Tyler Braun of the blog “Man of Depravity” recently wrote a blog entry entitled “5 Reasons Your Pastor Should Blog (and Twitter).” In it, he outlines 5 reasons why your minister or pastor should embrace the web as a means of communicating with your church family and the surrounding community:

1. It allows pastors to build relationships with people outside of the Sunday morning gathering. Especially in large churches, pastors have limited access with the people at their church. They are pulled in a lot of directions and very often those things pull the pastor away from the most important thing: the people. A blog allows relationships to be formed and to deepen.
2. It allows them to expand the topic of their weekly message and build a conversation around it. I can’t tell you how many times I go home on Sunday wishing the pastor would have expanded on a certain topic in their message. A blog is a great place to allow for those questions and conversations to happen.
3. It shows they are human. They sin, they watch sports, they have families, etc. Outside of the cute family story in the message, most church attenders know nothing about a pastors daily life. The web 2.0 world is a window into what that pastor is really like.
4. It promotes a conversation (when done correctly) rather than preaching. As our world becomes more postmodern and community decision-based, the value and effectiveness of the Sunday sermon goes down. Pastors need a way to allow for a conversation instead of the top-down learning model that preaching presents.
5. It allows for considerable connection with other pastors. I tell people all the time that I’ve learned about as much through the web 2.0 world as I have in seminary. There is so much great stuff out there and there are great thinkers who are putting their thoughts onto blogs. Pastors need to be connected with people going through the same things.

Our advice if you want to get started: find a “rockstar” – someone in your congregation who understands the technology and can help your minister or pastor get started.  Don’t have a rockstar?  We can help.