Review of "Blog" by Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt is a kind of Jeremiah for the people of the blogosphere.  Jeremiah, and the other Old Testament Prophets, often warned the people that unless they repented, they would be condemned to face the wrath of God.  Hugh is telling anyone who will listen that unless they will blog, they will be condemned to irrelevance.

When reading this book I felt as if I were walking the streets of New York or Washington with Hugh on the way to catch a train.  The train was leaving soon and he needed to tell me what I needed to know before I missed the train.  Hugh writes at a quick and breathless pace in this book, which is indicative of the mood of the blogosphere.  Information travels fast in the blogosphere and you have to move fast to get it while you can.  Further, the window of opportunity is still open in the blogosphere, but it won't be open forever and you need to get a move on if you are going to be a part of it.

There are many things that sets this book apart from others on blogging, but I'll focus on one matter that stands out to me.  There are lots of books out there that are all about how to blog for fun and profit.  What sets Hugh's book apart is that it is about how to blog for influence. 

I got started blogging by reading Biz Stone's book Blogging, and I would still recommend it to anyone just starting to blog. It has some technical details that will make blogging easy for the novice and it has lots of information on all the cool things you can do with a blog and cool add-ins that will double your fun and even help you build community.  And, as I read the reviews on similar books from Amazon I found that most of them were of the same genre.

Hugh's book is different.  While I am sure he would agree that blogging can be quite fun, and there is a certain sense of being on the cutting edge of technology, he is saying that blogging today is a culture shaping activity.  He gives a good summary of some of the stories we are all familiar with - how blogging is beginning to marginalize mainstream media (MSM).  Not that MSM is now on the margins, but the process of marginalization is in play.  He tells of how the pajamahadeen of bloggers have brought down Trent Lott and Dan Rather, and the role that bloggers played in the  NY  Times/Jayson Blair debacle and their role in furthering the cause of the Swift Boat Veterans which eventually sunk the John Kerry campaign.

The blogosphere has tremendous destructive ability, as these folks will attest, but it also has tremendous potential to edify.  Who hasn't heard of Glenn Reynolds these days? Yet, who would have ever heard of him if there had never been an Instapundit?  For that matter, would Hugh Hewitt be as well known as he is today without his blog?  Further, as Tod Bolsinger says, blogging has great potential to further the ministry of pastors:

In my last post I argued that pastors, of all people, should blog because we have a vested interest in something that the blogosphere makes more readily available: To more effectively, cheaply and regularly communicate the elements of Christian faith to a wider number of people.  This will also, I argued, encourage our long-term pastorates and presence in our home churches (and families) by making it easier to reach larger numbers of people each week without leaving home.

Hugh does make some astounding claims in the book, the most astounding of which is his assertion that, with the advent of blogging, we are at 1449 and 1517 again. Hugh says:

In 1449 Gutenberg amplified the human voice such that it could be heard around the world.  He provided the means by which one person could communicate with the masses without the interference of the institutional structures of the day.

Martin Luther became that one human voice which was amplified by Gutenberg's movable type and was heard around the world.

I generally prefer not to make too big a deal of things like this.  Too many times have I heard someone announce that a current event was to be a historical event.  That's hogwash - you can't know if something is historical until you have the perspective of history to look back upon it.  Yet, in this case I find it hard to argue and I find myself sharing Hugh's enthusiasm.  Whereas the internet made it possible for more people to publish and acquire more information than ever before, it was limiting to a degree.  While anyone could acquire the information, only those with some pretty sophisticated technical knowledge could publish information.  To publish you had to know a language like .html or be able to learn a complicated program like FrontPage or Dreamweaver.  Not so with blogs.  If you have enough technical knowledge to sign up with AOL and send an e-mail, then you know enough to blog.      

Now that the "blogosphere" is replacing "cyberspace," our ability to acquire and publish information has grown logarithmically.  Hugh mentions that at the end of 2004 there were over 4 million blogs and that number is expected to double in 2005.  And this is not only increasing the amount of information available, it is changing the way we approach our information gathering.  In "days gone by," we got our information from a few, trusted authorities.  With the internet, and now the blogosphere, anyone can be an authority.  I'll share a personal example of this.

I began my ministry in 1995 as a youth minister at a church in Florida.  I was fresh out of seminary and had a head full of theology and really looked at my ministry as an extension of the seminary experience (naivety is wonderful!).  While most folks weren't as impressed with my knowledge as I was, there were a few budding theologians in the congregation that gravitated to me.  We would have wonderful theological discussions and debates and we weren't always on the same page.  Very often these folks would quote someone they read on the internet to back up their position.  I would then quote one of the "famous theologians" I had read. It was as if we were playing poker and my famous theologian was the equivalent of a face card and there internet person was the two of clubs.  I suppose I expected them to simply concede the argument once I whipped out my theologian face card but they wouldn't do it.  The guy they read on the internet was as authoritative for them as my famous theologian was for me. 

How much more does this scenario multiply with the blogosphere?  In 1995 there were relatively few internet theologians, now there are thousands.  At it's worst, this situation leads to a multiplication of bad information.  But this situation is also helping to bring about a revival of critical thinking.  I couldn't win the argument with my friends simply by quoting famous Dr. So and So, they focused on the arguments themselves.  This is what Dan Rather, CBS News and the New York Times have found. Simply saying "as reported in the New York Times . . ." doesn't make a thing believable.  The argument itself must be sound, and as Hugh says in the book, thanks to the blogosphere there are now thousands upon thousands of fact checkers out there who are more than willing to speak up.

Hugh's book touches on how blogging impacts ministry and the church, but most of it is devoted to how blogging impacts society at large. Being a pastor I am mostly interested in how his thoughts apply to the church.

One thing I would ask Hugh if I could meet him face to face is how blogging impacts the Christian "mainstream media."  There is a mainstream media in Christian circles which consists of the family of publications of Christianity Today, World Magazine, dozens or maybe hundreds of denominational magazines and websites, as well as major publishing houses like Baker, Crossway, Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, publisher of this book.  Furthermore there are networks associated with large churches like Willow Creek and Saddleback.  And of course there are the well known radio personalities like James Dobson, Charles Colson and others.  I am wondering how blogging will impact all of these ministries?  Will we see a similar marginalization and distrust of these groups, like we have seen with mainstream media?

I think the answer to that question, at the present, is no.  Mainstream media has been sunk by scandal and bias.  Though we all know about the televangelist scandals, the organizations and individuals above have managed to stay clean and therefore they don't share in the collective distrust that people feel toward the mainstream media.  This doesn't mean that every evangelical agrees with everything coming out of those places and in fact all of them have their critics.  But there is still a critical mass of integrity in those organizations and individuals that, barring serious and widespread scandal, will keep them from losing their credibility the way mainstream media has.
But there could be an erosion of influence for these "house organs" of evangelicalism.  Being the basically lazy person that I am, when I have a question about something these days I am far more likely to stay planted in my comfy chair and do a Google search for what I want than I am to get up and search my library.  I will search my library, but only after Google has failed me.  More often than not I can get what I need from a Google search and more often than not, the results Google gives me come from blogs.  So, I could see a day coming where the influence of Christian mainstream media erodes simply because people find it so easy to get their information elsewhere.

The folks at World magazine have understood this and have jumped in with a major blog presence.  CT also has a blog, which is great, but it is more like a news aggregator.  It doesn't allow for any interaction via comments or trackbacks so I wouldn't say it's a major presence in the blogosphere, the way WorldMagBlog is. Still, these are folks who have a presence in the blogosphere and whose are poised to continue influencing evangelicalism.

I am also interested in how blogging will impact the local church.  Tod Bolsinger is right when he says that blogging will expand the ministry of pastors beyond their churches.  I am a good example of this.  I preach to 100-130 people for about 45 minutes once per week at my church.  I also lead a small group of about 10 folks and we meet once per week for a couple of hours.  On my blog I get 400-500 hits per day.  Granted, many of those are 10 second and out hits, but my blog touches a significant number of folks.  However, one of the things we pastors must be aware of is that most of our current church members don't see any value in this.  A few days ago, Diane Roberts commented on a post of mine that 95% of the people in the church don't know what a blog is.  My experience is similar to hers.  Furthermore, many of those folks who don't know what a blog is think it is downright silly that anyone would waste their time doing it, once they find out what it is.  In addition to this, pastors are paid to minister to their particular church and are expected to do so by their governing boards. 

And while all of the above may convince the person in the pew that blogging is irrelevant we could look back to the era of the Reformation era to answer these objections.  There were very low literacy rates at the time of the invention of movable type and even at the time of the Reformation.  Yet the invention of movable type changed the world of even those who couldn't read.  Furthermore it was the original example of "if you build it they will come."  Movable type was invented before there was widespread literacy, yet it led to greater literacy. Similarly, even those who don't know what a blog is already live in a world that is being shaped by blogging and there is no reason to believe this won't continue.  In the future more and more people will be getting their information from blogs and pastors and others in ministry have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve in these days.

Also, as Tim Bednar shows us in his provocative essay, We Know More Than Our Pastors, blogs are creating a new kind of church.  Bednar calls this the "participatory church," and says:

There are a growing number of people whose “butts are in the pews” who desire a deeper level of participation in the church. They are not looking for more volunteer opportunities or chances to use their spiritual gifts (these often feel like sophisticated recruiting schemes for bloated church programs). They do not just want to participate in small groups or even lead them. They want a chance to set the agenda and to direct the conversation (not permanently, but spontaneously).

According to Bednar, this includes bloggers and a whole lot of other people.

Such statements make many pastors uncomfortable.  I'm a tradition laden Presbyterian in a very conservative denomination and I am uncomfortable with the implications of what Bednar is saying.  Yet this is the world we minister in today.  This is where some of the people in our pews are and where many or most of the people we want to be in our pews are. Bloggers not only are shaping culture today, but they are also reflecting it.  Many pastors may think that our object is to go after these folks and get them off the computer and into the pews.  If so, these pastors will end up having the same success that the Roman Catholic church in the 16th century had at getting people to quit reading Luther so they could come back to church and listen to the priests. 

As I mentioned in this post, I see no reason why churches couldn't go to a kind of blog format for their web pages and I also see no reason why pastors couldn't or shouldn't incorporate blogs into their web ministry. Hugh says that all leaders need a blog.  With a blog a pastor can communicate with his congregation and the world outside.  With a blog a pastor can talk about issues affecting his particular church.  Here is one example of a pastor who tried this. With a blog a pastor can call attention to people in the congregation, which will thrill them to know that they have been praised on the internet.  With commenting enabled, he can receive feedback from the members of his congregation, thus making them a part of it.  But he could also write essays and talk about issues of national importance which would expand his ministry.

The bottom line is that Hugh is right - we in the ministry need to see the blogosphere as a gift, not a threat.  Yes, there is plenty of stuff going on out there that is threatening to the body of Christ.  There is much false doctrine and it can travel faster and farther than ever thanks to the blogosphere.  But if error can travel fast and far in the blogosphere, how much faster and farther can the truth travel.  As my own blogging has evolved I have begun to see it more and more as an opportunity to get solid biblical doctrine out there.  Any other pastor can do the same.  There is no reason not to use this tool that God has given us to further the gospel ministry. Hopefully, this book will not only encourage CEO's and politicians to blog, but also pastors and others involved in ministry.

Comments

[Rey]

The Devil, unfortunately, is very good at taking advantage of a good ministry—not that he is more cunning than God, not at all. But he is more cunning than us and if we're not careful in our own ministering in this digital world, getting solid biblical doctrine out to the people could potentially turn into snapping and backbiting especially when very solid biblical doctrines may conflict with each other.

When we are in buildings of stone where the world rarely comes inside, we often preach with fire and condemnation on the world and perhaps on other believers who have opposing doctrines. But this digital world is not a stone building, getting more and more exposure...

I guess all I'm doing is encouraging folks to realize the ministerial use of the blogosphere (like yourself) and at the same time making sure that we remain representatives of God and not discord.

[David Wayne]

Rey - thanks for the comment. One of the tensions I always have is on "contending for the faith," vs. "being gracious to the faithful." With the LORB and other things I find myself involved in apologetics and/or polemics from time to time. The challenge is in standing for what I believe is the truth while showing grace to those who disagree.

[Babz]

Thanks for the site, and thanks for the intel. Personally, I like getting all pruney with the Word. Let it saturate me. I need it.

[dopderbeck]

Am I the only one who notices the way Hewitt substitutes hyperbole and exclamation points for analysis? Maybe I'm being cranky, but I don't think "Blog" is a great, or even good, or even really decent, book about the blogsphere or about our responsibility as Christians within the blogsphere. My "gadfly" review is on my blog here: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/2005/01/hugh_hewitts_bl.html. :-) Check out my "Spiritual Perils of Blogging" series as well.

[David Opderbeck]

Sorry, there was a period in the URL for my review of "Blog". The link is: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/2005/01/hugh_hewitts_bl.html

[Jerry Dubats]

JOLLYBLOGGER'S I need your help to get this important story told. Go to google key in
www.jerrydubats.com and read the story of the miracle. Nothing has ever been told as is in this story

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Thanks
Jerry

[Tim Bednar]

FYI: sometimes I'm uncomfortable with what I've written.