Sometimes I Write

I talked to my friend Chris today and he told me he had been interviewed by a local paper about his blog. How awesome is that? He promised to send me a link, but I’m impatient, nosy, and proud of my friend, so I looked it up myself on the www. Here is the article in full. I changed the format a bit to fit here since it’s one of those pesky “for registered users only” sites and a pain in the bum to link to. I’m sure he’d love to hear any comments you may have, and you have to read the words to the song written in his honor. Too funny! (Poor Chris!) So, Way to go Chris! The five of us that read your blog are so proud of you! 😉


Pastors share thoughts on blogs
By Ann Work/Times Record News
July 17, 2006

“I am just a simple man living in a small west Texas town, trying to figure out life like everyone else … I pray that God will take me more into His presence daily and that by doing so, He can make me more like Him.”
– entry by Chris Robey, youth minister, Wilbarger Street Church of Christ, Vernon, found at chrisrobey.blogspot.com

When youth minister Chris Robey started “blogging” last year, he wrote about theological questions that were bothering him. He set up his Weblog, or blog, at chrisrobey.blogspot.com. He wrote in spurts, sometimes once a month, sometimes more. He used cyberspace to get discussions going with other youth ministers in his journal-like entries. “Generally, I have something to say, some kind of point to it,” Robey said. Robey is one of several local pastors who blog to communicate with other pastors, church members and church youth.

About 75,000 new blogs are started every day, according to Megan Greenwell in a July 9 Washington Post article. Some are started by computer-savvy ministers. While some see the forum as a way to reach out in an increasingly technology-oriented society, other Wichita Falls pastors are saying “no” to the trend.

For Greg Stanford, youth minister at Tenth and Broad Church of Christ in Wichita Falls, blogging started out as a way to let people get to know him. He wanted to open himself up a little bit, to share what made him tick. “It was just keeping in touch,” he said. “What it’s become is a place to put the thoughts that I don’t get to share with people all the time,” he said. He keeps two blogs, one at myspace.com and another on blogger.com. He writes a couple times a month. On his myspace account, Stanford serves in a role that is part youth minister and part guardian of his church’s teens, who also blog there. At the popular cyberspace teen hang-out, “I remind them that people do read what they type. They need to represent who they are and what they believe.” He’s blogged enough with church members that it’s not uncommon for members of his congregation to speak to him about it at church. “They’ll say, ‘I learned something about you today.’ “

In Vernon, Robey has used his blog to open up about some of his frustrations and fears. In one entry, he tells the story of a Mexico trip with his youth group when he hit a pedestrian with his car. He barely grazed the man but scared the rattled pedestrian enough to unleash a string of curse words from the victim. Three van-loads of church members saw the whole thing and wrote a song about it. “Let’s pray that I don’t give anyone a reason to write a song about me this year,” he wrote as he explained the stress he feels before taking 50 church members on a ministry trip out of the country.

In a March posting, Robey told of a recent trip to Pascagoula, Miss., with a Midwestern State University college group to do hurricane clean-up – and used the entry to do a little preaching:
“I forgot how much fun it is to sleep on the floor with a bunch of teen-agers. I plead with you. Go to http://www.123jesus.com and find out what you can do. We all have so much, but people in our own borders have nothing because of a six-hour storm …. Cancel your Six-Flags trips. Sacrifice your vacation time. Challenge yourself to live out Matthew 25:35 … Jesus means business when he says these things.”

Other pastors say blogging doesn’t fit their style or their ministry. Some simply don’t have the time. “Most of the guys who do those must have a good staff that allows them to sit and do that,” said George B. Davis, pastor of New Harvest Church. He doesn’t have the time, he said.
He noticed many blogs center on debate, not truth. He doesn’t want to debate merely for debate’s sake. “My efforts are spent studying and drawing people into the church environment to reveal truth to them in a systematic way,” Davis said.

First Baptist Church Pastor Robert Jeffress said he didn’t have time to blog and would question any attempt by one of his associate pastors to blog regularly. “If he was blogging, I’d wonder how he has the time to do it,” he said. Writing a blog may be a cathartic experience for some and he wouldn’t discourage it, he said. “In my own ministry I think people are more interested in hearing what God’s Word says about a subject than to read my musings,” Jeffress said.

Lukus Counterman, pastor at Messiah Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, follows other ministers’ blogs but doesn’t have one of his own. A blog to church members could be helpful for ministry, he said, but he’s still wrestling with its dangers. “Once you post it on the World Wide Web, it’s worldwide. You can’t effectively make retraction statements.” Some blog sites are merely “brain dumps,” he said. “It’s not coherent, thought-through or concise. The other deal is it’s decontextualized. People come in, they don’t know you, they don’t know your ministry, they don’t know your previous blogs.” He’s noticed that many bloggers are bitter, frustrated people who just want to criticize. “That’s not part of the culture I want to be in,” he said.

Other bloggers, like Robey, have warmed up to blogging over time and enjoy the forum to share what God is teaching them.

“I am not a very good blogger. Sometimes I wonder why I have one. I usually don’t have many profound things to say. I don’t live a particularly interesting life. I don’t skydive. Yet there are times that I am glad that I have a blog. The whole blog mechanism is good for distributing information to the five (and growing!) people who peruse the limited pages of this blog. I hope that if nothing else, this entry will create some interest in what I believe to be one of the places (the Pascagoula mission trip) that God is truly working in this world.”
– Chris Robey, March 27, 2006, blog

Education reporter Ann Work can be reached at (940)763-7538 or by e-mail at work (at)TimesRecordNews.com.