This from the UMR article on Methodists and blogging pushed my button:

United Methodist blogs give laity greater voice
She was even asked about the \”theology of blogging\” during her interviews for ordination this spring.

\”I think that lay folks in particular, and clergy who may not be otherwise very active in their annual conferences, can be more in the loop through blogging and blog-reading,\” Ms. Quick said.

\”It is much easier to follow news. Judicial Council decisions, for instance, are closely watched and commented on in the blogs. General Agency news is shared. Bishops are even blogging. So people get communication about the UMC they may never have had previously.\”

This section from the UMR blogging article raised the question of “theology of blogging” ,  but then did not elaborate.  Instead,  it went right into the “following news” and “staying in the loop”,  informational.  There was no effort to explore what was meant by “theology of blogging”.   Doesn’t “theology” imply that  we  use the language of faith; God’s purposes;  what God is calling the church to be?  To associate  “theology” with  “keeping up with the news” is to return to the old paradigm of the Web as “information” .  This is NOT why I am enthusiastic about blogging.  And some of the reason why I am enthusiastic is also a reason to be dissatisfied with the church as it is.  That is,  blogging enables MUCH better conversation than the vast majority of churches is  “programmed” to allow.  There simply aren’t emphases on the kind of relationships amongst ourselves that befit oa people called apart.

This is where I feel the rubber meets the road in talking “Theology of Blogging”.  How does Blogging adddress the issues of “what is church”,  and what are relationships to be in that church?  Another key issue here is the matter of VIRTUAL vs PHYSICAL or face-to-face (ftf).  I believe in an embodied, physical place of gathered persons. I do not want a church that is “an online church”.  That is incomplete.  Yet……

Incomplete is a reality of who we are. There are,  as a result,  many instances where online dialogue is light years beyond what happens in 99% of the churches.  People simply do not know how to talk theology and share their stories in church anymore.  And yet this is a natural in the blogosphere.

The funny thing is,  I blog constantly about my frustration with not finding a church with which I can be “called apart”;  WITH others.  There is a sense in which my theological blogging  community,  who have introduced me to the world of Radical Orthodoxy,  are my closest realtionships.  More of them know more of me than the churches where I have tried to become a part.  Again,  I go back to the structures and disciplines of the Church of the Saviour communtiies in Washington DC, and how it is ASSUMED that membership means an accountability to one another for being on a Journey Inward and Journey Outward.  I know that they have something there.  A true “ecclesia” theology that emphasizes the centrality of the church as the neccessary representation of what it means to proclaim the Kingdom of God.