John Piper made me do it!

   Pastor Roger is blogging?  You must be joking!

   No it’s not a joke, but it’s not my fault.  I blame John Piper, pastor and author and director of Desiring God Ministries.  Towards the end of last year I came across an article he wrote entitled “Six Reasons Pastors Should Blog.”  The intent of the article was to “convince as many pastors as possible to sit down and start a blog today.”

   Here (in abbreviated form) are Piper’s six reasons:

   1.  Blogging gives a pastor more opportunities to write, and writing helps you think more clearly, and express your thoughts more effectively.  Blogging lets readers come along with you as you “think out loud” about ideas and insights (with a little fun along the way).  “If you’re serious about your blog,” Piper says, “it will help you not only in your thinking, but in your discipline as well, as people begin to regularly expect quality insight from you.”

   2.  Blogging provides a pastor with another avenue through which he can teach his congregation — informal teaching that may not find its way into a sermon, and doesn’t come up during conversation (usually all too brief and superficial at best) over coffee on Sunday.  Blogging allows a pastor to fulfill the mandate for comprehensively teaching his “children” (cf. Deuteronomy 6:6-9):  “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

   3.  Blogging is a perfect means of passing on recommendations of all sorts to your readers.  Pastors do a lot of recommending to their congregations — Bible passages, helpful books, human resources within the body of Christ, practical hints, etc.  Blogging enables you to make your advice, or a specific recommendation, available to others who might profit from it.

   4.  Blogging is interactive, and so it gives your readers an opportunity to respond to your teaching and advice with their personal “comments.”  Your readers can contribute their own observations and insights to enrich the “conversation.”

   5.  Blogging “nurtures a habit of looking for insight and wisdom and value in every situation, no matter how mundane.”   As a pastor thinks Christianly about all kinds of things, he can pass some of his observations and insights on to others via the blog.  The more God teaches the pastor, moment by moment and day by day, the more he can pass on to others.

   6.  Blogging can help people get to know the pastor better as a person.  Piper calls this the greatest advantage for blogging pastors.  Most church members know their pastor almost exclusively in his official capacity as the leader of their church.  But the pastor is more than an official, he is (at the same time) an ordinary, imperfect human being.  He is a husband, and father (and, in this case, a grandfather).  By means of blogging, a pastor can open up a window through which his people can see more of his whole person, and that builds their relationship with him, and thus enhances his effectiveness in ministering to them.  It is impossible, even in a small church, for the pastor to become intimately known by everyone.  Blogging may help close the gap a little.

   Mr. Piper’s arguments convinced me to give blogging a try.  I'll be learning as I go.

   So look in here from time to time, read what I’m talking about (“from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again”), and “interact.”

   It could be fun.