The Journey Online

The challenge of any helping role is that most of the work you do is invisible. This is the case for pastors, whose jobs involve confidential counselling, mentoring, and simply coming alongside. I remember in my early days as a student pastor having to put up with comments like "nice job, only having to work one day a week." I kept thinking that a regular 9-5 job sounded so nice! So how does one share the fullness of pastoral life without appearing to be an attention seeker?

A friend at the Archdiocese of Ottawa office recently told me about Archbishop Terrence Prendergast's blog "the Journey of a Bishop." Posting nearly everyday, he chronicles events in the life of the church, both local and international. He shares prayers, pastoral thoughts and photos of special events. I understand that even the office staff find it a great source of information about the goings on of the church and the Archbishop. It the counter is accurate, he has had nearly 300,000 visits to his blog since January 2009.

The first thing that strikes me is the man is busy! Obviously there is much more he does than is depicted here, but this is a good outline of public activities. The next thing that strikes me is that this opens a window to the life of the church. This isn't text written by a PR firm, or photos air brushed by marketing. But if I was ever curious what does an Archbishop does, here is a good place to start.

Many pastors have blogs, feeds and websites. Some are current news, some are ancient history. It takes time and effort to blog, and I know pastors who feel there time could be better spent. Pastor John Piper has made a strong argument for pastors blogging, among them interacting, and being known. Interacting is important, and perhaps a weakness of "The Journey of a Bishop" is that it remains one way communication, although I have no way of knowing how many comments and questions are sent. I am just not part of the dialogue. Recently ChurchMag had an interesting post about using Church social media. How do you use social media to create conversations? Ask questions. Scary when you are on the web.

Piper's comment about being known also caught my attention. Piper writes,
"Your people hear you teach a lot; it’s probably the main way that most of them know you. You preach on Sundays, teach on Wednesdays, give messages at weddings, funerals, youth events, retreats, etc. This is good—it’s your job. But it’s not all you are....your people need some access to you as a person. A blog is one way to help them."

This is powerful. I find that much of the religious blogging I encounter is, well frankly, evangelistic and somewhat contrived. You rarely meet the person behind the scripture verses or sermon notes.

Lots to chew on. What is your favourite personal blog? What draws you back to it?