, whilst everyone else watches/lurks/visits.
5. Status:Well we had leaders too concerned with position and status and thanks to blogs we have replaced them with ‘A’ list bloggers, regularly telling us about their level of hits, awards, technorati rankings, and number of external links.
So it’s all changed then :-)
Tagged: Blogs, Church, Congregations, Key-Posts
22 comments
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Comment by billy calderwood
7.53 am on 18 Oct 2006
Ouch. Hilarious, but just a little too painful.
Comment by filip
8.39 am on 18 Oct 2006
Jiehaaaa….time for ‘emerging blogging’. Great observations!
Comment by Maria Toth
9.12 am on 18 Oct 2006
Interesting thoughts… Mmmm. I came across your blog today!
Maria Toth
http://www.inhishands.co.uk
Comment by Maria Toth
9.12 am on 18 Oct 2006
Interesting thoughts… Mmmm. I came across your blog today!
Maria Toth
http://www.inhishands.co.uk
Comment by marc
9.27 am on 18 Oct 2006
I second that too:¬)
Comment by fernando
9.38 am on 18 Oct 2006
Glad to hear someone else saying it. We’ve replicated so much of what was wrong with the constantinian church in the blogosphere. It doesn’t have to be that way, but in a few places it is
FWIW, I’ve taken to having a three strikes andyour out approach to A-listers who keep blogging about their numbers and ranking obsession.
Comment by Mackan Andersson
10.11 am on 18 Oct 2006
Funny and insightful, how I wish I had written that ;)
On a technical blog-note: Have you had troubles with your RSS feed the last few days or is my reader having the hickups? Most comments come several times, with a few hours in between.
Comment by Paul Mayers
10.16 am on 18 Oct 2006
A list…there’s an A list???
Dang I knew i should have grown a virtual goatee…
Comment by brett jordan
10.43 am on 18 Oct 2006
monologue, or monoblog?
Comment by Matt Wiebe
3.39 pm on 18 Oct 2006
Nice one Jason.
Comment by Tom Allen
3.41 pm on 18 Oct 2006
Just to say Jason yours is one of the best – but it is depressing when a colleague considers giving up cos he is only getting 50 or so hits a day. depressing cos his readers are largely outside the “formal church” – which would in the main give a fortune for “weekday congregations” of that size.I read a reading on Sunday night from St Paul which I could not resist adding a contempoary parenthasis ” all that I have written (- and email, texted, and blogged) to you”. While the dangers are there we should not underestimate the significance of the medium to communicate or how it can be a gift of God. I know that my posts on “twenty-something suicides” have saved the lives of (unknown)two young adults and have moving emails from concerned parents.Despite being a monologue it is a very personal medium
Tom
Comment by Helen
7.45 pm on 18 Oct 2006
Hmmmmm…Jase, are you daring to suggest that moving from a sanctuary to a website doesn’t magically eliminate our sinful tendencies??? ;-)
Comment by señor jefe
9.01 pm on 18 Oct 2006
What is particularly interesting about this revelation you have here is that, in our attempts to villify evangelical church, we have, in fact, imitated her… especially in postmodern circles.
There is a know-it-all attitude, pervasive in churches, that is merely substituted by a blogitude that is accepting-it-all. Many times, the attitude accompanying our lack of answers is just as polarizing as the church’s attitude accompanying their pet theologies.
May we all come to recognize our own humanity, and accept our tendency toward pride.
Comment by Dana Ames
10.33 pm on 18 Oct 2006
Dangit Jason, you made me laugh out loud! Too clever-
Dana
Comment by John Smulo
11.19 pm on 18 Oct 2006
Jason,
Very insightful thoughts! Ouch and ha ha at the same time.
Paul,
“Should have grown a virtual goatee”–very funny :-)
Comment by Existential Punk
2.01 am on 19 Oct 2006
:)
Comment by Rob Waller
7.34 am on 19 Oct 2006
“ecclesia semper reformanda est” or something like that! the Reformers said ‘the church i ALWAYS in need of renewal’.
jason – this doesn’t meant that blogging is dead any more than blogging is holy. we just need to reform it. i have some ideas:
1. use a blogging platform where you can have guest bloggers easily. eg word opress [must change over...]
2. invent a system where comments are given as much profile as the original posts – again, a comments RSS feed helps but is not ideal
3. ask more questions and give less monologue – what other ways are ther to get the lurkers involved? [that was a question you lukers!]
any other ideas anyone?
Comment by Jason
9.26 am on 19 Oct 2006
Rob (17): Blogging is far form dead, it just needs to reform, and you make some great suggestions.
I’ve been trying with my new design to do some othe things you mention, guest bloggers, comment rss and subscription, profiling commenters (see my sidebar)…and trying to ask open questions from posts…
Great questions, any other ideas anyone?
Comment by Helen
12.20 pm on 19 Oct 2006
Rob (17) – on the Off The Map blog network we look for interesting comments and repost them as new blog entries to share around ‘who has the voice’. We also are very open to having guest bloggers. For us it’s all about the dialog; if the blog entry is the ‘platform’ we’d rather share it than cling onto it just because we happen to have the role of ‘blog host’.
I prefer to think of myself as – hopefully – a ‘dialog facilitator’ than as ‘the one who gets to talk while everyone else listens’.
We also try to be present and participate in the comments (to the extent we have time), responding to questions and indicating that we appreciate that people took time to post comments.
I expect our blogs are flawed in many ways but we ARE trying to address the things which bug us about the way we do ‘church’ rather than simply carry those things over into ‘blog format’. We want the way we blog to reflect Off The Map’s values – i.e. following Jesus in ways that emphasize kindness, being otherly, treating people with respect, having fun, being creative, being ‘real’, etc.
Comment by Marcia
12.27 am on 21 Oct 2006
Funny!
Comment by ZooMuse
10.14 am on 21 Oct 2006
Jason, it’s okay if you want to tell your secrets, but now you’re telling mine. Ouch, a little too close to home! I now focus a little less on how many (few) hits my blogsites get, but…. Thanks for your transparency.
Comment by o2thoughtful
11.05 am on 21 Oct 2006
Nice! Maybe I’ll take all those trackers, technorati links, counters off then? But then I’d just be left with my monologue and it would be pretty dull. At least I can see where the lurkers come from LOL! Good post, thanks.
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