(Tim Challies has a thought-provoking - but not necessarily influential - post up at his site. I left the following there as a comment but thought I would post it here for anyone who reads EP but not Challies - although I cannot imagine such a person actually existing.)

I’m not sure what the value is of determining who is “most influential” in the Kingdom of Blog. If that appellation is bestowed, should we all rush to the site to be influenced? I don’t understand the point. I read blogs that edify rather than influence me: edifiying blogs facilitate the work of the Holy Spirit; influential blogs facilitate the work of . . . the flesh? the blogger?

Or maybe I don’t understand what is meant by the term “influence” as used here.

This discussion also reminds me of the disciples squabbling over who was going to be greatest in the Kingdom of God. I think we all need to stop looking at our own numbers and accomplishments and begin looking to God for His estimation of what we write. I might be caustic, abrasive, and arrogant (come to think of it, I am all those things) and be very influential and very popular - I won’t name any other names here - or I might tell the truth and spend my time in relative obscurity with only a handful of readers.

(Or, as in my case, I might be caustic, abrasive, and arrogant and then languish in total obscurity!)

Who is greater? More importantly, who among us is fit to say who is greater?

Or maybe I’m just too old for this kind of competition.

Why not this: you read what you want to read and find edifying, and I’ll do the same. What you (Tim) find edifying in the writings of some dead Calvinist, I might find uninspiring; conversely, what I think is profound in the writings of an “heretical” dispensationalist, you might find to be the source of all problems in Protestantism.

Who is most influential is likely to come down to who confirms the biases of most blog readers. Cynical? Perhaps, but probably true all the same. Ultimately, we are influenced only by those whom we allow to influence us, for better or for worse.

Addendum: I was thinking this morning about a sermon I heard long ago by Ron Dunn, a remarkable, expository, Baptist preacher. One of his points in his sermon on prayer was that the apostles had virtually no influence in Jerusalem following the Day of Pentecost. In the corridors of worldly influence, they were paupers.

But, although they didn’t have the influence to keep Peter out of jail, they did have the power to pray him out!

We have mistaken influence for power; we have settled for the influence of political lobbyists, book sales, and blog hits but neglected the power available to us by the Holy Spirit as He answers our prayers.

So there may be blogs of influence, but that is not the same as being a blog of power. Keep the influence, if you like, but I’m hoping to tap into just a small bit of the power of God that He offers to His children.

That’s not meant to sound smug, superior or like “sour grapes” from someone on the far end of the tail, but just a reminder about what is important and what is not, what is valued in the eyes of God and what is valued in the eyes of men.


2 Cor 1.13