On April 10, 2006 I posted my first official rant on gregstier.org. It was called “With Fear and Trepidation.” I just re-read it and I giggled inside (do guys do that?) because I was genuinely nervous to begin blogging. I thought that I would be some kind of lightning rod blogger. I thought my left leaning friends would come to my blog and want to argue. But, for the most part, they didn’t. And I’m glad. Because, for me, the world of blogging has become something else..an outlet.
Sometimes that outlet is a rant against the system of youth ministry that we have inherited from our youth ministry forefathers. Sometimes it’s an outlet centering on a theological truth that I just discovered from God’s Word. Sometimes it’s a story of my family or something crazy that happened to me. Sometimes it’s an outlet of praise to God in a devotional way. But, whatever the rant, it’s become an outlet that I’ve come to depend on.
I’ve been told my rants are way too long for blog world. Many of them are more like articles that I ponder on, pound out and post just because I want to get something in my heart and on my mind off of my chest. I’ve been told that if I got paid by the word that I’d be a rich man. In the words of one friend, “You just keep talking (or writing in this instance) until you start making sense.”
Guilty as charged. And I’ll keep on writing, talking and preaching until it makes sense to me and to others. I’m a verbal processor and that’s how I roll baby.
While I don’t have a ton of followers on my blog some of my articles get uploaded to Christianpost so the inner satisfaction that my rants and musings are being read by someone gives me enough fuel to keep writing. Afterall, no preacher wants to preach to an empty auditorium. I sure don’t.
I think that blogging has been an outlet for my spiritual gift, helped hone my writing skills, and been used by God to call a small portion of the body of Christ to the importance of mobilizing the next generation for THE Cause. And I am happy for that.
To be honest, as I’ve hit the “landmark” number of 500 posts, I’ve wrestled through whether or not I’ll keep blogging. It takes time and effort, time and effort that could be used to write books, raise money and prepare sermons (all a big part of my job at Dare 2 Share Ministries.) But I’ve decided that, for now, I’ll keep blogging. I’ll keep blogging because it’s now a part of my life and ministry. It also helps with the discipline of writing. To be honest it is a platform of personal expression and public ministry that is now so ingrained in my psyche that I don’t know if I could stop if I wanted to.
Although I’m not posting as much as I used to (down to once a week from twice a week or so), I am still blogging. And as long as God keeps giving me freedom to write and thoughts to write about it, I think I’ll keep uploading them here.
So, for those of you who follow this blog, thank you. Thank you for reading my rants. Thank you for wrestling through life and ministry with me online. It has been a privilege.
