***Live-blogging at Boundless Line and below***
***For earlier live-blogging, see Part I***
1:20 p.m. PT: Ran into Matt Sheffield, blogging pal since the early days, and Henry Copeland of BlogAds, who remembered attending my faith blogging session at BlogNashville back in 2005. Met Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. I did some consulting work through one of his former companies.
Rhett Smith is up. He’s discussing social media sites like Facebook and how Christians can use the “new media ministries” in youth ministry. Rhett does youth ministry and was reluctant to create a page on MySpace. His online forum was getting little traffic, so he decided to try MySpace. He started getting visitors to his site. He also joined Facebook, a site that I have yet to get into.
Rhett said he had to go where the teens are. Put yourself in the shoes of high school kids, he said, or young adults. They’ve always had the online world, with social networking sites. For an oldster like me, even though I’m a blog consultant, I have no use for MySpace or Facebook. Yet. If you do youth ministry, of course, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with those sites.
[UK update side note: I mentioned my desire to go to the UK to a couple of people this morning and got two more leads on places to stay. Cheaply. One sounds really cool - Related to C.S. Lewis. I'll keep you posted.]
How do you use Facebook effectively for your youth ministry? You can stay engaged with teens in your ministry by joining the same groups, subscribing to their newsfeeds, etc. Rhett says he no longer creates hard copy flyers for events. He creates an events page on Facebook, and all the “friends” in his network are alerted and can respond to the invitation online. He talked about advertising on Facebook for free, as opposed to spending $1,000+ to take out an ad in a college newspaper.
Rhett says he got some objections from church leadership over joining the social networking sites.
2:24 p.m: Gearing up to head to Hugh Hewitt’s live-from-Blog-World-Expo radio show on the convention floor at 3 p.m. Bonnie Lindblom of Intellectuelle is discussing how Christian bloggers can learn to communicate “biblical womanhood.” Applicable to both men and women. Women have it good in 21st century America, but we’re still looking for purpose and meaning. Each of us is influenced by different things: our families, our subculture, etc. What’s different about Christianity, Bonnie says, is that it’s not “culture.” Christian truth is beyond culture.
Regardless of culture, the first thing women can do is take leadership of themselves. We women must take responsibility for ourselves. Blogging can provide women with an outlet and help them discover their talents. Bonnie says the blogosphere is wide open for women to write on topics pertaining to sexuality: singleness, chastity, etc. In the model of the Titus 2 woman, older women can minister to younger women. There’s room in the blogospher for these kind of discussions.
Bonnie says her vision for blogging is encouraging good thought, clear thinking.
3:00 p.m.: Joe Carter is up next. Make it quick, Joe, make it quick! He’s discussing “culture points” Christians can blog about. What types of messages should Christian media carry? Whatever is true? Noble and right? Pure and loving. Admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. Christian bloggers should seek to improve our writing and expression.
What are these “culture points” he’s talking about? Folk culture (appeals to those with common ties), pop culture (appeals to the masses), and haute culture (intellectually above common works). Joe says Christian bloggers should be covering these points. We should be bold creators of culture, since we do worship a bold Creator.
[Side note: Andrew Jackson is here! Met Rick Calvert, Blog World Expo organizer. He knows me!]
5:41 p.m.: Finally met Eric Olsen. Even cooler than I thought he’d be. Going to the Hard Rock P.F. Chang’s for dinner with Joe, Andy, and a few other GodBlogCon speakers (including Albert Mohler and Hugh Hewitt). No happy hours for me. And no Hanson concert! See you guys on the second leg of the tour.
