I remember an old episode of “Andy Griffith” where a stranger came to visit Mayberry — a stranger who knew everything about everybody. He knew so much, in fact, that it creeped people out. They were ready to run him out of town.
As it turned out, the man had been taking the Mayberry newspaper for years and reading it, and he felt like like an insider.
Don’t blogs create that kind of scenario? We can wind up “knowing” each other pretty well — without even knowing each other.
Perhaps we need a big room to meet in sometime. So many of you who’ve been a part of this “blog community” for a long time are people I don’t even know. I’d like to hear YOUR stories. Yes, I know some of those stories wind up in comments. But there are so many other ones. Some of you feel like you know my kids. You’ve heard me blab on about faith, little league, social justice, parenting, and guacamole. (Lately, I’ve been braindead. Can you tell?) Someday, maybe I’ll get to hear the stories that have shaped you.
I have met several new friends off of your blog. It has changed my life. It is a pretty incredible adventure. Thanks for you help!
I mean “your” help!
It is a strange reality sometimes for relationships to seem so one sided. But I too have to say that my blog has brought me friendships from afar, and most delightfully from within my church family.
If you’re ever in Atlanta let me know! I did get a chance to meet Jack Reese this past weekend at the Atlanta Elderlink program, so there’s only one degree of separation at this point
Hearing you speak in Montgomery, Alabama several years ago is what introduced me to Blogworld. I’m not the fanatic I was several years ago but it’s still fun and I’ve met a lot of people from all over the country.
I think BlogWorld is God’s counteraction to Privacy Fences. We have more new neighbors than ever!
You mean you don’t read all our daily blog posts Mike?
Some of my dearest friends and ones who have been there for me these last few months are people I have met through my blog. I have a wonderful friend in Australia, Canada and Hawaii…its crazy.
We talk about this all the time. One of the crazier things for me has been developing a relationship with a girl at my own congregation. We have known each other and even had brief conversations here an there but she started reading my blog somehow and since then we have developed a strong friendship, gone to lunch etc etc. How bizarre is it that the blogworld propelled a relationship in my home church!
I am part of a talklist that has been fairly active for several years (though I usually am one of the background lurkers). Many of the people on the list know one another personally, but many of them do not. The similarities of the listers’ church experiences have supplied a lot of the connecting tissue that binds them together.
Relationships and even virtual personalities have taken shape over the years, creating a hunger for “a big room to meet in,” as Mike put it. That impulse recently hit the ground and now the group is actually planning to meet together this Fall. People from several different states have already committed to coming to a big weekend event in a major metropolitan area — ostensibly for the purpose of continuing their ongoing conversations about the faith, church, and so forth. But the desire to celebrate the online community, to make the virtual relationships concrete, making new connections and renewing old ones, are blatantly driving the event.
It is interesting to think about the information we put out on the web. I have a friend who will not even join Facebook she’s so worried about people who might misuse any information she puts up. She’s missing out on a lot because she’s so concerned about possible problems.
This blog does make it seem like we know you better than you know us, but that has got to be the way it is for a preacher a lot of the time anyway, right?
From watching you preach at church and telling stories at MOPS each year PLUS this blog I really feel like I know you VERY well and forget sometimes that we have only met twice
I know you don’t have a lot of extra time. But if you are ever bored and have nothing to do… come on over and check out http://www.juliakstewartsblog.blogspot.com !
Along this line,someone pointed me to Romans 1:11-12: “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong–that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.” Evidently, Paul never considered “the great Letter to the Romans” an adequate substitute for his presence. From beinning to end, Christian faith is incarnational.
You are right Mike, blogs of any kind including on line chat rooms and on line rp games help up to understand people better. I am part of an online rp game and have been for almost 4 years. I know people in Canada and Austrailia that I will never ever meet. I have been privilaged to speak to some of our military people in Afganistan and even one who was playing from Iraq a year or so ago who had to leave suddenly because of an alarm that some insurgance personal had made an attempt to enter the base where he was stationed.
I have been further convinced that people are the same the world over. It matters not their race or national origin. We all have the same needs of love and companionship. If you ever have a couple hours to listen to a man who is quite proud of his family and heritage, come talk to me and I will tell you my tale.
Blogs are fun, when you recognize their limitations.
For instance, I met the guy who designed the movie poster for “Notting Hill” through blogging. We chat almost every day about random things, and yet we’ve never met in person. Tres cool.
I think blogs are quite a bit like radio hosts. If you listen to the same local one every day you start to learn much about them and soon you think you actually know them even though you never met. At least that is how I feel with a few local ones here in NC.
My blog has not been up long enough to get that fimilar with folks, esp when many of them I already know quite well.
I enjoy blogging though but am still pretty green at it.
I’m thankful that you write on here. Even though you’ve only met me 2 times face to face, I’ve seen you speak MANY times at all kinds of events and at Highland.
With you writing here, I gain respect for you when I hear you speak. No offense, but when I listen to you, it’s more trustable because I know what you’re thinking and what you do and stuff. I wish Jeff Walling had time for a blog, I think it would enhance his ability to speak to people, if they got to know him a little more. I mean he does have a fan club and t-shirts, haha!
Keep on writing. We appreciate it.
One more story. I started reading Harvest Boston (Steve Holt Jr.) via this blog and really loved his heart and what I read. A friend of mine had a son at Harding who was preparing for church planting in Boston. I hooked him up with Steve’s info and they met and have made friends.
The Mom keeps me updated on things and often says, “O Taylor was with your friend Steve” I keep reminding her, that I have never met Steve and we wouldn’t know each other in a crowd. It cracks me up.
Arlene and I were friends before blogs!
I just hope that we act over the internet like we are actually in face to face dialogs. It is easy for us to write things to people we don’t know and will never see that we would never say to their face, and I know I have been guilty myself of this.
Another thing that is interesting is how different people take different roles on this blog. You can usually count on a few different folks to fill the various niches of the conversations Mike prompts. I just think it is funny how I do this.
By “braindead” I’m sure you mean “pre-occupied” with this little blessing from heaven you and Diane are waiting on. Your blog was introduced to me by D.U. and I’ve enjoyed your journey and that of many others along the way. See you in Malibu. Pictures please…
Keith said what I was going to say. Your’e brain is not dead, it’s just not able to think past that sweet little girl making her debut. AND boy does she seem to enjoy making the world wait!!! Isn’t she 6 or 9 days past due??? Do they not know how to induce in Houston? (Kidding! Please no disscussion on waiting and natural “in it’s own time” labor being best…) :)I think this is just the beginnings of a grandchild taking over your head and heart!
I love blogs because they make easy to keep up with old friends, not to mention all the new friends I’ve found in blog land! I wish all my old friends would blog, but I would never get anything else done from keeping up with everyone. Blogs are a bit of a time vaccum.
The same thing is true over on my little blog. I have made true friends over the past two years, but haven’t met many of them. I consider Greg, Cecil, Judy and others people that I could go to with/for anything. And yet we haven’t had any face-time ever.
I can’t make Pepperdine yet again because of the whole “job” thing. But I know that many of my blog-buddies will be there. That alone makes it hard not to attend. I’m sure that when the grand gathering takes place, if on this side of Heaven, it will be in Malibu (a fairly close facscimile).
I can’t believe you don’t read all of our blogs daily…
One of the joys of blogworld is laughing at Joel’s and Deana’s comments. Yeah, I feel like I know all the regulars around here, but couldn’t pick many of them out in a crowd!
And it is kinda funny that so many of us are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a little princess in Houston being born to parents we have never met.
It has been a joy to read your blog (and now one of your books). You have impacted my faith and stretched my thinking in many ways through your writing. Thank you.
What’s funny is, that I know Mike, but only see him once or twice a year(at Zoe in N’ville, Pepperdine Lectures, & the occasional wedding in the family), but those encounters are brief & casual—-never enough time for deep fellowship. But reading your blog makes me feel like we are close friends, and you & Diane are treasures to our family because of your time in Searcy & with the Harding community. One of these days there WILL be time, and lots of it, for all of us in Heaven! Won’t it be just the grandest thing?!
This blogworld really is an amazing place. I’ve “met” so many people from all over the world. It is mind boggling the connection you can feel with people you may never meet in this lifetime.
Roland messed up my whole day………I keep seeing you behind some glass with 45’s all around, and with a really cool beard talking like Wolfman Jack!
And JT is on the turn-table.
DU
P.S. Somebody clue the young-uns in on what a “45″ is.
My 2007 blogging has pretty much been a stinker -but I still come here and other blogs daily to read and catch up. It is a cool treat to meet fellow bloggers at real life events. Thanks Mike.
Hey Hub…my love to Debby.
A 45 is a big CD. A L-P is a really big CD!
One thing I mention on my blog on occasion is that my husband travels for his job — a development officer for an award- winning institution of higher education (sing it with me, “O, Dear Christian college, we love you..”) His traveling causes me to rearrange my exercise schedule so that I am unable to stalk any local bloggers. That’s one thing you may want to know about me. And, as Quile mentioned, there is WAY more than you want to know amongst the blather that is my blog.
I do love “blog-friends”, but, yes, it creeps me out when people start a conversation they thought we were having because of a post on my blog!
Mike, surely the assymetry of relational knowledge that you experience in blogdom is not that different from the assymetry of pulpit work, where many people feel they know you better than you could possibly know them. Maybe it’s not so acute when you’ve been at a particular congregation for a loooooonng time, but even so…
Really, you don’t read all our posts? What a let down.
Among the serendipitous joys of the blogosphere is an eminently practical one. When your servant needed a quiet, comfortable room to use as home base for a week’s toil in J. T. Willis’ and T. Thompson’s “Exegesis” class this past January, well, suffice to say that a generous soul in this sector of the sphere consulted the spouse, whereupon they agreed, offered and followed through with some fabulous hospitality.
Say what you will about the wisdom of intentionally hosting qb without plenty of security guards about, theirs is one good deed that will not soon be forgotten, either here on the Golden Spread or up in the heavenlies.
qb
I felt EXACTLY this way at the most recent ZOE conference in Nashville. For lunch we ended up sharing a table with Sheryl Thomas, and Brandon came along later. Having been reading his blog for some time I felt odd in that scenario. I was there with my wife and a couple friends, and I was the “imitation insider” as introductory information was being given.
Weird feeling.
Amazingly enough, I have met about ten people via my blog locally and who have traveled through Tulsa, OK. It has been an amazing journey, and I can tell you that having open conversation with people online and in person enriches my life.
The funny thing is, even if we disagree on many political or theological statements, most can put that aside for fellowship in Jesus. That is a good thing.
A shameless plug: http://stonebridgecrossings.blogspot.com/
I have about 20 regular readers besides my mother and sister…
New church in town…anyone familiar with the Gateway church?
Seems there is one in Austin, one in DC and now one is being planted here in Cleveland. The leaders all seem to have some affiliation with Willow Creek.
My first impression of you was positive because I had decided that any friend of Ray Muncy was a friend of mine.
Between you, GKB and JAW, I found three inspirations to write my own blog.
Ah….Dr. Muncy. Good memories there. “Historians reflect the tenor of their times” is still ingrained in my brain.
Check out my blog, that’ll tell you a lot about me. A Christian Churches guy trapped in a cappella churches but not 100% in line with either. Rough journey leaving Brazil and through a difficult church in New Mexico. Finding my way back to mission service.
Blogs are nice. They keep me an arms length (or computer length) away from all you wierd people.
Just kidding
I love that episode of the Andy Griffith Show and I love blogs. Until now, I had never thought of them compared to each other! Too funny. And congrats on your grandaughter too, she is going to be a great one!