12 Witnesses

Or guidelines for blogging in the pastor’s world.

1. Make it easy on yourself. Go back and read the other posts in the pastoral blogging series and figure out how to set up a feedreader and what rss feeds are. Also, figure out how to set your articles to drop at preset times so you can write when you want and go about your other business when you want. Hard blogging produces either lives out of whack or short lived blogging experiences. We have seen a fair share of both.
2. If you are able, tie your blog to your church’s website. It will boost your church’s site in the search engines by posting frequent content and it will keep you from saying things you don’t want your church members reading. Mostly.
3. Own your mistakes. If you can, own them before anyone else points them out. It is currency in the blogosphere to either be seen as one who will admit when they are wrong and thus be fair. The other side is that it is also currency in the blogosphere to spike someone’s words in their face. If you can point out where they are wrong - especially if they are reluctant to admit it, they lose credibility in spades. Don’t be that person.
4. Be gracious to those who admit their mistakes. It continues to boost your credibility.
5. Be a wordsmith. Capitalize, punctuate and follow the rules of grammar. Use a spell checker on your posts and comments (one comes embedded in Firefox, by the way). Know when to break those rules and why you are doing so. People naturally discount you if you can’t write clearly. Also, it’s not cute to act stupid or claim to be. If you say you’re just dumb about stuff, and that’s why you don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, etc., then people will think you don’t have anything to offer about anything else.
6. Say something original. Don’t repeat others’ thoughts like a Myna bird. People who frequent blogs read the same blogs you do, most likely, and they can see where you got things. Aside from making you look ignorant and losing your credibility, it’s plagiarism, which is stealing. It’s a major character flaw.
7. Follow the copyright rules laid out on other people’s blogs. If they copyright their work, you should follow whatever rules they have for citing it.
8. Take regular breaks from the blogosphere. It is a virtual culture and it is real, to be sure, but that is no substitute for the culture in which you currently live. If you don’t like the culture in which you currently live, change something about your life - don’t retreat into the computer. Allowing the blogosphere to dominate your life is unhealthy for your pastoral ministry (if you are a pastor) or other parts of your life.
9. Similar to the previous guideline, balance your life. Blogging can be a big and important thing that you do in this world. Again, it is a real, albeit virtual, culture. You can make a difference through it. Therefore, there are times when you need to devote to blogging. Then there are times when you need to devote to your family and no matter what juicy argument is happening on the blogs, you need to leave it alone. Give everything its proper place and make sure you know the difference.
10. Live blog a conference, if you are there. Whether you are able to blog at the moment or give reflective thoughts at the end of the day, your readers will appreciate the content. You will learn to appreciate those who live blog, more.
11. Allow comments, but tend to them. Blogging is conversation. Allow people to disagree with you and you will be better read. Tolerate disagreement, but don’t allow people to abuse others. Have some standards and publish them about what comments should be allowed. Don’t be afraid to delete comments if you have to. The secular blogosphere calls people who post unacceptable comments, “trolls.” They are everywhere, even the SBC blogosphere. Do what you must.
12. Only write on other writers’ personal thoughts occasionally. Stick mostly to your own thoughts. Wholesale reproduction of someone else’s articles shows you have no imagination. Avoid blog wars. They’re futile and only read by the participants and a few others.
13. When you read a blog that comments on an issue that you want to discuss, like a news article, give the blog where you first read about it a “hat tip.” At the end of your article, put something like, [HT: Kevin Bussey] This would let you know that I first read about the situation over at Kevin’s blog and let you jump there with the link. A permalink (link directly to Kevin’s article and not just to the blog) is the preferred option.

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Blogging, General Christian, Pastoral Blogging

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