MattGlover.com

Well, I’m still not that well, but good enough to be back on deck and doing a few things around the place. Light duties I guess you would call it…

Anyway, I was given a pretty tight word limit, but here’s the “almost” final draft of the article on ministry and blogging I had to write for the Witness. Enjoy.

When somebody first asked me if I had a blog, I faced a bit of a dilemma.

It wasn’t that I thought blogs were a bad thing, it was more a case of not having a clue what a blog was! Was this strange sounding word a form of swearing? Did they think I had some strange disease? Or was it a genuine question?

Anyway, I decided to check out this ‘blog thing’ for myself. To my delight, a new part of the online global community opened up before me and I quickly became hooked.

The term blog is short for ‘web log’ and in its most basic form is an online diary, regularly updated by its author and available for the general public to both view and comment on. But the ‘blogosphere’, as it has come to be known, is anything but basic. There are literally millions of blogs on the internet, covering topics that range from big business to relationships, from art to mechanics, from drawing to building, and just about everything in between. Blogging has become a career for some and most of the larger newspaper columnists will now publish their writing via a blog.

Around the same time that I first learnt about blogs, I was also thinking through ways of increasing the online component of my ministry. The ways that I communicated with my peers when I was in youth group no longer existed and so some of the traditional or familiar forms of youth ministry and discipleship were no longer appropriate. The blog, however, seemed to hold potential.

That was a year ago, and now my blog has become an integral part to my ministry. Each week I post my sermon notes on the blog for my congregation to read, debate, correct and ponder. I’ll post thoughts on other topics that I’ve been thinking through, direct people to other web sites that I’ve found helpful and answer questions that I’m asked.

In one sense, the blog has been the seed for another “community within a community” in my church. Others from around the world have joined us in our online meeting place, and a number have physically shown up to a worship service as a result of reading the blog. It will never replace real community, but it has become an extension of it - a place to connect and chat throughout the week.

I have no idea what the future holds for the online component of my ministry, but at the moment it is working. If you get a chance, drop by the blog at www.mattglover.com/wordpress/wordpress take a look around and then consider the possibilities of what a blog might add to the ministries of your church.