Enough Already!

“Your church is so nice and friendly…it’s just that it’s a bit small and we need something bigger…”  Those are words I’ve heard many times over the years as a church planter.  Truth is…I’m sick of them.  Our culture feeds this myth of the large church and the consumerism mindset of shallow people.  Even in Christian blogging, I’m beginning to see it.  When I entered the blog world a few years ago, I was discovering other writers, men whose churches were similar to mine.  Even amongst some of the larger churches, I found solace from friends who understood because everyone starts somewhere right?

So why all of a sudden are we seeing this alarming trend in blogging that lists the “top churches” and “top blogging pastors”?  I’ve nothing against those guys.  I’m sure many are solid, sharp folks but it appears the very cliques we disdain in our congregations are forming on-line in the blogosphere.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the most popular pastors (you know them…they are in your feed readers) and check out their blogroll.  I keep seeing the same 10-15 names on every single blog!  Really?  These are the only guys you get insight from?  All across the country, it’s the same “top ten” on the blogroll.  Personally, I think the creation of tags has made the blogroll useless on a site.  One can list their favorite links in a post and update the post with new links and just tag it with favorite blogs if someone is interested in searching it.  I’m likely going to do the same thing on this site in the near future.

Back to the issue of “top tens”, we now have other sites featuring blogs from the same guys.  Really?  Like nobody has heard of these fellas right?  If you’re blogging as a church planter or “progressive, missional, (insert name here), etc..” type of pastor or layman, you know these folks already.  I understand the concept of viral marketing thoroughly.  This is a small microcosm of that.  I read a lot of productivity blogs too and have been turned on to new sites by the recommendation of others.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  I guess my thought is what criteria do we use to recommend these blogs?  Is it purely church size?  Does size matter?  It appears so.  I’ve yet to see anyone list a guy whose church is running 200 and he’s “knockin’ it out of the park” to quote one of the famous blogging pastors.  How about guys under 100?  Perhaps we need to subcategorize the church blogosphere so we can identify those guys that are “nailing it” that aren’t seeing hundreds and hundreds of folks come through their doors.

The reality is, the blogrolls we see today will be gone in five years.  The churches will likely still remain but will begin to transition into another category much like the favorite sons of the 90’s are doing.  by 2013, I’ll be nearing 47 years of age and by the church planting standards in the blogosphere, I’ll be a dinosaur.  The truth is, I’ll be entering my very best years and my dream is to have my graduate degree by then and enter the sweetest time of fellowship with Jesus I’ll have ever had.

Most of my favorite reads in the Christian blogging world aren’t even a blip on people’s radars.  Many aren’t subscribed to by 100’s but the meat of their words sure beats much of the pablum I read on a daily basis.  Here’s just a few…

Michael Quicke
Quicke’s blog is relatively new.  He is the writer of 360-degree preaching and 360-degree leadership.  He’s so new to this stuff (starting in his 60’s!), that he’s just using the blogspot format to get started.  A professor of preaching who has pastored a church that was thought to be dying revived, he has great wisdom in the scriptures.

Church Matters
This is the blog of the 9Marks organization.  I don’t always agree with EVERYTHING they write about, but I do believe this blog is spot on with many of its statements.  It makes some folks a little uneasy and angers others because they don’t want to be “attacked” but taking to heart what’s written here is good for us to chew on when we want to assess what it is we are doing.  Again, multiple authors post here so I do not agree with all of them, but I enjoy reading all of them.

John Atkinson
John is the small groups pastor at Bil Cornelius’ church.  Bil is the co-author of “Go Big” lest you think I’m against the mega-church which I’m not.  John’s blog is nice because the guy is transparent many times.  “I’ve been too busy to post”, “It rained on our cookout”, “People frustrate me”, etc…This is the kind of guy that I could hang out with at a hot wings place over a ball game and enjoy learning from.  His friend G. Brandon Cunningham also blogs and heads up men’s ministry at the church.  I include Cunningham in that offer of hot wings too.  Both are enjoyable reads when they can post and both are real in the struggles they face as Christians.

Terry Glaspey
Glaspey is one of my favorite writers.  I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him twice when I worked in the broadcast industry and he is as nice in person as he comes across in his writing.  His book “Great books of the Christian Tradition” now re-released as “The Book Lovers Guide to Great Reading” was outstanding in its recommendations of classic Christian literature.  The books he recommends are not what you see being written about in the blogosphere.  With so many new books entering the publishing world each year, it’s getting harder and harder to pick good books from today’s writers but Glaspey’s book ensures you will get the sweet cream of the crop of writing centuries old with his reading lists.  He’s written other books but “Great Reading” is still my favorite.  His blog recently went online and I am so glad.  I think it will be another extension of his creative, humble, writing self that we’ll see on a semi-regular basis.

There are many others that I need to include.  But these are some you just don’t see getting any plugs in the blogosphere.  They deserve as much kudos as any other site I’ve read in the past year.  Enjoy..and ENOUGH ALREADY!