For many months now I’ve been wanting to take up contributing to my neglected blog presence. As the mayhem begins again, I start with a re-post (from over 4 years ago) of an article on why an ordinary pastor, like me, should regularly blog.

Wouldn’t blogging be persona non grata in the life of the truly ordinary pastor? Maybe a few years ago, but no longer. I would suspect that the majority of pastors blogging today are among the ordinary variety. It helps that more than 99% of the pastors in our country are ordinarily flavored, so you would expect that the same percentage of pastors blogging will be ordinary pastors. With that in mind, why should a pastor blog?

I wish more extraordinary pastors blogged – I mean really blogged. Not like those guys who have their staff post excerpts from their books. I wish they would actually take a half-hour each day and write something about their life, ministry, personal discipline, reading habits, family life, and the very unique experiences they have in ministry. It’s good to hear from some of the extraordinary guys who share from the overflow of their vast amount of time in the Scriptures and years of experience.

But I also like hearing from the average Joe. In fact, I think there are a host of reasons why an ordinary pastor should blog. Here’s my list:

• It humanizes the ministry, allowing people to see the past the ivory tower facade.
• It allows you to speak to issues you could not cover in your sermon (even though your sermon was too long already).
• It gives another opportunity to write – and writing helps a pastor to be more clear and concrete with histhoughts.
• It is another opportunity for a pastor to teach Scripture, theology, apologetics, etc.
• It provides more people with more access to a pastor’s thinking and teaching.
• It allows the opportunity to provide biblical thinking in response to issues in the culture as they happen.
• It allows others to interact with, dialogue over, and even debate (in a healthy way) with a pastor over important issues.
• It is a good way for pastors to communicate more about the church’s ministry to the flock.
• It can allow rare but helpful glimpses into a pastor’s home and family life.
• It provides opportunities to recommend good books to the flock.
• It provides opportunities for pastors to publicly review popular books on the market.
• It points people to helpful resources on the web.
• It gives others a glimpse into a pastor’s other interests and hobbies (Other interests and hobbies? I need to find some of these for myself).
• It can provide unbelievers or those questioning Christianity an opportunity to explore and interact with a pastor.
• It can humble a pastor when he writes something he really should not have and has to recant it.
• It can be a tool to invite more people to pray more specifically for issues in your family, ministry, or even through your sermon preparation time.

I think a number of dangers exist to an ordinary pastor taking up blogging:

• It can steal precious time from a precious family.
• It can steal precious time from the study/meditation on, and personal application of Scripture.
• It can make a pastor self-centered or more full of his own self-importance (as if anyone else wanted to hear any more from him).
• It can make him lust for status, prestige, readership, recognition ““ like we need more of this temptation.
• It can bring out the worst in a pastor’s responses to people who question him or differ from his viewpoints.
• It can become another plate he has to keep spinning.

To be honest, if blogging proves to be a negative thing, it may only be exposing what is already in a pastor’s heart. If blogging proves to be beneficial, it is probably because a pastor has a good sense of what is important and uses blogging to expand on his gifts, abilities, availability to people, and specific ministry opportunities.

Now, after writing this, I really should have just pointed you here.

So, I’ve put a few out there. What do you think? Whether you are a pastor or not, what are the pros and cons of ordinary pastors taking up blogging?