Regularly, with skill,
tact and humour, Dean instructs the technical dummies and design bunnies
among us how to run a Christian website, or, in his own words:
…to correct, rebuke
and encourage with great patience and careful instruction on how to design
church and para-church websites that are effective, fast-loading,
informative, edifying and hopefully a bit of fun….I want you to look at the
church sites out there today and ask yourself this question: are we giving
God our best, are we influencing the culture, is the message of the Gospel
clear, do people want to visit our churches and hear our sermons?...We have
hundreds of years of beautiful sacred songs, art and literature as the
result of the artistry that was once the Church's. Why can't we have the
same for websites?
As the person who
launched the
original list of Christian blogs, I felt excited when Dean contacted me
last year with suggestions for turning it into a new Christian outreach,
called blogs4God.
From a tiny start, my
list had grown enormously, was
taking up too much of
my time, and clearly needed skilled management. I was delighted to be
able to pass it over to him and his team.
I assumed he would add
a few sorting functions, and leave it at that. Instead, working with a
growing number of moderators, he has transformed it into a significant
Christian ministry, highly user-friendly, with heaps of information and
regular commentaries from some of the best Christian writers on the net.
Rules are necessary. I
had been allowing onto the list anyone who asked, even if their sites seemed
to have no Christian content, or weren’t even blogs. I actually included
this guy, because he asked
nicely and because he was writing about Christianity, even though it was
from an atheist’s perspective. (And also because he was a fellow Aussie.)
But as the list grew I knew some guidelines were needed.
So the reason I’m
writing this commentary is that Dean has been under
attack for his ruling that for the time being he can’t accept to
the list an anonymous blogger.
There are always going
to be issues on the edge. The key point is how well you sort them out. It
seems to me that Dean – a hugely busy guy - is doing just that with great
tolerance and patience, and with his customary humour. I reckon these
attacks are unfair. Or, to use an Australian idiom, I think that Dean’s been
getting the rough end
of the pineapple.
I’ll go further. With
his exemplary work on Heal Your Church Website and blogs4God I reckon Dean
is helping build the Kingdom in a way that few other Christian bloggers can
match.
I’ll go further still.
When they start canonising the Christian internet saints I reckon Dean will
be up there in the pantheon.
Rebuke on, mate.
March 16th, 2003
