B L O G P A S T O R

blogging for the churched and unchurched

April 28th, 2008

Some Christian blogs focus on theology, the Christian life, church denominational issues, or other particular focus that would interest other churched people. So you have Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight or Albert Mohler or Adrian Warnock or Real Live Preacher and other such blogs. There is certainly an important role for such focused blogs and such targetted audience.

In my case, without my being intentional, BLOGPASTOR reaches out to the churched and the unchurched. I began blogging as an attempt at reaching out to young people in the church. As I got familiar with the tool, I realized it was reaching even more than just the youths or church people. According to Google Analytics my blog reaches people in all the continents, and it is the Lord’s blessing, but many other websites do the same. This is thanks to the increasingly powerful search engines that scour the internet and blogosphere to categorize and locate all words to form like a gigantic concordance of sorts. So if someone wants to learn about Holy Communion and does a blog search they may get to my blog to read a post I wrote about that subject. Now this is all good if I want only to reach Christians. Few pre-believers will do a search on ‘Holy Communion’. But they would do a search on ‘NUS or NTU better’, and they will see a post I did on this topic. And I seem to get some increased visits after A Level results from people who do a search with that in mind. Now I didn’t deliberately write on that topic with that in mind though there is no shame in that. I was just trying to figure out something for my son and posted the results of my research. And I believe some of those who read that post, and went on to read other posts including my ‘About’ testimony would have read how Jesus changed my life and family. That’s one of the reasons I try to evangelize pastors to blog, like I am doing now, especially if they enjoy writing: it can reach those outside the church.

If you want to reach those outside the church, you just have to write about things in addition to theology or church or spiritual matters! You have to write about a variety of topics and the best are those you have knowledge of and interest in. Then the people who are outside the church will visit and read your blog and perhaps be a little more attracted to Christ and less misconceived about the faith. They may not pray the sinner’s prayer but what is evangelism but bringing the unchurched one step closer to following Christ. For me I write about soccer, my treks and travels, politics, current affairs, interesting local personalities and my family. So if someone who is a pre-believer googles “NTU or NUS business school better” or “Mt Kinabalu” or “Philip Ng” or “Dr Chee Soon Juan” for instance he may get to my blog and read more than just the post on that particular topic. And he hopefully gets to know what the Christian faith is like.

Random Musings, fellow blogger in Johor Baru, writes about Star Trek, Movies, Manga, Medical matters and it attracts all kinds of readers, many of whom do not know the Lord. Hopefully they then read his other stuff about the Lord. That will definitely smash common stereotypes people have about Christians.

Blogging is a tool for influencing the new generation and it gets even better with embedded videos as they convey something of the joy and peace among Christians that words fail to do. I wish I can do a blog in Mandarin because 200 million in China are hooked up and it is rising fast. I am persuaded Web2.0 will one day be more pervasive than newspapers and books. Books and bookstores will not exactly go the way of cassette tapes but in 20 years time, it is likely my children’s children will be carrying laptops instead of heavy bags to school.

Any pastors out there want to start a blog?

Entry Filed under: Blogging