Saturday, March 19, 2005
Here's An Interesting Discussion
They both have some great an informative things to say, I recommend you read all of them. But I think Andy at SmartChristian gets down to the heart of the matter with the money quote he pulls from Parableman. I'll repeat it here:
When I think about some of the top Christian blogs, though, I just can't imagine why most non-Christians would care to read them that often. Jollyblogger and Wittenberg Gate are ministry and theology blogs. Adrian Warnock is a networker for Christian blogs. SmartChristian Blog serves as an Instapundit-like linker focusing on just Christian blogs. Apologetics blogs attract a certain audience, including skeptics who like to refute Christians, but they're not exactly what you expect the average non-Christian blog reader to be interested in. There are plenty of Christian blogs that focus just on politics, but you can get that at many blogs that don't have the religious element that many people don't want mixed with politics to begin with. So I'm just not sure what Kevin wants is something we should expect at all, even if we desired it.This quote begs some questions
- What is a 'Christian Blog?'
- Who is the target audience for a 'Christian Blog?'
- What do 'Christian Blogs' hope to accomplish?
For example, is a blog with entirely political content, though written by a Christian really a "Christian Blog?' There are numerous examples of such blogs, and they are the ones with most of the traffic.
Some of my favorite blogs are about preaching -- Transforming Sermons, Stronger Church, even Adrian Warnock to some extent, but I have to agree with Parableman, who would want to read those except an avid consumer of preaching or another preacher. They have an automatically limited audience. Such is going to be the case for any blog with heavy Christian content. even though there are a lot of Christians, most of them are not heavily into aspects of Chsitianity that lend themselves readily to blogging. Pretty hard to sing praise choruses by blog.
For one thing, I do not think we need to be worrying about traffic, rather I think we need to worry about truth. Prior to yeterday my most heavily trafficed day was from a link from Hugh Hewitt. But yesterday I busted that record by about 15%. It almost all came from people doing searches about Terri Schiavo, which if you are a regular reader has become a cause, not just a topic for this blog. My passion has drawn a bigger audience than any link from the big.
In the end, blogs cannot do the job of the church. the best they can do is helo the church do it's job. The best function I can think of is the "prophetic swarm" idea that I coined some time back.
I think the best advice is to concentrate on what you are writing and how well you are writing it. Do those things well and the audience will come. If you write about things purely to draw audience, what will you have accomplished in the end except having an audience? I would rather change five lives for the better than have 2500 people listen to me and walk away.
In the meantime, here are some bloggers I am praying for today
- John Mark Reynolds
- Amy at Amy's Humble Musings
- David Wayne at Jollybloggger.
