Friday, October 14, 2005

GodBlogCon III

GodBlogCon's Plenary Session 2 had the same speakers as the first session. In the first session, they talked about blogging within the Christian community. This time, they talked about Christian blogging and the world.

Dr. Andrew Jackson said that we will never have an impact on the culture unless we're interpreting the culture properly. We need to look at the trends and issues in the culture that we want to impact and go from there.

He said he recently visited Western Europe and was sobered by the realities there. They have no ideologies or voice that can stand up to the militant Islam in their midst, because the non-Muslims have gone secular and so they're not united around any common belief. We the Christian bloggers can be the voice of salt and light. And this is important because it's not just the European culture but Western civilization that's at risk.

The three speakers talked quite a bit about developing community among Christian bloggers. Christianity is not a solo religion to be practiced as individuals. Rather, it is all about relationships, and we need to look at how to get relationships to be more of what Christian bloggers are about. And since blogging is an extension of how we live our lives, then we need to work more toward that goal.

One of the warnings that they gave, particularly for political bloggers, was to be careful that we don't start with a political party and shape our Christian beliefs around party policies. We need to start with our faith and shape our politics around those beliefs. It's a valid warning, because if we start on the wrong foundation, we risk losing our credibility.

So I'll make sure to be up front. I am a Christian. And I am a blogger. But the focus of my blog is not evangelism or theology. It's about the way this Christian blogger sees the world.

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