Dan Edelen of Cerulean Sanctum recently sent me a solicited email giving me a baker’s dozen worth of tips about blogging. All were very good and helpful; one was outstanding and one was a blow to my considerable ego.

To address the latter first, the “slap” - wholly unintended, I’m sure (I should think so! He couldn’t possibly have read any of my stuff and suggested such a preposterous thing!) - was his recommendation to take a class or two in journalism. I’ve but two things to say in response to that: first, that I spent 12-13 years as a newspaper reporter/writer, even winning a minor Associated Press Award once; second, if I ever thought I was a journalist or becoming one, I would immediately seek out the nearest low-speed freight train route and superglue my fingertips and lips to the respective rails. I am a writer, thank you very much, and would not deign to associate with the bottom feeders of all-things-written, i.e., journalists of any and every flavor.

But I think Dan said that generally or because he had cut-and-pasted some things from an earlier post of his (which I think I read, but may have written - I get confused sometimes).

The quite valuable point he made (in two-parts) was the following:

1. Establish a brand. All the best Godbloggers can be expected to deliver something specific. At Cerulean Sanctum, my brand is that I talk about the American Church. I stay on topic about 80% of the time. What is Eternal Perspectives’ brand?

“2. Write to your brand. People expect something from me when they read my blog. I have to deliver my brand. Fortunately, I staked out a position early on and have been able to ride it through the blog explosion. The earlier you got in the game, the better off you are.”

Dan is, as he says, very good at this: he writes about the church and makes a lot of good points - and by “good” I mean constructive and positive in addition to putting his finger on problems.

(He also suggested using a lot of images, in case you couldn’t tell.)

I started thinking about my “brand” (as Dan calls it) and wondered if I shouldn’t do something more narrow and specific (something I’m already doing at The Lord of the Kingdom, my other blog that looks at Christian themes and values in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and for which I have just given a self-promoting plug). Since I have a couple of graduate degrees in psychology, Christian education, and discipleship, that brand seemed like a natural. Then I thought about sanctification in general: I was struggling to find my niche and write to my target audience, you know? In an effort to do that, I changed the name of the site (for less than a day) to Eternal Prospectus and was quite pleased with my cleverness. I would discuss santification and discipleship since we are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, which was kinda like a prospectus.

This thought was utterly boring to me. I have a minor in Marketing and detest the Madison Avenue approach to ministry; was I now going to succumb to the temptress (I would say “whore” but I don’t want to offend people)? Then I was struck with a rare sighting of common sense, truly an endangered species in the ecological system which is my mind.

Why not think about what I had been writing and write more of that? Only do it intentionally and unabashedly (I started to write “unapologetically,” which might be more accurate, but I like the sound of “unabashedly” much better; don’t you?). So I changed the title back and altered the description to “Searching for sanity in a Christian culture gone mad” since that is what I think of the state of Christendom these days: it’s nuts, both in the pulpit and in the pews.

I almost went with my life’s mission - “Comforting the Disturbed, Disturbing the Comfortable” - but it seemed like too much of a cliché. It is what I do, both professionally and personally, but I’m tired of the phrase.

So there it is. For now. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? One thing I think is here to stay, though, is what I posted a couple of days ago and what I wrote in an email this morning. I’ll close with the pertinent portion of the email to a friend who thought I had been more caustic than usual (is that even possible?) of late:

As far as being caustic: (1) it’s short of profanity and, if it makes people think, then that’s all I seek: “comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable; (2) my “Tiptoeing through the Tulips” post pretty much explains the disgust I have for Christian prima donnas and prima dons that can’t stand to have their tender little toes stepped on or soiled. What kind of cloistered world do they live in, anyway? They can pretend ’till the cows explode that there are nothing but holy thoughts in their heads and virtuous acts in their lives, but they need to face reality. Is it any wonder that Driscoll, McLaren, Miller, and others are reaching people by being genuine? I don’t embrace the means often used, but people - whether lost or MIA from the church - are starving for someone to be real. I am very tired of the Christian Monkeys (see no, hear no, speak no) getting apoplectic because of the presence of sin in the world. They are among the worst theologians: they believe in the concept of sin, but not the reality; is salvation any different to them, i.e., a concept but not a real-world fact?

“Really, I’m not caustic. I’m just pissed. Not at you but at all the you-know-who’s.

“My theology anticipates the failure of the church but that doesn’t make watching it’s pitiful death throes (at least in our countries) glorious. Instead of sharpening the rails on our sled, we ought to be doing everything we can to slow this avalance of insanity.”


2 Cor 1.13