Testing... 1,2,3

I recently discovered the power of blogging when my wife started one under the pretense of keeping the relatives updated on the development of our new son. It sure beat sending out a thousand emails to people who may or may not want to know when Bryce rolled from his stomach to his back. If you were interested in seeing current pics of Bryce, then you could easily do so by firing up the browser. If you were not interested then you would never be annoyed with weekly email updates that seemed to assume you would of course love to see our son and hear about his latest babbling.

However, it wasn't long before our blog focussing on Bryce began to focus on Amy in her new role as a stay-at-home mom. She readily admits this, and the more she was able to share her life on the internet, the more people seemed eager to read it and comment. Soon blogs for all our friends were popping up (each proclaiming to be about the children) and everyone was communicating with everyone via blog comments. My in-laws were linking from our blog to our friend's blogs and our friends were linking to our siblings and so on and so forth until there was a bonafied community of people who might have known each other before (barely) but were now virtually involved in each other's daily lives. Praying for each other, offering advice and encouragement.

Almost like a church. And thats what got me thinking that Dunwoody Baptist Church needed a hub for online communication. I started talking with Jeff Reams about the power of something like this and we decided that we would start this blog with him as it's primary keeper and me as a sort of contributing author. At the end of the day this may never be anything more than Jeff and I venting, but its got to start somewhere.

For those of you who are saying "but Dunwoody already has a website", consider how often you actually use that site and if you ever read anything interesting there. As I told Jeff, when I want to experience the Auburn football community ethos, I don't go the Auburn athletic department's website... I go to the blogs (in fact, I predict blogging will overtake sports reporting as the primary source of sports news within two years). You go to the official website when you want schedules and contact information and sign up forms. But here's the thing, we're going to do our best to provide those same things to you here, whether through links or actually transposing the critical information here in a timely manner. We'll see how that works out.

Here are some of the ideas we have for blog entries:

Comment on current cultural trends and entertainment- things like movie reviews with a Christian slant.

Jeff will submit his weekly (or more frequent) reflections here rather than via email.
Jeff and I and anyone else we approve of will post thoughts and random musings on the Christian life.

We may be openning Pandora's Box, but we have considered commenting on sermons if we think it will be productive (there is un-tapped market for sermon reviews).

How about book and music recomendations? We will need everyone's help for this.

Jeff will keep a running journal on life at DBC. He sees and hears lots of stuff each day that the average lay person never knows anything about.

Michael