Sinclair Ferguson doesn’t seem to think so. Recently a clip of an interview with him was circulated where he argued that the time spent writing your blog article could have been spent visiting an elderly lady in the congregation.
I have an obvious interest to declare here because I write a blog and have done so whilst in pastoral ministry. My current role involves pastoral work with a specific church congregation but a significant proportion of it is a wider role recruiting, training and coaching church planters and pastors. In that respect, much of what I provide via Faithroots fits directly with that role. However, there have been times when I’ve blogged when my primary role has been pastoring.
I first started the Faithroots blog about 10 years ago. My reason for doing so was that I realised there was far more we as elders might want to share with the congregation teaching wise than we could include in a Sunday sermon. Primarily I wanted to help people think about doctrine but I also wanted this to be practical not theoretical so my concern was to show how we could think Christianly about significant issues both in the wider church and the wider world too. I in fact stopped blogging for a period when I realised that most people in our congregation were not likely to read a blog and that most interest in my blog came from a wider audience who were mainly interested in controversial topics which I did cover but weren’t my real reason for doing this.
I restarted Faithroots in 2020 for two reasons. First because it was at that time that I realised much of my focus would be on the wider role of recruiting, training and equipping. Secondly, we had just gone into the pandemic and lockdown had been announced. We lost face to face communication for most of 2020 and so we were all thinking about how best to communicate with others for discipleship, pastoral care and evangelism. I found that a mix of writing, live streaming, zoom and phone calls was the way forward in our context.
So, what about pastors now. If I were focusing on local church ministry outside of the pandemic would I continue to blog. There is a real possibility that I would not but I think that on balance, probably I would. Here are the things I’d be considering though.
- Is this what our congregation need? I’ve heard a few people including Kevin DeYoung helpfully argue that when blogging, you should first write for your own church. If it is helpful to a wider audience, that’s brilliant.
- How does it affect me? Blogging, like anything can become addictive and idolatrous. It can hinder growth and take us away from better things, not just visiting that elderly lady but prayer, Scripture, family time, evangelism.
Now in my case, a major factor might be that I would probably be writing anyway. I enjoy writing, I find it a helpful way of processing my thoughts. So, once something is down on paper, I might as well upload it to Faithroots, if only as a convenient place to store it. If others read it and find it helpful then that’s a bonus.
I would encourage others in pastoral ministry to think through the same types of questions. I don’t think there is a rule against blogging. I find Sinclair’s comments a little on the legalistic side and a little ironic given that he has devoted much time to writing, it’s just his material has ended up in books rather than on blogs! However, don’t assume that you must blog. Be ready to let go of it, even if it is successful.
Faithroots 
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