The problem of ministerial blogging

It's been exactly a month since i blogged anything substantial. Ironically, i've been getting more hits these days, probably because of the frenzy of new links to my blog created by everyone posting the list of bloggers who participated in that Christian bloggers survey. The increase in people trying to read what i have to say combined with the decrease in me saying anything is frustrating. Part of it is always busyness, but i think the big thing is a problem i'm not going to be able to completely fix - it's not easy blogging as a minister. Most of what i'm passionate about, what i read about, and what i could write about has to do with ministry. Some of it is abstract enough to blog about, but a lot of it, and usually the best material, has to do with real stuff i'm facing in my ministry - my concerns, struggles, theories, and victories. And since churches and ministries are made up of people, all of these things are directly related to real people that i know - which means i've got no business airing my opinions about these things on the internet. Unless of course i was blogging anonymously, but i'm not.

One of the primary ideas behind blogging is creating a window into a person's experiences in the world - but as ministers who genuinely care about the people they interact with, not to mention being obligated to protect the confidentiality of those people, there's actually very little left of our lives that's OK to blog about.

So i guess i'd better read another book to review :)