If you take a look at my sidebar and peruse my blog archives by month, you might notice something odd: there is no July for 2008, 2009, or 2010. The month skips from June to August each year. That’s because, for those three years, I spent the month of July away from social media and the blog world. 31 days without any blogging or tweeting or updating my facebook.

For the last couple of years, I’ve approached my annual “sabbatical” differently. I re-ran some older posts from my blog archive. And I provided a platform for some other bloggers.

I’m going to take the same approach this year, especially since we are also expecting to have our third child next month! I hope to schedule 10-15 posts from guest bloggers for the month of July. If you’re interested in submitting something, take a look at the following qualifications:

1. You must be an active blogger or an active contributor to an established blog. (I would link to your blog or website.)
2. You must be familiar with the Kingdom People audience and willing to write accordingly.
3. You must focus on delivering helpful, edifying content for the good of the church and the glory of God.
4. You must submit the guest posts to me by June 24.

If you meet these qualifications, then send me an email, tell me the subject you’d like to write about, and then we can discuss the possibility of collaboration. No doubt the quality of blogging here at Kingdom People will rise during the month of July with the addition of some new voices!

James K. A. Smith, in an extended analysis of how our habits shape our orientation to the world, reflects on the impact of Facebook and Twitter on teenagers:

I do not envy our four teenagers in the least: far from carefree, their adolescence is a tangled web of angst that is, I think, qualitatively different from that of past generations. The difference, I suggest, stems from a unique constellation of cultural habits that has exacerbated their self-consciousness to an almost-paralyzing degree.

Granted, self-consciousness is part of the rite of passage that is adolescence. The hormonal effects on teenaged bodies make them realize they are bodies in ways that surprise them. They inhabit their bodies as foreign guests, constantly imagining that all eyes are upon them as they go to sharpen their pencil or climb the stairs at a football game. Such self-consciousness has always bred its own warped ontology in which the teenager is the center of the universe, praying both that no one will notice and that everyone would.

The advent of social media has amplified this exponentially. In the past, there would have been spaces where adolescents could escape from these games, most notably in the home. Whatever teenagers might have thought of their parents, they certainly didn’t have to put on a show for them. The home was a space to let down your guard, freed from the perpetual gaze of your peers. You could almost forget yourself. You could at least forget how gawky and pimpled and weird you were, freed from the competition that characterizes teenagedom.

No longer. The space of the home has been punctured by the intrusion of social media such that the competitive world of self-display and self-consciousness is always with us. The universe of social media is a ubiquitous panopticon.

The teenager at home does not escape the game of self-consciousness; instead, she is constantly aware of being on display – and she is regularly aware of the exhibitions of others. Her Twitter feed incessantly updates her about all of the exciting, hip things she is not doing with the “popular” girls; her Facebook pings nonstop with photos that highlight how boring her homebound existence is. And so she is compelled to constantly be “on,” to be “updating” and “checking in.” The competition for coolness never stops. She is constantly aware of herself – and thus unable to lose herself in the pleasures of solitude: burrowing into a novel, pouring herself out in a journal, playing with fanciful forms in a sketch pad. More pointedly, she loses any orientation to a project. Self-consciousness is the end of teleology…

With the expansion of social media, every space is a space of “mutual self-display.” As a result, every space is a kind of visual echo chamber. We are no longer seen doing something; we’re doing something to be seen.

- from Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Cultural Liturgies), 145-6.

Last week marked my sixth year blogging at Kingdom People. Since then, I’ve written more than 3000 blog posts about a variety of topics.

Along the way, it’s been interesting to watch how the blogosphere has evolved. Here are a few things that are different today:

1. Content curation and content creation have come together.

Six years ago, popular blogs were usually centered around a particular personality. That person was either an expert creator of content (a Tim Challies type who pumps out thoughtful posts every day) or an expert curator of content (a Justin Taylor type who discovers interesting posts and passes them along).

Today, the personal connection with the writer still exists, but many (if not most) popular blogs combine both curation and creation.

• Tim Challies started providing daily links through his A La Carte. 
• Justin Taylor is more inclined to post his own thoughts on different subjects.
• Scot McKnight posts his own material, but also provides excerpts from interesting articles designed to stir up conversation in the comments.
• Blogs associated with organizations (TGC, The Resurgence, Pastors.Com) provide curated content from a number of creators who may or may not blog themselves.

Curation and creation have come together.

2. Engaging with commenters is no longer as important.

For years, social media gurus said blogging was all about the conversation. You’re not doing it right if you’re not heavily engaged in the comments.

Not the case anymore. The people who read this blog and follow me on Twitter do so primarily because of the content I provide, not because of my accessibility in the comments section.

Engaging in the conversation is no longer the key to a successful blog. Popular blogs generate conversation, but not because the blogger is the most active person in the comments.

3. FaceBook and Twitter matter more than other blog links.

During my early years of blogging, the way to see an increase in traffic was to have a popular blogger link to your article. Unless a bigger blog linked to you, your post was destined to languish in obscurity.

All that has changed. The most important factor in blog traffic today is FaceBook shares and Tweets. Blog links still matter because that is usually the way an article gets noticed. But it’s the FaceBook and Twitter action that happens after the post gets noticed that makes the biggest impact.

On a similar note, many have given up altogether on following blogs through RSS feeds (like Google Reader), and prefer to follow the blogger on Twitter.

Finally, if we were to jump back in time to 2006, we’d think of reading blogs as something that takes place in front of a computer screen. Today, blogs are read on phones or mobile devices. Social media and technological advances have changed the way we interact with online content.

4. Blog “neighborhoods” have developed.

Since 2006, blog networks have become more established, and some have grown into – what I call – “online neighborhoods.” These mega-sites bring together like-minded (and sometimes not-so-like-minded) bloggers who appeal to a particular segment of readers.

• Beliefnet was one of the earliest online neighborhoods, and it sought to appeal to a wide spectrum of religious readers.
• The Washington Post launched On Faith with a number of well-known religious leaders. The diversity of opinions represented by On Faith and the fact that the participants were not “bloggers” made that endeavor interesting to readers from all over the spectrum.
• The Gospel Coalition came later and, through the acquisition of popular blogs from Justin Taylor and Kevin DeYoung, quickly carved out a predominantly conservative, evangelical audience.
• Patheos was launched soon after as a multi-faith community of blogs, and the evangelical portal attracted some well-known bloggers from across the spectrum.

I could go on and point out other online neighborhoods that focus on different topics (such as politics, sports, etc.). Needless to say, the bringing together of popular blogs into communities is an important development since 2006.

5. Blogs are valuable to mainstream news websites.

Last year, a reporter from a major news organization contacted me about the evangelical debate over hell. I knew that this major news site was going to put the article on their website’s front page and that they would feature a link back to my blog. Having never been linked from a major news organization before, I wondered what that would do to my blog traffic.

The reporter wrote to inform me when the article was posted. Then, she asked me to link to it. Twice.

I soon figured out why. On the day the article was posted, my blog sent hundreds of people to her article, whereas her website sent only a few dozen to my blog. Furthermore, one of the other two people quoted was a popular blogger/scholar. Out of all the people she could have interviewed for this story, she made sure two out of three had an online presence.

Here’s the takeaway: the mainstream media needs blogs in order to get traffic to their own websites. News is not what it used to be. Blogs and non-traditional news sources are seen for the audiences they have (and can transfer!). The mainstream media, still bleeding after the onslaught of cable and the internet, crave the attention that blogs already have. Media websites also need traffic in order to hold on to their advertisers.

6. Theological blog tribes have solidified.

Recently, I was talking with a popular blogger from a different evangelical stream, and we were lamenting the way that the blogosphere has solidified people into very distinct camps. In 2006, when there were fewer blogs, there was more conversation that crossed over into other theological and philosophical camps.

Now, with the proliferation of blogs, there is less of that conversation. Reformed-types read certain blogs. Church-growth guys read other blogs. Etc. There’s no longer much conversation between camps taking place, and when conversation does happen, it’s more like lobbing a grenade into someone else’s camp.

Nobody is to blame for this development, for it’s only natural that readers would gravitate toward good blogs that serve the need of their particular tribe. But I think it’s good for our Christian witness if we hold firm theological convictions without succumbing to theological tribalism. Maybe we can change that in the next six years.

What do you think?

What changes have you noticed in the blogosphere since 2006? How has other social media impacted blogging?

“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.”

I love that quote from G. K. Chesterton. Not a surprising statement, considering it comes from a man who once wrote a lengthy essay about his fascination with all the items he found in his pants pocket.

Like Chesterton, I am fascinated by all kinds of things. One of the reasons I write and read blogs is because I am curious. There’s so much to learn. So many interesting voices to listen to. So many insights into life and love that arise from places you least expect.

Is Your Blog Post “Christian?”

When I first considered moving my blog home to The Gospel Coalition neighborhood, I realized that my choice of subject matter and daily links would be more eclectic than some of my blog neighbors. Perhaps that’s why, in the past few months, I’ve received occasional comments or emails from readers puzzled about my choice of topic for a blog post or link. Almost always, the question concerns the perceived “Christian-ness” of the choice.

Here’s an example. My post on “7 Myths about the Columbine Shooting” earlier this week prompted this comment:

A question about your article….and I accept I might be missing something here…apart from a review of a book and you sharing some things you learned from it….I’m struggling to see how this article is either helpful to a Christian or is relevant to a Christian. I guess another way of putting it might be, what is there about the article that makes it ‘Gospel Coalition’ content? Just curious?

No, the commenter isn’t missing anything. He’s right. There was nothing distinctively Christian about the post, apart from the fact it was written by me – a Christian. I wrote about the book because I found it fascinating and thought others would be interested in some of the truths I learned.

That said, the Columbine post certainly provides a number of possibilities for further conversation. Here are a few:

• The power of the media to shape a narrative in the wake of a tragedy.
• The persistence of myth-making and conspiracy theories in our culture.
• The willingness of Christians to pass on an inaccurate martyr story in order to invest a terrible tragedy with spiritual significance.
• The ongoing discussion about bullying among children and teenagers.

Though I didn’t pursue these avenues in detail, I knew the blog post might spark some good thought in these directions.

Living on Earth as Citizens of Heaven

Whenever I hear from readers who wonder why my daily links do not always relate directly to Christianity, the church, or pastoral ministry, I point them to the name of this blog: Kingdom People: Living on Earth as Citizens of Heaven.

Too many times, we think of something as “Christian” only when it is directly tied to our being “citizens of heaven” instead of our “living on earth.” But I don’t think we can separate the two. Those of us who seek to improve our ability to exegete the Bible for our congregations should also be experts at exegeting the culture. Kevin Vanhoozer writes:

I cannot love my neighbor unless I understand him and the cultural world he inhabits. Cultural literacy – the ability to understand patterns and products of everyday life – is thus an integral aspect of obeying the law of love. (Everyday Theology, 19)

So why learn to read culture? Vanhoozer offers three reasons:

1. It helps to know what is forming one’s spirit. It helps to be able to name the powers and principalities that vie for the control of one’s mind, soul, heart, and strength.
2. To make sure that the scripts we perform in everyday life are in accord with the Scriptures – the story of what God is doing in Jesus Christ through the Spirit to give meaning and life to the world – rather than some other story.
3. Because we need to know where we are in the drama of redemption. The world is our stage, but culture is the setting for our next scene.

Chesterton was right. There are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people. That’s why, whenever I find something of interest on the web, my first thought is not – Is this Christian? - but Is this interesting? Is it “worth a look?” Is there humor in it? Pathos? Insight into the way the world works? The way people think? If so, I’ll link to it or write a post about it.

This whole world is God’s. As Nate Wilson reminds us, “To an infinite artist, a Creator in love with His craft, there is no unimportant corner, there is no thrown-away image, no tattered thread in the novel left untied.”

For the past four years, I have taken a break from blogging during the month of July. I have found that this time away has been spiritually and mentally refreshing.

This year, I’ve enlisted more than a dozen talented bloggers and writers to contribute posts and book reviews. I’ve already read through all the contributions, and I have scheduled them to be released one day at a time during the month of July. The posts are great, and I look forward to seeing the response they generate.

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming up in July:

• 10 Tips on Solving Mysterious Bible Passages from Sherlock Holmes
• Preventing Heresy in Small Groups
• What Does Gospel-Centered Leadership Look Like?
• The Secret Life of the Cross-Cultural Missionary
• How to Help Bereaved Parents in Your Church

That’s just scratching the surface. As you can see, Kingdom People is in good hands for the month of July. My hope is that you won’t even miss me! Seriously, I believe you’ll be encouraged and challenged by the guest contributors, and I encourage you to add these bloggers to your feedreader. They are doing good work.

On August 1, Lord willing, I will resume writing daily here at Kingdom People. Until then, I pray you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

If you take a look at my sidebar and peruse my blog archives by month, you might notice something odd: there is no July for 2008, 2009, or 2010. The month skips from June to August each year. That’s because, for those three years, I spent the month of July away from social media and the blog world. 31 days without any blogging or tweeting or updating my facebook.

Blogging is an act of stewardship, an act that is fraught with peril even as it is bursting with possibilities. One of the only ways I know how to check my heart and discern where blogging is potentially harmful to my soul is to get away from it.

Last year, I approached my annual “sabbatical” differently. I re-ran some older posts from my blog archive. And I provided a platform for some other bloggers.

I’m going to take the same approach this year. I hope to schedule 10-15 posts from guest bloggers for the month of July. If you’re interested in submitting something, take a look at the following qualifications:

1. You must be an active blogger yourself. (I would link to your blog or website.)
2. You must be familiar with the Kingdom People audience and willing to write accordingly.
3. You must focus on delivering helpful, edifying content for the good of the church and the glory of God.
4. You must submit the guest posts to me by June 21.

If you meet these qualifications, then send me an email, tell me the subject you’d like to write about, and then we can discuss the possibility of collaboration. No doubt the quality of blogging here at Kingdom People will rise during the month of July with the addition of some new voices!

For about a year now, I’ve been enjoying the social media insights of Justin Wise. Justin is the social media director for Monk Development, an Internet solutions company. He also co-directs the Center for Church Communication. He blogs about social media strategy, personal productivity, lifestyle design, and entrepreneurship. Today, he’s joining me for a conversation about the future of social media.

Justin Wise: I believe that social media will continue to integrate more deeply into the minutiae of everyday life. Social will find its way into what we eat, what we wear, where we are (and where we’re going to be), what we’re listening to. Social is and will continue to be everywhere.

When I say “social,” I really mean two things:

Share and interact. We want the ability to tell people, namely our friends and family, what we’re doing/eating/going to/listening to. We share, much in the same way we’d tell a friend or spouse over dinner, what our day was like. Now we can share socially and experience feedback in real-time, regardless of where our “conversation partners” are located.

My favorite example of this is the Nike+ running app for iPhone or iPod touch. I use this app for every run I complete, and it’s been astounding to see the results. You can connect the app to your Facebook profile, and your friends can “cheer” you on by commenting on the status update the app posts whenever you start a workout. I hear these virtual “cheers” in my headphones as I’m running. Similarly, I can post the stats from my run across social networks and challenge other runners to a timed race. I’ve heard everything from “You run a lot!” to “I’m going to start running because of you.” Social is actually affecting the real-world lives of people that are sometimes continents away. That fascinates me.

This, hopefully, isn’t breaking news. We’ve all experienced the impact of social, whether a small business owner, megachurch pastor, or Fortune 500 company. Everyone has been impacted by social. I see this when I talk to small-town churches who, quite bewilderedly, say something to the effect of “We know social media are important, but we have no idea where to start!” This is not an uncommon reaction.

That said, organizations will build social into their structural fabric by resourcing social media as a department. In the same way that organizations have communications, PR, legal, and accounting departments, they’ll have social media departments.

Brian Solis says that we’re about the enter Social Media 2.0. Much like Web 2.0, culture reached a saturation point with the Web, and innovators started doing what they do best…innovate. We’re starting to reach critical mass with Social Media 1.0, where literally everyone and their grandmother are using social media in some fashion.

Trevin Wax: For many years, I heard social media gurus saying that social media (from a business standpoint) was all about the conversation. You’re not using it right if you’re not heavily engaged in the conversation across social media platforms. I’ve always scratched my head at that kind of talk because – in my case, at least – I always felt like the people who read my blog and follow me on Twitter were doing so because of the content I was providing, not just the conversational aspect. It was passing on good content through my daily link-posts or (hopefully) crafting interesting articles for the main page that were driving the social media engine. A few months ago, I saw that other social media people were now talking more about content creation and content curation as the heart of social media strategy. What do you make of this shift?

Justin Wise: “Engaging in the conversation” is a waste of time. While that may seem like an overstatement, it’s not. I even have the data to prove it.

I wrote a post on this very topic using the data of Dan Zarrella, the social media scientist at HubSpot. Dan equates “engaging the conversation” to unicorns and rainbows—they make you feel better but don’t accomplish anything.

With the addition of iBooks Author, Apple, once again, is creating a “blue ocean” in which to market. If you make ebook creation as simple as Apple has while claiming sole publisher rights to books created with the tool, more and more authors will drift to the platform. This is typical Apple—creating an ecosystem where they control every last detail from start to finish.

Last week, I announced that my blog would soon be transitioning into a new phase. Those who left comments on the old blog site for Kingdom People quickly guessed the blog was going in one of two directions: Patheos or The Gospel Coalition. (Well, there was actually a third guess – that I had finally given in and decided to become a sports blogger!)

The fact that commenters immediately speculated about the blog moving to one of two popular websites signifies a change in the way people think of the blogosphere. In the early days of blogging, like-minded readers discovered new blogs by the strategic use of blogroll links in the sidebar. Almost all bloggers were independent of one another.

In recent years, however, blog networks have become more established, and some have grown into – what I call – “online neighborhoods.” These mega-sites bring together like-minded (and sometimes not-so-like-minded) bloggers who appeal to a particular segment of readers.

• Beliefnet was one of the earliest online neighborhoods, and it sought to appeal to a wide spectrum of religious readers.
• The Washington Post launched On Faith with a number of well-known religious leaders. The diversity of opinions represented by On Faith and the fact that the participants were not “bloggers” made that endeavor interesting to readers from all over the spectrum.
• The Gospel Coalition came later and, through the acquisition of popular blogs from Justin Taylor and Kevin DeYoung, quickly carved out a predominantly conservative, evangelical, Reformed-leaning audience.
• Patheos was launched soon after as a multi-faith community of blogs, and the evangelical portal attracted some well-known bloggers from Beliefnet (Scot McKnight, Ben Witherington) who provide thoughtful commentary for a mainstream or progressive evangelical audience (with a good number of politically conservative columnists involved as well).

I could go on and point out other online neighborhoods that focus on different topics (such as politics, sports, etc.). Needless to say, the bringing together of popular blogs into communities is an important development – one that I failed to mention in my “state of the blogosphere” post from late 2009.

For a while now, I have wondered about the positives and negatives of being part of an online neighborhood. I’ve been honored to be invited to “move” to a couple of different neighborhoods. But several questions kept me from making the jump:

• Would editorial control or pressure prohibit me from speaking freely on issues?
• Does being associated with other bloggers in the same neighborhood communicate that we are all lock-step in agreement on most issues?
• What about the logistics of making such a move?
• How would a new “neighborhood” impact some of the distinctive features that made the original blog what it was?

In thinking through a possible transition, I asked some blogger friends who had already moved their popular blogs into various neighborhoods. They said the move had been a good thing… that it provided a more robust community of people who read and comment.

So, after I gained clarity on my remaining questions, I chose to pack up all my blog belongings (2551 posts to be exact and tens of thousands of comments) and move Kingdom People to a new neighborhood – the Gospel Coalition. There are several reasons I think The Gospel Coalition is a good fit for my blog:

1. I resonate with the theological vision for ministry expressed in the Gospel Coalition’s foundation documents. The ministry philosophy described in the documents is a balanced, thoughtful approach to a number of issues related to the question of truth, engagement of the culture, the importance of the local church, and the need for Christian witness in society.
2. I am nourished daily by the insights I find at this site. That’s one reason why I’m constantly giving TGC blogs a spot in my daily “Worth a Look” posts. I benefit from the grace-saturated posts of Tullian Tchividjian, the insightful articles presented at the TGC group blog, the excellent articles spotted and passed on by Justin Taylor, the pastoral heart of Kevin DeYoung, and the brief, but heart-melting insights from Ray Ortlund.
3. I want to see Southern Baptists represented in this neighborhood. Although several of the contributors to the TGC group blog are Southern Baptists, there hasn’t been a consistent SBC voice at The Gospel Coalition. The Southern Baptist Convention is the most populous denomination within evangelical circles, and as a member of a Southern Baptist church by conviction and confession (Baptist Faith and Message 2000), I hope to accomplish a broader goal of “being Southern Baptist among and for evangelicals.”
4. I want to honor the Lord and serve His people. If I had to sum up my thoughts on blogging in two words, I would choose “service” and “stewardship.” I write because there are people who (for whatever reason) find this blog worthy of their time and attention. I want to serve those readers faithfully, and I want to properly steward the little bit of influence God has given me.

And so, I’m honored to bring my blog to The Gospel Coalition, and I pray my work here will magnify the worth of King Jesus and serve His people – those of us living on earth as citizens of heaven.

Note: If you have been a subscriber to Kingdom People in the past, you don’t need to re-subscribe, as the transition has worked in a way as to maintain the subscriber list.

After five years and 2,551 blog posts, it’s time for a new phase for Kingdom People. Exciting days are ahead! I look forward to sharing more about the changes soon.

For the new phase to begin, there are some technical and design things that need to be worked out in the next week. Therefore, I am effectively “signing off” until the week of January 22.

Don’t worry about having to re-subscribe or find me somewhere else on the web. We hope to get all those kinks worked out so that the transition will be smooth. You’re welcome to speculate in the comments about what’s going on with the blog, but I can neither confirm nor deny.

See you on the other side!