www.pastorsnew.wordpress.com

See you there!

My new sites are as follows:

For book reviews, and serious ministry articles only:

www.pastorsnew.wordpress.com

For everything James Smith:

www.revjamessmith.wordpress.com

For anything CH Spurgeon / Met Tab history:

www.charleshaddonspurgeon.wordpress.com

And that’s your lot.

Finis

*This really is the penultimate post – this is a piece I wrote last year and had saved as a draft for a long time, but I decided in light of what I have been thinking, and closing down this ‘blog’, I should let it out to be read for as long as this site is still here – I may keep it up for a few months*

Well, here we are. Is it worth asking ‘Should Christians Blog?’. I believe so, but firstly it is worth asking what ‘blogging’ actually is. It can be so many things. Having a ‘blog’ does not make one a ‘blogger’. Our church website, for example, IS a blog. But you wouldn’t call it a blog, because it doesn’t function as one.

Blogger, the old system I used to use, has the slogan ‘publish yourself’ – and herein lies the biggest problem with blogging for the Christian. We are NOT HERE to publish ourselves, but to publish Christ.

Let’s start with my personal ‘blog’ history. All afire with recently meeting Phil Johnson of Grace to You and www.spurgeon.org fame, I visited his blog, and decided to start my own in 2005. After all there was a button at the top saying ‘start your own blog’. I clicked it, realised how easy it was, and decided it would be a bit of harmless fun. I called the blog ‘fatbaptist’ – a self-deprecating name with a couple of linguistic twists – and an instant appeal to the American audience – the stereotype Southern Baptist Pastor is always fat. So I began doing some good stuff – talking about hymns I liked, putting one or two sermon extracts online – and some not-so-good stuff – writing silly and over-personal accounts of recent events – especially weddings.

In June 2006, I began to realise that such a trivially-named blog with such lighthearted contents was not a very good witness for someone who was beginning to preach on a regular basis – so I pruned the blog and renamed it ‘glosbaptist’ – as it remains today, bar the switch to wordpress.

So, does Jonathan Hunt ‘blog’? Not really, in my opinion. I will write the occasional account of family life and include some photos – but this is by way of keeping family and friends around the world up-to-date with news. Why talk about the recent Proc Trust talk in Cheltenham? For the benefit of those who were not there and who will check in here to read what was said. Some would roll their eyes and instantly assume that this means that I endorse the Proc Trust, rather like the instant assumption that I was a huge fan and promoter of the now defunct Cheltenham Bible Festival. Not quite. Do I continually express my own opinion and make proclamations for the world to read? Do I try to be edgy and controversial, and pour hours into themed graphics for my site? No.

I am told that in order to have a successful blog, you need to publish nearly every day – something that people can read or look at, something to keep them coming back. Some blogs are even successful commercial ventures because they have so many readers they can sell advertising. Is this what I do? No – often I post next to nothing for weeks at a time. Blogging is to my mind defined as keeping up a continual stream of personal opinions, thoughts, news, trivia, gossip and commentary. Should a Christian be engaged in that? Probably not.

I would rather view this ‘blog’ as a tool – a way in which I, a technophobe of sorts, can have my own website to store and make available certain useful things. A few historical articles, and the republishing of a victorian book (in progress) are examples of this useful side.

The Internet is a bewildering place. I keep track of a few blogs by means of feedburner but I have to continually prune the list or I would spend my time doing nothing but reading the opinions and news of other people. You could read every minute of every day and not exhaust the world wide web. But we cannot ignore the internet – as Christians, we should use it as much as we can, legitimately. Our church has had several visitors we would not have had without a net presence. Also, I have come into touch with several people through this site and have learned many helpful things, among them who to listen to and who to avoid because of their false teaching. Yet many British pastors do not seem to know what is going on out there – I suggest the internet can be very helpful with this problem.

We live in an age of over-information – an age where the opinion of a ten year old with an internet connection can be read side by side with the opinion of an Oxford Professor, and the two be given the same weight, and the same reach across the world. What should we as Christians do? Should we withdraw, or should we engage – in the world, but not of the world – is the principle to aim for. What does this mean in practice? I suggest that it means that we take the technology available, including blogs, and use them in a Christ-like way. Not constantly publishing trivia, silly cartoons, links to youtube, opinions on every news story that breaks, and so forth – but presenting Christ to a Christless world.

Am I guilty of publishing without thinking? Certainly I have been. Does this mean I should delete everything and forget about it?  I don’t believe so – of course deletion is a good thing in some cases – but we are to learn from our mistakes and do better. Learn not to ‘blog’ in anger just as we should not ‘preach’ in anger – or even speak in anger. Learn to consider that what we do, we do before the world. Learn to value our time so that we do not waste it writing endlessly and hoping that we might attract a few more readers – and that we do not waste it endlessly reading the opinions of others. If we must continually read what men have written, it is surely better to read books – no absolute guarantee of quality of course, but you may be sure that a recommended book from a decent publishing house will be a far better use of time.

Should Christians blog? If you’re asking ‘should Christians publish themselves?’ – the answer is no – love does not seek her own advancement – humility is called for. I am deeply unimpressed by those who use their own blogs to continually promote their own sermons week by week (yes, I have done it once or twice, I know). But are there sensible and honest uses for blogging technology in the Christian life – yes, there are. From certain quarters in modern evangelicalism we too often hear the wail of the baby thrown out with the bathwater, and in sweeping condemnations of this or that ‘new thing’ there is too little acknowledgement of the fact that we live in a changing world. Let us apply the unchanging standards of Scripture to our changing world, and use the technology we are given to make Christ known, to communicate, to encourage one another. Unless, of course, because some people use technology wrongly or unscripturally, we should all withdraw from it. If that is the case, then sound preachers should withdraw from broadcasting on all Christian TV stations because of the charlatans they broadcast alongside. ‘Oh, well, that is different’, you say, No, it is not.

*So there you have it. A bit prophetic perhaps. I am setting up a new site (I hate to call it a ‘blog’) to pursue the use of the technology without all the add-ons. I’ll have that up and running soon and let you know*

Update: Thanks to Gary Benfold, here is an article on a related subject, ‘Should Pastors blog?’ from Desiring God Ministries

Had a great time at Banner, very encouraging but I don’t have time to dissect it. I have added a few photos and if you want more details go on over to Gary Brady or Guy Davies.

The Announcement:

I’m letting blogging go. I don’t want to. I enjoy it, but I have had enough hints that the potential for damage is very high. Not damage to me, but to the honour and glory of Him I serve. I am going to open a new ‘blog’ for new book reviews, but that will be about it. I have a couple of other blogs for James Smith and James Walker, Cheltenham pastors from the 1800s, which I might get going eventually. What has really tipped the balance? A very trusted advisor told me at Banner that he had been approached by someone (elsewhere) asking if he knew me and what my character was. On getting a decent report, the person expressed suprise and the opinion that my blog had portrayed me as something quite different. There’s too much at stake to hold on to little things we enjoy. So this is it, apart from an announcement of the new site in due course.

Soli Deo Gloria.

I understand that numbers are usually between 350-400, and I look forward to meeting some men I know, and getting to know some men I don’t. I am looking forward to hearing Sinclair Ferguson and Derek Thomas, many American acquaintances have good things to say – and I have appreciated some of their written work. Having heard Garry Williams at NWA2 I’m looking forward to his contributions as well. The theme is – Calvin’s 500th, of course. They let Baptists in, but I’m not sure under what condition they let us out. Do we have to memorise the Westminster Confession to get our car keys back?

Please pray that I make use of this time, grow in grace and and equipped to serve back at home. This conference is a gift to me from a good friend. Who would still be a good friend whether he had given me the gift or not! In a way, I feel like I did when my parents went the extra mile to send me to private school – someone else is paying, so I’d better learn something! After an unexpected pull-out yesterday, I had to preach twice, so I need two fresh sermons for next Sunday too. I’m not experienced enough/wise enough/sermoned enough/connected enough to have arranged some pulpit swapping, but I do have the Highland Host coming on 10th May, so a respite is not far off!

I’ll write something about it when I get back. Or I might even do a little liveblog depending on wi-fi. In the meantime, a final NWA post is scheduled to come your way tomorrow.

The ESV study Bible was a ‘suprise’ present today, although I had my suspicions.

The two books that are catching my eye are (from my parents!) Phillip Comfort’s commentary on the Textual Variants of the NT and Tapperts’s four-volume collected writings of Luther. Before I get to perusing these I have a review to do, not for Thomas Nelson (I await their book) but for ‘internet-friend’ Crawford Gribben, whose scholarly work ‘Writing the Rapture’ has just been published by OUP. It is a literary (not theological, he did that before in an Emmaus-EP book) critique of the ‘Rapture Fiction’ genre, most famously, of course, the ‘Left Behind’ series. As a literature graduate and a Christian, it interests me quite a lot.

Before I scoot off to read, I recommend this post to you – by Dan Phillips, who reminds us that while books are a joy, they can be dangerous, and their authors must not become our ‘paper pastors’ to the detriment of the real thing.