Matt and Stephen have offered some important and helpful critical observations on my last post. While I maintain that his reflections on the post are his personal views, and I’m trying to summarise the published thoughts of a wider range of bloggers, I think his comments warrant a review of my last post, even if it’s just tidying up the wording a bit. So, here goes…

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Blogs are a vehicle for participants in the sample to reflect on the practices of Christians in relation to those outside the church. It is also a place to retell personal experiences of meeting others in ministry, ask questions and share knowledge.

Generally these bloggers are suspicious of programs and activities that attempt to convert people to Christianity, or attract them to come to church. For a start, having everyone come to church will not necessarily make the world a better place. Also, the motives by which the programs are implemented are under scrutiny. Bloggers question the packaging of spiritual goods for consumption and edification (and profit) of the supplier. The “God-shaped hole” rationale, which treats everybody as “needing the Gospel”, is viewed by bloggers as arrogant and judgmental. Bloggers believe there is not much good in going to church that people haven’t found in other faith practices and religious sources. The converse is also true; history shows that church-goers have much to be held accountable for.

This is why a small number of bloggers have played with term “apologetics”. Bloggers accept that their faith is on trial by wider society, they seek to learn from others how to right previous wrongs, search for common objectives, and strive for reconciliation. In a few posts some bloggers have retold the experience of the Desert Fathers, recalling a historical period when, like this one, Christianity needed a defence. For these emerging church bloggers, the culture wars between Christendom and secularisation is over, and Christendom lost. Yet there is a beauty in the story of Christ and followers that deserves declaration, both within their experience and into their imaginings. The story offers a prophetic voice that bloggers receive in order to responsibly speak to their readers on their cultural experience.

For many, Christian witness is most authentically expressed in service. This may involve offering resources to communities in need, caring for individuals who are marginalised in these communities. They wish to see themselves not as missionaries to the lost, but fellow travellers, who carry the same questions, and are willing to find answers in others. Christian mission is as much a quest for self-transformation, and renewal of the present-day church, than it is a call to reform larger society.

These voices, then, do not use blogging to rally the troops, or convert people to their way of thinking, but as a confession that their experience of Christianity is not all they have wanted it to be, and that the world they know is not the same world their churches think it is. They call out for alternative methods of thinking and doing mission, and seek to engage non-Christians in the discussion. Perhaps there is another paradox to be noted, that in the use of new technologies these bloggers seek a return to older, even ancient, conversations.