Scot McKnight on blogs - "like a coffee table conversation"

This came across my feed this morning. It's a very good read. After decades of experience as a preacher and professor, Scot McKnight proposes a mental model of blogging that is less about trying to proclaim or teach, but more like having a discussion in a coffee shop. Here are some excerpts, but the full post is worth a read. https://scotmcknight.substack.com/p/an-oldie-but-i-think-goodie

When I first began to blog I had to learn that blogging is not the same as the pulpit or the rostrum, no matter how deep those instincts were for me. A blog post might be written as a sermon or as a lecture or even an outline for a dialogue, but once the post goes public it can become a free-for-all. It can turn south, get ugly, or go ballistic faster than any media of communication I know. Some other image had to give me an image of what was going on.

So, as I sat there and watched it happen, all along deleting inflammatory, accusing, personally-destructive comments, I arrived at an image that has worked for my blog. A blog is like a coffee table conversation at a public café. If the pulpit gives the image of preaching and teaching and the rostrum the image of dialogue, the café table gives the image of personal conversation.

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Our goal on the blog is to create civil conversations about Jesus and about orthodox theology and about sports and (sometimes) about politics. Keeping some topics civil can be immensely challenging and one reason is that civil conversation is not easy for some of us.

That idea resonates with me. A coffee shop conversation has to recognize that people are not on the same page.

This blog is meant to be a coffee table discussion for those in various stages of questioning the RPCNA culture. I would like it to encompass more than just theology and church polity because there are many more aspects of growing up within the RPCNA microcosm that have affected me personally.

One big example is that it is easy for me to transfer the legalistic baggage. For example, it's hard to navigate a grace-filled approach when I find patriarchy to be abusive towards women, but there are a lot of versions of patriarchy that are, in my opinion, still wrong, but much more thoughtful and caring towards women. Preston Sprinkle talked about a patriarchal church that had a sermon review committee. Since it was not "eldership", women were welcomed to the committee and he said that many times the women on the committee provided valuable insight on points or illustrations. They might say, "have you thought about how the single moms in the church will hear this?" He said it really improved the quality of his sermons and still fit within the patriarchal bent of male-only eldership, while giving women the ability to use gifts of spiritual discernment within the church.

That's at least the goal. I don't do it perfectly or even well at times, but I ask participants to embrace or at least respect that goal. We're not on the same page or even in the same book as we seek to more closely align our lives with Jesus. What is straightforward to you might seem wrong to me, and what I think is true might seem false to you. I don't believe truth is relative, but I also don't think I get to disrespect others who have different opinions on what is true.