Way back on July 9, 2006, the Washington Post ran an article on ministers who write blogs, “Cyber-Savvy Pastors Blog When the Spirit Moves Them” by Megan Greenwell [link; and thanks World of Your Making for the link]. Some of the ministers Greenwell interviewed use blogs for evangelism and at least one uses a blog for personal reflection — but for me, the most interesting reflection on ministerial blogging was this…
The Rev. Jan Edmiston, pastor of Fairlington Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, said … the blogging phenomenon is part of a larger shift in the way religion is practiced — although she is unsure what form that change might take. She now devotes every other Monday to “monastery day,” when she sits in a coffee shop reflecting on the state of the church and expressing her thoughts on her blog, “A Church for Starving Artists.”
“I’m doing the things you would do in a monastery except with a cup of coffee and my laptop,” she said. “It’s completely spiritually energizing in ways a lot of people wouldn’t think possible. I think the church is going through a transformation similar to the Reformation, and blogging helps me work through where I fit into that.”
Now that’s an interesting new spiritual practice:– blogging in a coffee shop. Just as Edmiston calls her practice “monastic,” I think this is less a story of technology changing the way we do things, than it is a story of people finding and creating new ways to pursue spiritual growth and exploration. And as Edmiston says, it’s all very spiritually energizing — which doesn’t mean I have the faintest idea of what form this new change in religion will take.
I don’t know Dan.
I read Douglas A. Sweeny’s The American Evangelical Story and thought this described today,
They [Evangelicals] accomplished these things [the evangelical movement] with the help of a new communications network that linked evangelicals living in Europe and North America. Historians refer to the eighteenth century as the great age of letter writing. In God’s providence, evangelicals could now stay in touch with one another quite easily, and they did, exchanging tens of thousands of pieces of correspondence. This was also the time of the rise of British magazines and newspapers, media used by Christians both to promote the cause of revival and to inform interested parties about God’s work around the world. In fact, several Protestant leaders founded their own periodicals to convey intelligence regarding the progress of the gospel. Famous examples include George Whitefield’s Evangelical Magazine, Thomas Prince’s Christian History, Jabes Robe’s Christian Monthly History, and John Wesley’s Arminian Magazine.
But I’m having second thoughts.