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 inaddition 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.
So much to blog about - the holy land tour, holy communion and other things on my heart but will take a blogging ’selah’. If you want to read some heavy stuff about this musical notation you see in the Psalms you can read a friend’s post in PERICHORUS. And if you want some lighter stuff, may I introduce a lovely couple working among children and youths in Kathmandu, Nepal. Read PASANGJASMINE. The blogroll on my right are good Asian Christian leaders’ blogs. Enjoy, while I hibernate; my blogging winter has come, and I go to sleep and dream……
…..and by the way you must read this 13 year old students poem. Go HERE.
This is my first attempt at uploading videos direct instead of through YouTube, thanks to instructions from Vee and just plain stubborn perseverence until I succeeded. Now I wonder if it can take a 5 or 10 minute video.
Pic on the left is Timothy P. (P for photogenic), a ministry staff with Bartley Christian Church in Singapore. I think he works with the young adults. He blogs HERE.
Another blogger, a lecturer in theology at STT Satyabhakti is Ekaputra Tupamahu(pic on right), an Indonesian. You may access his theology blog HERE.
If you do know of other Asian or Singaporean pastors who blog regularly do let me know by sending me his link in the comments box or contact box.
Now I have met another online pastor-friend Rev. Dr. Tony Siew (’Revelation is Real’- see my blogroll) who was in Singapore to give some lectures at Singapore Bible College. He preached in the main service on Sunday. He spoke about the graciousness of God and his text was Zechariah 4: 7. The church was blessed with the anointed message. As we got to know Tony my wife remarked that he is a personification of what he preached: a gentle and gracious person.
He brought along an interesting uncle, a Datuk Dr Alex Ho, a Roman Catholic, who over Whitley Rd prawn noodles, regaled us with entertaining anecdotes about the grace of God upon him as the personal physician to the former and present Johor Sultans and the royal family. He is now an active layman and has designed a program to help Catholics become Bible literate. Interesting character.
Tony Siew did his law and theological degrees and earned his doctorate in New Testament in New Zealand. He is pastor of Likas S.I.B. (Sidang Injil Borneo-450 strong church denomination) in Kota Kinabalu and also district superintendent over 24 churches. He is an ethnic Chinese pastoring the Bahasa Malaysian section of the indigenous churches made up of Kadazan-Dusuns and other tribal peoples of Borneo. To read his blog go HERE.
If you need inspiration for 2008 read this post by The Hinge on Brother Tsen, a modern day hero of faith, read HERE. Be grateful for every breath you take….and preach the Gospel.
If you got scared instead of edified from reading that, enjoy the lovely poem about the sovereign God at the end of Random Musings’ post HERE.
I did a treadmill test and doc said my heart’s okay; never mind that it’s only 60-70% accurate.
I miss my trekkie friends. Have not seen them since the Nepal trek.
Training begins on Sunday for the church’s Mt Kinabalu Youth Adventure 3.
Arsenal is No.1.
Bolivian Beat will be in Singapore for the next 2 years!
The church attendance will go up 30% this Sunday.
By God’s grace, Blogpastor will do more videos and try podcasts.
My blogosphere friends Lynn and Daniel, Daryl, Mag, Dr and Mrs Allan Wu visited the service yesterday. Apparently their church, the Church of our Savior, had no service on Sunday, and they were able to visit churches, as their three nights of Christmas concerts were quite a stretch on the people. Daniel and Mag gave words from the Lord to the gathering: pictorial words of hope for the church and I could sense the witness of God’s Spirit on their sharing. The church was encouraged. We were blessed: the Lord had sent his Christmas gift early.
Here are several bloggers who have linked me: two from Malaysia- Hoc Mun a student from Kuala Lumpur, THE CROSS-JUNCTION; and the other, Elizabeth Chen from Kota Kinabalu, THE HINGE.
My previous header was cropped from a painting by a Singapore artist, Anthony Y.S. Tan, also a diver and fisherman: Black Coral/ Akar Bahar No. 4 (Abstraction from a rare marine tree acrylic relief on canvas, 2001.
Time to change the header. This one is from “Sea Swirl 1 - The Ocean’s Energy” an oil on canvas, 1998, by the same artist. Either you love it or hate it…..
