Friday, October 14, 2005

GodBlogCon II

Today's schedule at GodBlogCon started with a devotional time, which I missed because I was trying to get my laptop's wireless to find the connection at Biola. No such luck.

I got to the first Plenary session, and one of the other bloggers tried to get my laptop working, but she couldn't make it work either. I felt better about my technological challenge, and started typing in a Notepad document to save for later, which it is now.

The first session was a panel of three of the bigger Christian bloggers discussing blogging within Christendom. I typed a lot of what they said in detail, but I'm only going to post what most spoke to me.

The panelists were:

Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost
Dr. Andrew Jackson of Smart Christian
Pastor David Wayne of Jolly Blogger

And the moderator was John Schroeder of Blogotional.

Blogging allows for the concept of "iron sharpens iron" to happen. We hone each other's work by critiquing, questioning, and reflecting on what is said.

"I don't really know what I believe until I sit down and write it. That's when it becomes clear even to me." Sorry, I'm not sure who said that.

The panelists agreed that, in the same way that going to church each week isn't considered a hobby, neither is blogging. It's a natural extension of who we are, not simply another task on our to-do list that's fragmenting our lives.

When asked "What's a blog?" by other people, we were advised not to give the technical explanation. Find out what their interests are and point them to a blog along those lines. Is it a woman who is newly divorced after a long marriage? Show them "A View From Her." Are they interested in politics? Show them Hugh or one of the other Christian Poliblogs.

Small churches especially should take advantage of Christian blogs, because the blogs can help supplement what the churches do, in a way that the church's size would prevent. But we need to educate our churches and fellow Christians about what's available to them in the blogosphere.

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