Hat tip to Michael Davis for alerting me to this question posed over at Total Leadership: "Should Ministry Leaders Blog?" Here are my thoughts…

A blogger with a "why" beats one with only a "how"

Blogging can be a waste of a leader's time if he doesn't know what he's doing or why he's doing it. (Especially why.)

I would never suggest a leader start blogging (or podcasting) unless they've already been reading some choice blogs and are starting to get some idea of what value a blog can bring to a ministry or to one's life. Rushing into blogging without first experiencing it is like convincing someone to preach who's never heard a sermon in their life. Sure, it might be comical or even refreshing — once.

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Here are some tips I've learned from nearly two years of blogging and consistently raising my site's traffic from month to month, often doubling it from previous months. Compared to some, I'm a rank newbie and have no business offering you any sort of pseudo-sage advice, but whatever I have to say below has already been said by others smarter than me. Most of it is hard-won insight that has worked for somebody somewhere, sometimes even me.

I want to say a few words about the power of blogging on a personal level. And I want to challenge my fellow quiet Pentecostals and Charismatics to pick up the keyboard and begin writing.

Words have Consequences
A friend on an email message group recently asked me about the effectiveness of ministering through a blog. So I'd been thinking about that when a couple things landed in my inbox that encouraged me and seem to illustrate the answer to his question. Writing in a public forum — whether blogging, managing a web page, or crafting freelance articles for a newspaper or magazine — can have an effect.

First up, from Amber, who sent me a nice note via my online contact form:

« I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your blog.  … Your blog is always honest and open, you don't shy away from even the hard stuff in your comments. After joining the Assemblies at 16, I soon discovered that opinions and controversy and doubt are all too often a flag for that person needing to "get saved" again.

I have just recently left the Assemblies … but a part of it is still in me, hopefully the good parts. And honestly, I think all of those good parts are what you portray here at your blog.

Thanks for being there and restoring a little of my fragile hope for humanity. »

Just a very quick note to say that I've updated the PneumaBlogs list in recent days to include some stellar new names, including:

Update, April 15, 2007: As of today, you can now link directly to your own entry in the PneumaBlogs list. Just look for the "link to this item" text to find your custom URL for your entry.

Update, April 10, 2007: You can also use the square-but-fiery button shown at right. Just see the updated section below.

For the 130+ PneumaBloggers currently listed on my PneumaBlogs page, if you want to host a button on your site promoting your pneumatic bloggy-ness, here it is in all its drab elegant simplicity:

Please right-click on the image and host it from your website (it's only 255 bytes) and then link to the PneumaBlogs page (or the PneumaSphere aggregator). Here's sample code you can use: