By Melinda Hemphill
I began blogging in 2005 in order to stay in touch with family and friends, to practice some different writing styles, and honestly, because I’ve been an obsessive scrapbooker and journal-keeper for years. I guess it was just a natural progression to document the family’s activities and my thoughts about faith and life online instead of print.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen the blogging option for PWOCI develop from a print newsletter to an occasional option on a regional page on the website to the PWOCI blog that we now have on each week day. So why do we do it? Why do we write? I think it’s part of the makeup of our ministry to want to share with others.
Sharing with others out of our life experiences, out of our testimony of faith, out of our frustrations of our shared military lifestyle, out of a need to give back and possibly even educate.
The Communications Team from the past two years met at conference for an early morning breakfast, and the contributions of creative giftings permeated the room. Think about how these offerings can be involved in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) that Christ left us: web management, graphic design, print layout, blogs, social networking, video production, proofreading, editing, other forms of writing, administrative gifts, all trying to keep up with an everchanging level of technology. All of these can be used as part of God’s command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.
Comparing a significant era in history of the church to our communications situations today can be seen in the 2005 book, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World, by Hugh Hewitt (Nelson). And I quote, “The sixteenth and twenty-first centuries share a dramatic element in common – the birth of a revolution in communications technology. The cultural, political, and economic transformations that emerged out of the Reformation and have affected the course of Western civilization ever since were fueled in large part by the advent of an extraordinary device: the movable-type printing press…Gutenberg’s gift of the printed page was an invitation to new understanding and human liberty. As we set our feet firmly in the Information Age, an examination of the sixteenth century allows us to see how the power of publishing can change the world.”
The power of publishing can change the world. God has called us to go and tell.
That’s why we share the Good News with the nations and generations through this medium. That’s why we blog.
