Why I blog (and maybe you should too)

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started thinking a while ago about blogging – whether I should continue with it or not – because blogging has a significant number of downsides:

• The time it takes to write posts takes time away from other things which are arguably more important.
• It impacts on my thought life; something happens, and I immediately start thinking about how it would fit into my blog.
• I don’t feel like I get loads of visits so it’s not as if I’m changing the world by blogging – I could probably save the internet a good few megabytes by cancelling the whole thing!
• The responses I see are generally negative; far more people leave critical or angry comments than grateful comments. That doesn’t make me feel too good.

But, of course, it’s not all bad:

• Blogging makes me better at communicating – looking back at the first year or two of blog posts makes me cringe at my own naivety, aggression, and uninformed opinions. I’m sure I still have a long way to go, but I’m heading in the right direction.
• It impacts on my thought life; a few years ago, life just happened. Now I’m far more analytical, I think things through more logically and clearly, enabling me to appreciate God’s grace in creation, other people, and myself.
• I’m handed a heavy dose of humility whenever I see the stats or the eloquence of those who disagree with me.
• I’ve learnt a lot about how to deal with people who disagree with me.
• Having to face challenges head-on, and thinking through tough things, has only ever strengthened my faith in God. It’s good to have had that experience.

For the moment, I think I’m going to keep on blogging. Not many other people seem to read my blog, so doing it for the benefit of mankind would be a bit silly, but I’m going to maintain these objectives:

• Get better at communicating.
• Think about lots of stuff so that when people ask, I have an informed opinion.
• Create posts about Jesus so that random internet browsers are more likely to read something about him.
• Hope that some book publisher out there asks me to write a book that becomes an international bestseller, meaning I can think and write about Jesus full-time.

Oh well, I suppose three out of four wouldn’t be too bad.

Pondering…

Image via Wikipedia

I’m quite often asked how I manage to blog on pretty much a daily basis, and my answer is pretty disappointing I’m afraid – I write them all upfront and then use the Schedule button to get them all lined up, Monday-Friday.

But the second question is then most often: But how do you come up with five different things a week to write about? Do you just re-use old material? Well, allow me to let you into a secret.

As a child I remember how exciting it was to go to a New Year’s party, to be allowed to stay up until actual midnight! But I wasn’t the sort of child who would let my excitement stop there; I wanted to achieve something greater. So, I set myself the target of being the first person in whichever year it was to speak a certain word. I’d wait until Big Ben chimed the new year in, and while everyone was cheering I’d be speaking out a list of as many random words as I could think of:

‘parachute, overalls, Neapolitan, pepper, tricycle, telephone exchange!’

To be honest, that’s pretty much been my target every year; I’m reasonably certain I was the first person in the whole world in 2003 to say the words ‘yoghurt pot’ together.

But I discovered recently that every individual apparently speaks something like seven sentences that have never been spoken or written down before, so I seem to have set my goals quite low.

But what that does show is that there is a virtually infinite amount out there to think and write about, so me coming up with five unique thoughts each week and communicating them isn’t actually that big of a deal. Particularly when you realise that lots of my ‘thoughts’ are just quoting what someone else said.

In any case, I’m going to keep on blogging, and I hope you keep on enjoying it (if you do enjoy it…if you don’t, why are you even still reading this? I’ve been writing for ages!).

So not a particularly profound post today, but don’t underestimate the value of what you have to say, you may be the first person in history to say it. And don’t underestimate the value of listening to what others have to say; you may be privileged to experience something no-one else in history has ever experienced.

Ed Stetzer and Adrian Warnock

Adrian Warnock’s blog is one of my most visited websites and I thoroughly recommend it, along with his book, Raised With Christ.

He recently posted a video interview – he’s normally the one asking the questions but I thought this was fascinating and encouraging so if you’re a Christian who’s not in full-time ministry (just like Adrian is) be sure to go and check it out!