Why I Blog in Community.
Jordon Cooper's comments (here and here) about the so-called emerging "Christian Blogosphere" has got me thinking about why I blog and to whom I am blogging. Back in January, I happened upon Andrew Jones' site and followed his experiments in blogging for a month or so. I had published whatischurch.com mainly as a way to communicate with our sending church in Gainesville and to spark discussion among people we would meet here in West Palm. Blogging seemed to me like a great way to tell our story and instill the discipline of journaling what God is doing in us along the way. At the outset, I firmly decided that this blog would not be my personal bully pulpit to rant and rave about whatever provoked me. Instead, I wanted to invite our community to participate in something that would stretch us and allow us to share ideas with whoever read the blog.

As a pastor (which I'm trying to learn what pastor really means, so don't get freaked out by the language) I'm learning that fundamentally I’m called to be a servant. This is not my show. I'm not expecting top billing at the next big "emerging church" conference. My identity is wrapped up in the people who I am serving. Anything I write or speak primarily is created for the purposes of building up our community here or for someone specific with which I have a relationship. For example, all the articles I have written have come from email conversations with a friend in Gainesville or from phone calls with Todd Hunter. That's where I find inspiration, where my thinking gets sparked. I don't blindly lash out against evangelicalism because of my painful church history. I don't rant against consumer culture because McDonald's is the Great Satan and it must be stopped. I don't subversively chastise my modern church friends because they carry around too many enlightenment assumptions about truth or gnostic tendencies when it comes to the gospel. Anything I say (or anyone else here says for that matter) will be because it is beneficial to us and to those around us who are on the quest to discovering authentic faith in Jesus and Christian community.

If there's any confusion about the people who post to whatischurch.com, we are a unique, very small, experimental faith community. We don't have everything figured out and often we lapse into old habits, old language, and old ways of dealing with our struggles as followers of Jesus. Here's the bottom line: I blog in community because I am trying to except the fact that I am dead. "Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life - even though invisible to spectators - is with Christ in God. He is your life." (Col. 3:3, The Message) The Mike Bishop who has all the great ideas, who is creative, intelligent, witty, even funny, is dead. Every time I try to be those things for my own good and to fly my own flag I give that old, dead body a treatment of CPR. The new Mike Bishop, the one that God is forming and shaping, is submitted to his Kingdom and to his community. That is where my real life is - where I am not in charge and I take my place as a member of the people of God.

So don't expect brilliance and wit to ooze off your computer screen every time you visit whatischurch.com. Sometimes community is really boring. Sometimes we're overly optimistic. Sometimes we're a pain in the butt. But we try to be honest. So if you want to use your blog to engage the internet culture with the kingdom of God, then do it. If you want to blog about the deepest parts of your life with God to other Christians, do it. Integrity (as my friend T has reminded us) is being the same person wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

Sorry for the length. Man I'm really turning into a Creechian blogger.