The Book and its Topic
The Blogging Church is a long overdue book. To newcomers, the blogosphere can be a very intimidating place. What do you read? Why? What does Technorati, FeedBurner, del.icio.us, Digg This! and similar terms mean? How do you create your own blog? Why? Where?
Add to that the responsibility of communicating clearly as a disciple of Jesus, and you are almost sure to be petrified...
Enter The Blogging Church. This book will tell you all you need to know, and set you free to read blogs, create your own blog, and manage the whole process with confidence. You will feel like a native of the blogosphere, where now you feel like a tourist in a strange land, speaking the wrong language.
Brian starts off the conversation brilliantly by telling the story of blogs, and then giving the reasons for blogging, and thus, for this book.
Throughout the book he has little Q&A sessions with leading pastors, and other blogging disciples. These help a lot, and have the additional benefit of creating awareness to the reader. I didn’t know Mark Driscoll has a blog! And I am too scared to read ;-)
He then goes into the main things a church can use a blog for. Share news, cast vision, reach out, connect staff, etc. It is useful information, though as a revolutionary infopreneur for Jesus, my ministry and website are not directly related to any offline church. Brian’s suggestions here could have been a bit more general to cover ministries and other inter-church movements as well.
Nonetheless, I found all the information very useful, and in the last part of the book, where Brian goes into the details of how to build a blog, and how to do it better than the next guy, I benefited hugely. I hope that this will show on my own blog (and this website for that matter) in a year’s time.
I also hope that once I have put enough thoughts into writing on my blog, I can piece together the contents and make them see the light in a book at a later stage... that’s just me dreaming off-topic again!
This book is a very helpful guide to a largely unexplained and difficult to navigate new world. Brian does an excellent job in getting the need-to-know information across, and helping poor, lost guys (like me) to get going. Brian also skillfully gathered helpful contributions from experienced bloggers to add value, and to stimulate the reader to keep the creative juices flowing. I am sure that this book will bear much fruit.
BookDisciple Power Quote
“Blogging is simply a new way to tell stories. In the same way that we seek out new modes of worshiping, preaching, and reaching out, we must find new methods of sharing stories. The message doesn’t change when the methodology changes. If the methodology fails to change, however, we begin to distance ourselves from the people we are called to reach, and we risk becoming irrelevant.” – The Blogging Church, p.169.
So, how does it read?
It is an easy read (I read it while on vacation). It has 183 pages of main content, written in a language that this generation likes and uses daily.
I liked the slightly larger than normal format. It suits a how-to book, and (even though the emphasis is not specifically put on that term) that is what The Blogging Church is.
You will find your curiosity growing as you go along, and I think it would be murderous not to be able to explore the blogosphere while you are reading this book. Therefore, don’t venture to a remote bush cabin where there is no internet access...
Conclusion
We need to embrace the world we live in. Not to become like it morally, but to reach (read ‘love’) those who live in it.
If we are going to do that, we had better be prepared to start communicating in ways that suit this world. That means… start blogging. The Blogging Church is your manual. Use it!
Return from The Blogging Church to the BookDisciple Front Page
Trackback(0)
 |
Christian Books 
TrackBack URI for this entry