It's a funny thing blogging. It is both personal and impersonal. I don't know personally the majority of people reading this but I am sharing insights into my family, my church and my head (scary for everyone, I admit). I haven't set out to become anything or anyone with it, the blog has a simple goal of helping me articulate thoughts as I seek to make sense of the world around me by holding it up against the plumb line of Jesus.
But sometimes you can get caught up in all, number of readers, number of visits, number of comments or links. Well I can anyway, and it's easy to play to the gallery. Which can be OK as long as you don't score any own goals in the process. Which no doubt I've done.
Recently I met with a friend and mentor, he cautioned me back to the path of wisdom and humility when it comes to blogging. A helpful reminder that people actually read what I say, so I need to choose my words with care.
Its nice to know that people consider your thoughts worth reading and perhaps thinking about it but with that (just as with all communication) comes the responsibility to do it well and honour Christ in it. It was pointed out to me perhaps a couple of places where I didn't do that as well as I could have. I appreciate people that care enough to point that out to me, to challenge me to do better, to think it through.
It's too easy to be careless in the virtual worlds of blogs, twitters and facebook - yet every publicly accessible comment, link, tweet becomes a testimony to my witness (or lack of it) to Christ. It's just as important in these virtual worlds that virtues such as integrity, honesty, graciousness, purity, accountability and wisdom are held just as they should be in the off-line world.
I'm grateful for the reminder to blog wisely.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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4 comments:
Thankyou for this reminder. It is all too easy to get caught up in blog ratings and readers and comments.
I wonder whether it might be useful to write a "vision statement" for your blog, so that when you write something you can just do a quick does-this-fit-with-the-blog check to make sure you aren't writing for the wrong reasons.
I know that the purpose and content of my blog has changed gradually over the years, and I often write things which I later feel I probably didn't belong on my blog!
Wow. A vision statement for blogging? For me that would take some of the fun out of it. But that's cos my blog is a bit random.
It's always good to assess the potential impact of what you write though.
agreed
I am in the middle of planning on a series of new on-line ventures, and my spiritual director asked me to consider how each of them would glorify Christ. An excellent question that certainly made me stop and think.
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