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Blogging as Ministry resources?
I’m still thinking on this notion of blogging as ministry. I’m curious to know …
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I find that, for me, staying fairly topic specific helps me feel like I’m giving more of a “ministering” feel to my site than when I tend to talk about my own specifics.
I don’t know if that helps answer your questions, but hey, I tried. I think that’s kind of my blogging philosophy, too.
I think interactivity is important. Blogs have the advantage from books that they give the chance for readers to respond directly.
Another one is that blogs are dynamic that it can respond to various issues faster that other publications. For example is, let us say in the past event of Hurricane Katrina, many people are asking why do good people suffer (Job’s questions). A blog has the ability to address these questions faster than books.
Perhaps for me, ministering comes from inside…Blogging becomes ministry to me first. By putting down on “paper” the reflection of another that has had an impact on me, I can go back and read it again and ponder it again without having to search for it. Then, too, by putting it in the blog I am able to share them with others. I don’t need validation or comments and seldom get any. If one person reads it and feels touched by it then I have offered a bit of the faith, shared with me by others.
Words of wisdom seldom are mine. But I believe the Holy Spirit guides me to reflections that are meant to provoke action in me and maybe by sharing them, others will be encouraged to act as well. A perfect example is in “Prayers and Devotions (365 Daily Meditations) of Pope John Paul II”, today’s reflection is called “The Resurrection Shows the Mission of Christians.” It is a reflection on “ministering”.
I meet people everyday as a nurse in family practice setting that mandates compassion, love and understanding to the staff as well as the patient. I NEED these reflections to keep me focused on who I am and why I have been called to this moment. So you see in many ways in ministering I have to come first…before I can minister to another.
Off to another day at the “office”. God Bless Cathy
Good topic, Julie!
I guess I would say that I see my blog more as “witness” than “ministry”, though one could argue that they are one and the same.
Still to answer your question more directly, I would have to say that having a team of folks that would be able to respond to participants from different areas of expertise would be the ideal way to run a “ministry blog”.
For example, I’m not trained in psychotherapy, so if someone says something kind of strange on my blog, I may not be able to get a sense of whether that person is in some kind of trouble. And perhaps in cyberspace it’s not something even a trained therapist could do. Given the events of last week, I’m certainly paying even more attention to the demeanor of my students than usual…
I have often found that when I simply write from the heart, somehow what I have written will minister to someone I’ve never met, often when I least expect it. As Cathy says, “ministering comes from inside…”
On the rare occasions when I have thought something I was writing might be helpful to someone somewhere, there’s a deafening silence… Go figure!
I can totally relate to the “deafening silence” experience!
Why is that? The more tossed-off a post is, the more responses I generally get. I work on a post? Crickets.
LOL… I am on a couple of forums and carry a personal and a spiritual blog and I know how you feel. I wrote what I thought was a thought provoking introduction laying out my philosophy of life and *asking* for conversation and even critique… I got 14 people saying “Hello! Nice post!” and not one of them took me up on my offer. The rest of my posts haven’t gotten a nibble… sigh… oh well by writing them I was able to start to give language to subjects I have only thought about. I guess that is important too.