Monday, August 12, 2002

Blogging as Strategy in Religious Publishing It seems to me that as Macromedia has done,  and InfoWorld has done,  and also in ways that perhaps nooone has yet done,  corporate Weblogs provide an effective format for telling a story.  Seen in business terms,  a story that is intended to sell the customer on the trustworthiness of their wares by exhibiting their expertise on the issues around which these wares explore (in the case of religious publishing, and Christian Church related publishing in particular,  these wares are Chrsitian resources and Christian Ed resources). The idea is to create an online content store that persuades by its expertise,  and by exposing to the public the hard work and stategizing that happens around the publishing of a product.  To clue in the customer base on how the resources are conceived and created and made available to the market is to give the customer an opportunity to be a contributor to the process.  In the context of Religious Communities and/or Churches,  this practice is not only good business,  it is good theology as well. This is a theological variation on the Cluetrain Manifesto theme.  What excites people,  what interests people,  what drives people,  is what retains people.  The customers for whom a business provides a way for them to find things that interest them and impassion them will be not only paying customers,  but a business's biggest evangelist.    comment [] 6:20:07 PM     Architecture Matters: The Rebirth of Public Discussion Dave pointed this article about how Weblogs tend to minimize "noise", or "flames" in public discussion due to the fact that people who flame tend not to be widely linked,  except by other "logo-pyros" --- people who like discussions with lots of flaming---  It seems to me that this too, his theoblogical implications:  Theology has laways been shaped by the level and quality of dialogue that takes place around it.  Catholic middle age dogma had very little growth for a long period becuase communication was much less two-way until the printing press allowed for more voices and the distribution of those voices of the less powerful (even though to be able to print, it took SOME power,  but the frequency and amount of dialogue in theology was much more rare until printing.   Now , with the immediacy of online communication,  a more dialogical theological process can shape that theology (at least the opportunity is there and being grabbed by some).  Others simply use the network to perpetuate the traditional orthodoxies,  and so some orthodoxies are even strengthened among that online audience. comment [] 6:07:50 PM

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