The Dawn Treader

I have waffled back and forth on that question. 

I am a big believer in journaling as a means of focusing your thoughts about life.  One of the great joys of my life was spending hours reading my grandmother's hand-written journals the day after her funeral.  She filled countless shoe boxes  with notebooks of date stamped entries of her thoughts, prayers and reflections on God, family and life.  What a joy to read what she asked God for when my eldest child was born.  My eyes mist up just thinking about that day.

Blogging has become my proxy for journaling and filling shoe boxes with spiral bound notebooks.  But let's face it, I don't put the really personal stuff on my blog.  I am not into "spiritually streaking" as my friend Ed calls it.

The reason I blog is for influence.  Plain and simple.  The answer to my wife's question is no.  If I were the only one reading my blog, I would not do it.

As much as I enjoy blogging, it chews up too much time.  The pay is lousy.  I have never collected one red cent from blogging (at least Joe is making $1.97 per hour).  The temptation for pride from blogging is always present.  My family is still trying to decide if blogging is a good thing.  My wife tolerates blogging, but would not complain a bit if I quit (as long as I did not backfill my blogging time with watching Jack Bauer and the adventures of the CTU team on 24).

The time away from blogging last week was refreshing to be honest.  I quit blogging once, and considered quitting again this past week ... in fact, I consider this question all the time as I am sure other bloggers do too.

Here is why I will go on ... at least for now ...

God has called me to influence others through writing and teaching.  One of my Centurions teachers, T.M. Moore, challenged me and others to develop our gift by "writing small".  For me, that means blogging ... for now.  Stage two is writing articles ... perhaps for Breakpoint or Touchstone or World.  I need to get a lot better before that is a possibility.  Stage three is writing a book ... probably non-fiction, but who knows?

Regardless of the media, I want to influence others toward truth.  I want to point others in the direction of God.  One of my callings is to shape plausibility structures.  Simply put, many think it is implausible and unreasonable to believe in God, to believe Christ was raised from the dead, and to believe the Bible is true.  I am in the reformed camp in my understanding of soteriology (salvation) meaning I believe that the Holy Spirit regenerates a person's heart and mind prior to their acceptance of Christ.  However, I believe God uses the ministries of apologists to shape ideas as a part of that process.  Given my background and interests, I contend for the faith in the marketplace of ideas by pushing back against the corrosive effects of naturalism and its daughter philosophies.

A second calling is to influence Christians toward seeing the Christian faith as larger than just about getting saved.  We are called to be part of the community of faith and the kingdom of God.  God is sovereign over all of life, not just Sunday mornings or your personal quiet times.  As Christians, we need to care about restoring shalom to God's creation.  That involves more than the Great Commission.  It involves the Cultural Commission.  We are "double agents".  We are agents of God's special grace, and we are also agents of God's common grace.  I realize there is a whole element of the church that has run headlong toward political power.  That is not what I am talking about.  Restoring shalom means aligning with God's design for creation and society.  It means working toward peace and justice and order ... it means promoting righteousness ... it means being wise in how we live, and helping others to do likewise.  Being a Christian is far more than trying to save souls.  It is about all of life.  I like how Mike Synder (a Centurions leader) summed it up at a Centurions residency.  In short, "everything matters."

A third calling to influence Christians toward submitting everything to Christ -- not just their hearts, but their minds as well.  This means fighting against the rampant anti-intellectualism that has been infecting the church for the past two centuries.  Thankfully, God has laid this burden on the hearts of many Christians and we are seeing a great increase of Christian thinkers who love Christ with their hearts and minds.

So ... I blog for influence.  I have gotten enough encouraging feedback to keep on keeping on.  To come full circle to Joe's post, I don't care about statistics.  But I do care about influence.  If the statistics or lack of comments show me that no one is reading, then it is time to hang it up and try to move toward stage #2 (writing articles for newsletters or periodicals).

That said, I do enjoy the relational aspect to blogging ... which seems to be what keeps Joe going ... in Joe's words

What I’ve gained from blogging - friendship, community, education - can’t be quantified. The best things in the blogosphere are the connections you make, the relationships you form, and the posts that amuse, inform, and surprise - and those are things that can’t be measured by Sitemeter or Technorati.

Very true, of course.  But Joe is also having an impact for Christ through his blogging, whether he realizes it or not.  Further, in my opinion, relationships and community with people you see should trump the virtual / internet kind.

There is a another  significant benefit to blogging.  It is a benefit that, in my arrogance and pride, I never envisioned.  It is the opportunity to have my own thinking and tactics refined and cleaned up.  Eighty percent of the comments I receive are from readers who disagree with my point of view.  As bizarre as it sounds, I like that.  Though it appears that I have had little influence on their thinking, they have helped me with mine.  It is great to have the opportunity to test ideas and clean up my own sloppy thinking, sloppy arguments and sloppy writing.  They have helped to soften my own dogmatism about things which are non-essentials, as well as to be wise in how I word things and frame issues.  Even though they have not changed my convictions about truth, knowledge and centrality of Christ in all of life -- they have still helped me grow as an ambassador of Christ.

I like how Joe spotlighted the highlights of his blogging experience.  I want to do the same, but my keyboard has gotten too long-winded with this post.  I'll save it for later.