Comments on: Blogging: A New Spiritual Discipline?

By: Dahle

Dahle — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:25:26 +0000

Hey bro. Consider adding, “Church of Irresistible Influence” by Robert Lewis. Great book on the design of community groups. Great book.

OVERVIEW – Jesus compared the church to “a city set on a hill”—inescapably visible. Why should our congregations settle for less? From the author of Raising a Modern-Day Knight comes a look at how to build “incarnational bridges” that connect churches with local communities, making them strong, well-traveled links between earth and heaven. 221 pages, softcover from Zondervan.

By: John Domingo

John Domingo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:07:44 +0000

I love it! Thanks for the exhortation, Scott. Much needed.
Blessings!

By: Scott W. Somerville

Scott W. Somerville — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:13:02 +0000

I didn’t say that blogging was necessarily narcissistic… it’s ME that is the problem, not any form. I can mess up private prayer as easily as public proclamation. I’m sure Jesus had men like me in mind when He told His disciples to go into their closets to pray!

Blogging offers several advantages over journaling. It’s less like “speaking in tongues” (which was a private matter between Paul and the Holy Spirit) and more like “prophesying” (which convicted unbelievers and blessed believers).

Blogging, unlike journaling, can edify others as others can edify us. Your post gave me something new and good to think about today, and I gave you something back with my little caution about narcissism.

By: John Domingo

John Domingo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:36:31 +0000

That’s a great point, Scott. Thanks for commenting. But I wonder…does anyone keep a journal with the expectation that it will never be read? If one of the purposes of journaling is to leave a spiritual legacy/heritage for future generations, that would suggest that everyone who journals does so with the foreknowledge that at least their children and children’s children will be reading their words (unless they decide to throw all their journals away). Think of the multitudes of people who have benefited from the personal journals of godly men like Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and David Brainerd? I think the potential for narcisism is as present in journaling as it is in blogging, because a human audience is to some degree assumed. So I would surmise that fundamentally, journaling isn’t much different than blogging, and it can’t really be equated with personal prayer. In journaling, blogging, and in corporate prayer for that matter, we are communicating something partly for the spiritual edification of other people. All of these disciplines can appeal to our narcissistic tendencies (as John Piper describes in the link above), but does that mean they necessarily are narcissistic?

By: Scott W. Somerville

Scott W. Somerville — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:09:06 +0000

I’m tempted to agree 100%… except for the nagging suspicion that blogging appeals to my naricissism whereas journaling is the literary equivalent of going into my closet where only my Father hears me…