Show notes
Blogging is a free opportunity available to anyone to communicate the gospel. We take a tongue-in-cheek look at why pastors should avoid starting a blog and then offer practical reasons why they should. To get started, you need your own website. I mentioned our affiliate link Bluehost, but there are others like godaddy.com and hostgator.com to name a few. Once you have your own web address, this is the free download I offered: Step By Step Process For Starting Your Own Blog. If you need some basic information about social media, here is my free eBook. Transcript of Today's Podcast Welcome to ministers toolbox. Specifically there are 7 reasons pastors should never even think about starting a blog. (Sarcasm included) #1 - It is too difficult. I mean, you have to turn the computer on, open up your WordPress site and push the new post button. If that isn’t bad enough, then you actually have to write something. That is not easy for a pastor. I mean, in your line of work, when do you ever write? Yeah, there are your sermons, but those are for Sunday mornings. Yeah, sermons are constructed like a blog, but it’s not like you could just take former sermons and turn them into blogs. That would take too much time. Besides, a lot of pastors are not comfortable pushing the submit button when they’re finished. #2 - There are too many blogs already. Most don’t even know what the word blog means. It kind of sounds like someone dumped a mixture of mashed potatoes and pea soup on your plate right on top of your salad. blog! Who reads them anyway? You have better things to with your time, like visiting with Mrs. Smith who wants you to walk her cat when she goes on vacation. #3 - People outside your church might read something you’ve read and decide to come Sunday morning. I mean, at your church you say you want new people, but truthfully, you really don’t. Every time a new person comes to your church you have to learn their name and spend time trying to find out what they need and how you can help. It is much easier to have the same people come to church each week. They come; they tithe; they have coffee and then they leave. What could be better than that? No muss, no fuss. Blogging could mess up your church big time. Before you know it, new people might start sharing new ideas and that can be just annoying. You already know who you are and how you like the church to operate, thank you very much. #4 - You’re not very techy. Yeah, you understand that everyone under thirty has never lived in a world without the Inter web, but technology is not your thing. You’d much rather read a book about Spurgeon than learn about Tweeter or Facebook anyway. Besides, you got an email account a couple of years ago. If anyone wants to get ahold of you, you check it once a week. #5 - Privacy. Blogging means that people might start coming up to you and talking to you about what you wrote. That can be very awkward, especially if you’ve never met them before. One reason you like pastoring is that other than Sunday, people pretty much leave you alone. Blogging might change all that. #6 - Cost. Blogging is expensive. I mean getting a domain name and website has got to cost a fortune. The church budget is tight and wasting money on the Interweb is just foolish. #7 - It could lead to other things. You start blogging and before you know it, you’re writing books. Then you’re meeting new people and going different places to speak. That is just a real pain. Do you realize how many re-runs of CSI you’d miss if you had to be out speaking all the time? Blogging is just not the right fit for pastors. ____________________________ Well, that’ll be enough tongue and cheek for now. Pastors, why aren’t you blogging? Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past two decades, the Internet is the largest fishing pond for reaching people for Christ in history. It has never been easier to get started even if you have no tech skills or training like me. Will you have to learn a few things? Yes. Is it hard to learn? No. Especially since there are loads of people at your fingertips to help you every step of the way. Technology has advanced exponentially. Years ago, the idea of getting a church website involved lots of money and paying someone with technical expertise to run it. Those days are gone. You don’t need to know anything about code, HTML at all. Nearly everything is point and click with incredible free help along the way. What is a blog anyway? Well, a blog is the shortened form of what it used to be called, web log. It is the equivalent digital paper. How many blogs are there? Currently, there are over 200 million with 175K being added every day. I guess it is popular then. Is there a better way to spend your time. I can’t answer that for you, but let me ask you a question. Why do you spend 10-20 hours writing sermons? Come Sunday morning, you deliver that sermon with all the passion in your heart hoping that your congregation will not only hear what you’re saying, but apply it to their lives and grow in Christ, right? Here is something that won’t make you happy. Your congregation retained 10% of what you said, assuming it was a great sermon. If they genuinely grasped one idea and took action that is a home run. If 1 in a 100 did that, you are an effective pastor. Those are pretty poor numbers. What happens on Monday? Start designing another sermon. Sunday’s sermon is like yesterday’s newspaper. After putting in all that work, wouldn’t you like your sermons to have a more lasting effect? Blogging does that. You can put it on the Internet permanently, accessible for many years to come. I said earlier that blogging might bring people to your church and that most churches really don’t want new people. That is quite true. When pastors were asked what the purpose of the church is, 90% said to reach the lost. When church members were asked the same question 90% answered, to meet my needs. We spend money on initiatives, but the reality is that most church members really don’t care if new people come. It requires them to learn names, get in conversations , etc., and most people think their life is too busy already. Spending more time getting to know more people is just too much effort. As a church leader, your job is to lead people where they don’t want to go. If selfishness is permitted to reign, your church will never fulfill God’s purpose for it. Blogging has the potential of connecting you with people you’ve not met and they may come to church because they like what they read. Probably won’t happen overnight, but when you commit to communicating on the web consistently, you start to get known. One of the largest barriers I hear from church leaders is that they are just not very techy. I understand that; neither am I. Back in the day, I served in a church where the leadership was anti-computer. They saw no need to have one or use one. Of course in those days, computers cost $1200 and had monitors with amber screens. As the pastor, I insisted and got my computer with a 40 MB hard drive, which I was told would be enough for a lifetime. Ok then… Back in those days, the only way I knew to learn was to push the f1 button whenever I got stuck. That would bring up options on the screen and as I followed the instructions, I usually figured it out, or rebooted the computer. Knowing a little MS Dos was always a plus. That is ancient technology. Today you can be a tech wiz and know almost nothing about HTML code or any of that stuff. Anything you do on the computer usually has access to an immediate chat with a tech person to get you answers fast. Beyond that, what would you do if God called you to missions? First thing you would do probably is start learning the language and the culture. I think you see where I am going. If you want to reach this generation, learn their culture and their language. It is all Internet based. I doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. If the natives speak Chinese you learn Chinese. If the natives speak tech, learn enough to communicate. Now let’s get down and dirty. The main reason you don’t want to blog or get a website is cost. You think it costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and that you need to hire some geek to show you the way. Completely wrong. First things first. To get blogging you need your own website. Why? A website is your permanent home on the Internet. You control it totally. Like a house, you can determine precisely how you want it to look without having a clue about HTML or any other tech-sounding terminology. The best place to start in my opinion is Bluehost. You’ve heard me mention them before, and you will probably hear me mention them again. To create a website, you need a company to host it. No way around that. Go daddy, Host gator and others each come with step by step instructions to create your own website. You do not need a website builder anymore unless you’re a corporation and need intricate and specialized work. Bluehost is the only host that currently will not host pornographic sites. I personally like that commitment which is why I use them. Bluehost is also inexpensive; about $4/month. Pastor, what makes blogging unique for you is that you’re already doing it every time you put together a sermon. Every sermon you write (assuming it is good of course!) can be re-purposed into a blog and maybe even a book. With a blog, you just cut and paste your notes into WordPress which is nearly identical to Microsoft Word in feel and function. You do a little editing and away you go. It won’t be perfect the first time or even the second, but the key to blogging and anything in the Internet world is consistency. Choose your best day for releasing your blog and then stick to it. I started blogging 4 years ago using a free site. I blogged about 3 times in a year. That’s not blogging. In January of this year, I committed myself to every week. That means that on Friday morning at 6:50 a.m., my blog is up and on Facebook, Twitter and Email simultaneously. The same is true for podcasting or whatever you do. It is the same as putting a sign on your shop telling people when you open. Blogging will help your preaching. As you refine your writing skills, it affects how you communicate. You will discover what impacts people and what doesn’t. One of the challenges of Sunday morning preaching as leaders is that we get very little honest feedback. Our sermons can be awful and still everyone tells us how great they are. In blog world, people are a lot more honest. Not necessarily more critical, but honest. They vote by following you. With a blog you can invite discussion and ask for input. It puts you in the marketplace where pastors belong. As leaders, we need to be speaking God’s mind and heart to the web world. Finally, blogging can turn into books very easily. And here is something you might not know. You can write a book this morning and post it on Kindle tonight. They days of begging publishers to accept our books or paying thousands to self-publish are all but over. For virtually no cost, you can get your books on Kindle with their own website address that can be posted in emails, on business cards or wherever you interact. If people buy, you get 70% of the sale. You will not find that with paper books. The cool thing with Kindle as well, is that you can update books effortlessly, add new pictures, new links to your church or products…the sky is the limit. Your blog website then becomes your internet real estate; Your home, where people can find you. Our mission at Minister’s Toolbox as you know is to provide you with tools to be successful in ministry. I think by now you get how passionate I am about using your gifts to reach a larger audience. As a pastor or church leader, I challenge you to take a long hard look at the impact of your ministry. Where will your church be in 10 or twenty years? Are you preparing your church for the future, or clinging to the past? Pastors ought to be on the cutting edge of technology, not to be cool, but to be relevant. You may love the smell of a good book, but in all likelihood the people God wants you to reach love the smell of a new IPhone. New technologies are coming out all the time and each has great potential to advance the gospel of Christ’s kingdom. This show is about blogging, but once you get your feet wet, I hope that I can nudge you towards podcasting as well. There are over 540 million podcast downloads per month. Shouldn’t the church be seizing that opportunity? In any case, I really do appreciate you taking the time to let me rant a bit today. One of your greatest strengths as a church leader is communication. In what other type of employment are you expected to give weekly speeches? Very few. Blogging is such a natural for church leaders and there are no limits of how you can use it. I have put together a free guide outlining some simple steps to take should you decide to start your own blog here. As always we end with a quote: This one most appropriately is from Steve Jobs: “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”