I'm back

Hello everyone!

Some of you may have wondered why I took a two week break from posting as I didn’t let on much. Others will have seen the issues clearly. Personally, I’ve valued having a couple of weeks to give serious thought to some of the issues that were raised with me. It’s easily to be cheaply dismissive or (equally easily) blown here and there by everything everyone says. I wanted to be neither, but to listen and think with care.

The issues are these: I work as a curate in a Church of England parish church. When I speak in a sermon, address a PCC, etc. I know exactly who I’m speaking to and can qualify / package what I say appropriately and decide how far to push issues equally appropriately. (Actually, I never know exactly who will be there, and I know nobody perfectly, but the point still stands – I can give it my best). In a blog, on the world wide web, anybody can read anything. In a sermon, I can (theoretically!) anticipate how people will react to what I say, and decide whether to raise an issue or not, whether to cheer people up or not, whether to challenge them / upset them or not. On a blog, there’s something indiscriminate which means people in a local church context may be upset by something their minister says – only because he did not have that individual in mind when he wrote it. There is therefore potential for upset / division / anguish to be caused by a local church minister writing a blog. Is it, therefore, in the balance of wisdom not to do so?

I don’t believe it is. But it’s taken me two weeks to make my mind up. Here’s why:

• In my previous post, I invited anyone who comes to St James or St John’s churches to let me know that they read this. Nobody did so – either through the comments box, or by e-mail, or in person. I realise this does not mean that nobody reads what I write here, only that they did not tell me that they do. But it does mean that nobody (apart from the friends who kindly raised these issues in the first place) reads regularly enough, and fears the fallout enough, to let me know. My conclusion is that the issues still demand careful thought, but that the scale of the problem / benefit to local church life is small.
• Literary genre: What kind of literature is a blog?
  • It is not a published work that is fully researched, referenced, edited, proof-read etc.
  • Neither (should it be) a place for ungodly ranting or criticism that would not be delivered elsewhere.
  • It is a place where thoughts can be shared with others, for whatever benefit those others may or may not derive from it. It is quick to post, which means those thoughts will often not be fully-developed before they are published.
  • It is a place for accountability. By letting the world at large know what I’m thinking, and turning on the option for comment and feedback, my private thoughts suddenly become accountable to the wider church.
  • It is a place for discussion. I can say things for others to react to. I can ask questions / advice / for reading lists etc. Part of the point of it is that poeple will enter into the spirit of it. Which means it is a place (sometimes, in the right way) to be deliberately provocative!
• All of which does not mean I can hide behind genre as an excuse for being rude. But it does add up to saying that I do not want people to read my thoughts as though they were fully-polished ideas to be presented as fact with no opportunity for come-back or disagreement. If anyone takes offence for that reason, they’ve misunderstood the genre they are reading.
• Related to which: Who reads blogs? This won’t be universally true, but… It is my perception that blog-readers are generally not the hypersensitive, or at least that they suspend that part of their personality for the time they read blogs and forums. The so-called “blogosphere” is a bit like the Athenian marketplace – people spend all their time doing nothing but talking about the latest ideas. You don’t wander through the Areopagus looking for predictable things – if you go there on your 1st century holiday, you do so expecting to find all manner of different things being said. I think people who read blogs regularly broadly understand that. (Although, again, I concede that there will be exceptions).
• A blog is not so very different (apart from the genre considerations above) to publishing a book. I have been profoundly helped over the years by busy church pastors who have taken the time to publish. But they do not know who will buy or borrow their book. They may raise issues in print that they choose not to debate in their churches (yet). The logical conclusion of saying pastors should not blog is to say that they should not publish either. I’m unwilling to go there. They should, of course, be careful what they publish – but more on that in a moment.
• So far, I’ve reacted to ways in which a pastor’s blog could be said to be unhelpful. Now for the other side of the coin – I think it is a really helpful thing. The vicar, and to a lesser extent I, make decisions in church life. We are church leaders. We decide what to include in the sermon programme, what priorities the church should have for the next 5 years, what changes to introduce, which changes to leave for now, what shape our formal gatherings should take, what shape mid-week church activity should take – and so I could go on and on. It’s what we do. All people in church see are the decisions, coupled with as much explanation as there is time for. A blog makes me accountable, explains myself, opens the lid, shows you my working etc. If you know what I think about: The covenants, the place of children in church, the sacraments, evangelism in church life, the fall of Jerusalem, the Spirit, the Son, the Father, fair trade coffee, penal substitution, human rights and so on – an awful lot of stuff in church life will make an awful lot more sense. I’m all for being as open as possible. People often say that they wish there was better communication between church leadership and the rest of the church. Well, for those with the interest to read and think – here is another channel of communication.

• Related to which, (picking up Neil Jeffers’ comment to my previous post): Any issue that I raise here, but not elsewhere in church, is deliberately here not there. That means I can let you know what I think; I can take the lid off. But I can do those things in such a way that I’m not forcing a big, open debate on it where people feel obliged to take sides and line up. Blogs could be a source of division. Used well, and understood properly, they should be a way of avoiding division on secondary matters.

So much for my reasons for carrying on blogging. Now for a few personal resolutions as I do so:

• I can post issues on here that are as technical, involved, complex as I choose. (It’s up to you whether you keep reading, after all.) But I must make sure that lots of what goes on here is gong to be upbuilding, intellible, and Christ-honouring to those amongst whom I minister.

• I need to make sure that things are about ideas and not people. In particular, I apologise for those occasions when I slipped from that – not so much in naming someone and attacking them, as much as caricaturing a position in a way that is distorted and ungracious. Labels are dangerous things!

And finally,

• You need to know that there have been many, many times when I have not posted something that I could have done. Whether it was something really apt and funny that someone in church said to me, but which I thought might be misunderstood by them. Or more often, I have resisted replying to a view that was expressed to me, because I thought that people in these two churches would know immediately who’s view was being critiqued. A post can appear to be about ideas, but everybody knows that it really is personal. If that is the case, I keep my thoughts to myself…

If you made it this far, you’ve done well! May everything that is written on this blog bring glory to God the Father through the exaltation of his Son by his Spirit!