Blogology Again: The “Un-Ordained” Voice of the Blogger as Prophetic Speech (@Byers

Blogology Again: The “Un-Ordained” Voice of the Blogger as Prophetic Speech (@Byers_Andy)

– August 18, 2012Posted in: BigBible

This is the fourth installment in a series looking at the theology of blogging (“Towards a theology of Blogging,” “The Blog as a Non-Biblical Genre for a Biblical Practice“). Specifically, I am interested in theoblogs, that is, blogs that specifically focus on raising and addressing theological issues. In the third and latest post, we looked at the “un-ordained voice” of the blogger. To address the church through preaching or authoring books, a rather complex process of screening has preceded. One must be appointed (or at least invited) by a church to stand behind the pulpit, and book manuscripts have to endure a series of editorial reviews before publication.

But when we offer our theological thoughts by way of a blog, all we have to do is sign up for an account with WordPress, Blogger, etc. and click the blue “Publish” icon.

Considering the growing influence of bloggers in the life of the church, how does this new media format affect theological discourse among God’s people? How can such a vast array of “un-ordained voices” be potentially harmful? These questions, tentatively addressed in the previous post in the series, strike me as immensely important and deserving of careful attention as we navigate our way through the church’s gradual embrace of new media.

In this post, however, we are looking at the potential benefits those “un-ordained voices” amplified through blogs may bring to the church.

As the Bible makes clear, God often ordains the “un-ordained.” He has a way of appointing the un-appointable to speak with authority. Moses—the exiled murderer with a speech impediment—is sent to Pharaoh, and his voice becomes the most influential of the Old Testament. Daniel—a Jewish kid held hostage in a Persian palace—becomes counselor to one of the most notorious kings in ancient history. When chief priests and scribes (clearly the authoritative experts on Israel’s Scriptures) wanted to shush little kids in the Temple one day, Jesus quoted Psalm 8:2—”have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Mt 21:16).

We should not be surprised to find God using un-ordained voices.

Many of the prophets were fringe-characters outside the establishment of Israel’s leadership. Elijah lived out in the wilds by the brook Cherith (1 Kgs 17:1-7), and during the same time, faithful Obadiah (a reluctant employee of King Ahab) took a hundred of the Lord’s prophets in hid them in a cave (1 Kgs 18:1-4). Jeremiah seemed too young to warrant a following and Amos (unlike his contemporary, Isaiah, who dwelled in royal courts) was a local shepherd out in Tekoa.

The prophetic voice is often addressed to God’s people from the fringes, from outside the realm of established authority. Blogs can be ideal media outlets for this sort of voice so crucial for the health of the church.

That phrase “for the health of the church,” however, cannot be emphasized enough, because prophets are not the only voices crying out from the margins. Embittered cynics are among those un-ordained fringe-voices. Both prophets and cynics can be quite shrill, but there is a difference in motive and intention. Cynics are motivated by a disgust for the church; prophets are called to share in God’s own pathos toward the church. Now, sometimes, God himself may be disgusted and angry with certain behaviors he observes among us. But the prophet’s disappointment is to be sourced in God’s anguish, not in a petty sense of personal annoyance with church-folk! And a prophetic voice, however harsh, is intended to draw the people of God back to God, not to divide and scatter them to the winds.

Many of us who keep blogs do so as a public journal of sorts. Maybe we are writing to share with family and friends our daily adventures. But a number of us are clicking “Publish” to release into the cyber realm our thinking about God, culture, and the church. We write at great risk as “un-ordained”—what we say about those topics in public without much accountability can be quite influential at times. But God may also be calling us to write from that unique fringe-position (a position outside the normal realm of established authority) from which our words sound forth as voices crying out of the cyber-wilderness.

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About AndyByers

I serve as the Chaplain for St Mary's College at Durham University while working on a PhD in the Department of Theology. CODEC has also taken me on to work as a theological consultant of sorts for the BigBible blog. My first book is about cynicism toward the church and disillusionment with God—'Faith Without Illusions: Following Jesus as a Cynic-Saint' (IVP Likewise, 2011). The next project underway is ‘TheoMedia: The Media of God in the Digital Age’ coming soon from Cascade Books.

http://peterbowyer.blogspot.com/ Peter Bowyer

What a great series of posts, Andy – I’ve just read through them all, and all the comments. Good to see the discussion.

The filters and barriers to publication you refer to here:

“To address the church through preaching or authoring books, a rather complex process of screening has preceded. One must be appointed (or at least invited) by a church to stand behind the pulpit, and book manuscripts have to endure a series of editorial reviews before publication. ”

are quite different from each other. In order to be appointed or invited to preach, the church will have as its main concern whether the sorts of things you’re likely to say fit doctrinally and theologically with that church. Or more simply, are you saying things that they want their congregation to hear?

Conversely, what a publisher wants to know is ‘Do enough people want to read this in order for it to be economically worth our while publishing it?’. OK, some publishers also have higher motives but the economic one will be in there somewhere. And people don’t only buy books they agree with – a bit of controversy can work wonders for book sales. Rob Bell is a case in point.

The blogger has neither of these constraints. They don’t have to follow a prescribed doctrine (unless they’re blogging on behalf of their church, obviously) and they don’t have to write a string of books, each one more controversial than the last in order to keep a publisher interested. They can write what they’re called to write. If that turns out to be critical of the established church (whatever that means), then so be it – as long as they’re prayerfully considering their words, their writing is legitimate.

As Christ says in Matthew 13:57b, “Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” Blogging is a modern-day medium for a prophet to write outside his hometown and his own house. He/she should not expect or need honour from within the church, and the church should not expect to feel comfortable with everything that’s written.
- Andy Byers
  
  Dear Peter, these lengthy comment is full of wisdom and sounds spot on. You are right about the motives at work in the screening process for churches and publishers. Thank you so much for contributing to the discussion! Bloggers do not always operate free from certain misguided motivational constraints, of course, but there is quite a bit of freedom there, the dangers notwithstanding.
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John Griffiths

Good post. My personal favourites are Ezekiel criquiting about the Phoenician commercial empire from the River Chebar refugee campin Ezek 27, and Hosea (the one with the disastrous marriage and the terrible choice of children’s names) who turns around and announces that God’s own marriage is on the rocks. The marginal voices are a constant in Scripture – I wouldn’t worry about whether the church authorities endorse or legitimse blogging its nothing to do with them – God is as likely to speak from the fringe as the centre.

To take this one stage further if God’s people are not faithful then God chooses other voices. I have used Roy McLougry’s writings where he talks about the voice oof celebration, the voice of suffering, and the voice for creation to point out that environmentalists, fair trade NGOs and other lobbying groups are doing God’s work where the church fails because it is to tied to its members cultural agendas. Spotting the secular prophets is uncomforable and instructive. Cyrus in Is 45 wasn’t just convenient. His cultue building and repatriation was God’s work at the time which Isaiah recognises.