Friday, July 13, 2007

A little about blogging

Below is the text of an email I sent out trying to explain how we use blogging. Hopefully it will give you some ideas on how to blog or read blogs.

Blogs are a shortened name of "web-log" Basically it began as a bulletin board for people working on projects to leave notes for each other as to progress etc. Eventually, people started using it as a way of keeping a personal journal in computerized manner. From there people started making portions of their journal available for others to read, and things like myspace.com came about. Blogs are used a lot by media to run stories that might not make the paper, or by political pundits who are trying to sway voters. Some churches use them as a way to communicate with people as a type of church newsletter. My blog is mostly for my church people. We use it to stay in communication about the news and events of CBC and it is a great way to get a behind the scenes look at the vision of the church. IF you want to see pictures, get to know the pastor, find out what is going on, the blog is the place to go. On a more practical sense, bulk email quickly turns into spam, where the blog is read on the reader's terms. There is not a sense of I have email from the church I have to read. Also, the last few months I have used a blog to write a daily devotional for our church that leads into the study we will be doing in our small groups on Sunday and what I will preach about in worship. As a reader, I read several dozen blogs, mostly by pastors and church planters. It is a way for me to see what others are doing and to find insight and inspiration. It is a modern day newspaper where I select the collunists. Google has a reader that will bring all new articles to one page and allow you to delete them or keep them in folders. That is blogging 101. For reference, my blog is found at blog.joeljohns.org my devotional blog is www.inthedaily.blogspot.com.