What is a blog?
Blog is short for “web log.” A blog is a Web site, maintained by an individual or organization, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other media such as graphics and video. You can start a blog about anything that interests you. For example, LDS365.com is a blog by several authors who talk about the wise use of technology and media for LDS parents and youth. LDS CIO is a blog written by a technology geek to other technology geeks. Other blogs are simply a collection of thoughts and ideas. You can create a blog that is open to anyone to read, or you can restrict who can read your blog.
Why should you start a blog?
To share your ideas and wisdom, to have an archive of interesting things you’ve discovered, or to share your beliefs with the world or with a targeted corner of the world. You don’t have to be an expert on a topic to blog. Blogging is a great way to share your own personal testimony and to teach people about the Church by telling them what it’s like on the inside. It’s also a lot of fun. When speaking to students at BYU-Hawaii, Elder Ballard said, “Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.”
Is blogging difficult?
It can be as easy or hard as you want to make it. Setting up a blog is very easy. Writing regular blog posts is the tough part. You’re most likely to enjoy blogging if you enjoy writing on the topic of your blog. It you really want a high-quality blog, you need to be committed to post often to keep people reading. If you decide to begin a blog about the gospel, schedule regular times each week. Every Sunday evening you could write about what you learned in Church that day and every Wednesday evening you could write about one thing you are thankful for, related to a specific gospel principle.
Where do I begin?
You can sign up for a free blog at LDS.net or on blogging sites like WordPress.com and Blogger.com. If you’re interested in starting a blog using your own domain name (your own Web address), you can get one at those sites, or contact the More Good Foundation for help.
In my experience, the blogging commitment is by far the most difficult part of the process. There’s a chicken-and-egg relationship between content and readership that works in both positive and negative directions.
The recent push by the Church for members to get into the blogging habit does provoke an interesting question – perhaps rhetorical, perhaps not: with all the Church asks its members to do (and to be sure, those most motivated to start blogs will be those most committed to the Church in other areas), are we increasing the risk of member- and family-level burnout as we cram more and more things to do during the course of the day?
As someone who’s been blogging for nearly three years, I can attest to the high level of commitment involved. Does sharing the gospel online bolster the reputation of the Church and its members? Undoubtedly. Does it make me a better husband and father? That’s a bit more uncertain.
Tradeoffs, tradeoffs. Good, Better . . . Best?
Interesting comment Bryan.
I don’t think the encouragement to blog about the church will increase the risk of burnout at all.
You should really watch the following excellent video of a presentation by Clay Shirky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky), the author of “Here Comes Everybody” where he talks about “where people find the time” to participate in wikipedia, blogging, and other new media.
http://blip.tv/file/855937/
The whole presentation is excellent, but the crux of his argument is that people have the time, but that they have been wasting it watching TV.
He estimates that all of Wikipedia represents about 100 million hours of cumulative thought. He compares that to 200 Billion hours of TV Watching in the U.S. alone every year. In the U.S. we collectively spend 100 million hours every weekend watching just the advertisements.
That is equal to 2000 Wikipedia projects a year.
I don’t think members will burn out, they will simply allow the time participating on the web to replace time spent in other activities–most notably TV Watching.
Watch the whole video.
Shirky certainly has a good point, and I’m sure you and I would agree that watching dozens of hours of TV a week ranks fairly low on the “Good-Better-Best” continuum. I’m talking about people who are already up to their eyeballs in Church, family, personal, and work commitments (and feeling guilty about all the things they aren’t doing, like preparing their food storage, planting a garden, writing letters to the missionaries, write in their journals, do their family history, etc.) feeling like they must now become regular contributors to the LDS blogosphere too. We should keep in mind that Shirky’s audience doesn’t have all those weekly Church commitments and doesn’t harbor any guilt about the appropriateness of their Sunday activities either.
For all those people who plant their backsides on the couch from 7:00-11:00pm each night (and more on the weekends) to watch TV, I say they absolutely could afford to do something more cognitively productive. I almost wish I could be so privileged as they are to have the free time they do. Time enough, at least, to justify a cable/satellite subscription, which we don’t currently have.
I think more people reading this blog can identify with me (# of things you’re supposed to do > time in the day to do them) than with the group Shirky’s describing. But I could be wrong.
I think the crux of the invitation for Church members to blog is the need for us as members to talk to as many people as we can about the restored gospel. I think it’s instructive that one of the graphics in the Ensign featuring this invitation includes a personal email on a blackberry inviting someone to learn more about the restoration.
It’s not just about blogging, it’s about doing missionary work. It’s about having conversations with others both online and offline.
Elder Oaks once said regarding familiy history work that it was his desire that everybody do something rather than that we try to do everything. I think the same applies to missionary work. If you want to give out Church literature at the gas station, invite personal friends to that ward bbq, or feel more comfortable sharing your testimony on a blog, I view it as another option–not one more task for overburdened members–for fulfilling the divine mandate to share the gospel with others.
Elder Ballard’s encouragement is greatly needed so people share the Gospel and support/defend the Church and it’s members. It’s the perfect rebuttal to the antagonistic claim that we’re all brainwashed and can’t think for ourselves.
Having said that, he didn’t command us all to run out and sign up for a blog account and spend 24/7 in front of a PC or risk of eternal salvation. He tells us to be an “active participant” and to “engage personally with blogs, to write thoughtful, online letters to news organizations, and to act in other ways to correct the record with their own opinions.” Too many people spend more time on the frilly bells and whistles of the gospel and neglect the foundation. Ture, people who watch tv every night could put that time towards blogging but I’d bet they need more foundation work as well.
Blogging holds interest for those interested in dialogue.
Very nice.
nice! i’m gonna make my own blog