Realizing the Blogging Church

Having spent the greater part of March on work-related projects and my ever-decreasing free time on facebook app concepts, the Idea Maven hit the bottom of the priority list. Yet, I’m back with more. I’ve been reading Brian Bailey’s The Blogging Church, and am happy to report that his book makes blogging approachable to the less-tech savvy. I’ve been reading it for the dual purpose of 1) personal inspiration to grow and nurture this site, and 2) begin to influence my church toward using blogs and podcasts as methods to extend community and life-change beyond our weekly on-site services. Almost on queue, my pastor asked me to review a “media center” service called SermonConnect. Haven’t checked them out yet, but their ad mentions “unlimited storage, streaming audio/video, podcasting, blogging, and broadcast e-mail.” Needless to say I’m thankful that he’s already thinking about blogs and podcasts, since it makes my job much easier. I’m really looking forward to establishing a consistent, genuine, high-quality (in that order) online presence for the church. One of my near-term goals is to meet Brian Bailey in person to thank him for the book and his ability to represent Christianity with excellence inside the blogosphere. Kudos to you, sir.

BTW, thanks for the kind encouragement, especially to Jeremy “The Product Guy” Horn. He’s been an inspiration to me and I hope this blog achieves the level of thought-provoking depth and utility he’s achieved over at tpgblog.com.