MSN Spaces Launched
I’m capitalizing on an announcement in the blogging world today to write a bit about the potential of blogs for internet evangelism.
MSN Spaces, the new blogging service from Microsoft, was launched yesterday. At the same time, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, told Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press that “"Blogging is huge. It brings together the three biggest Internet trends: communicating, sharing and socializing. It started with e-mail and instant messaging and music sharing, and it’s getting bigger each day.”
I haven’t looked too carefully at MSN Spaces (although at first glance, it seems to have some of the most common blogging tools - things like comments, trackbacks, a photo upload service, etc.) I personally prefer Expression Engine from pMachine, but there is a cost to that tool and it also requires your own hosting space. MSN Spaces, like Blogger, is free and they will host the blog for you.
Blogging is an important tool for internet evangelists because it facilitates the creation of websites which follow The Bridge Strategy, one of the most effective approaches to web evangelism. And blogs have a built-in opportunity to create community around common life interests and experience through their system of comments and trackbacks. Since I believe that The Bridge Strategy, combined with approaches which facilitate relationship between believers and unbelievers around common life experiences and interests, it should be no surprise that I also think that blogs are a very effective tool for digital outreach.
As an example of what might be possible, I have recently thought about creating a baseball-related blog (baseball was perhaps the earliest passion of my life) which would provide commentary on the world of my favorite sport but also include interviews, for example, with professional baseball players who are committed believers. In that way, unbelievers who are baseball fans could be drawn to this blog where they would read tasteful presentations of the testimonies of pro players and also interact with believers who are avid baseball fans. Just a thought. Virtually any topic could be the subject of a blog with a similar strategy.
I believe that the internet provides today's church with a historic opportunity .... to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love in ways which could only have been imagined in times past. The objective of this website is to explore the various ways in which today's technology can be used to spread the gospel around the world.
