Blogging at Patheos

I’ve been blogging here at Jesus Creed for, I think, five and a half years. It began one day when an editor friend, Bob Smietana, over coffee suggested that I blog and I asked, “What’s a blog.” He told me, I marched over to my office after coffee, set up shop at Blogger and it took off … rather quicker than anything I expected.

I found blogging to be natural because, as I’ve said before, I have scribbler’s itch. I learned lessons from folks like Steve McCoy and John Raymond, and then we set up our own shop with Dave Anderson building the blog — and I’m so thrilled to have Dave’s design back here at Patheos.

Patton Dodd at Beliefnet pitched their site as a better site for the blog and after some arm-twisting and some compromises on their part, we moved there and have been there for two years. Yes, I heard your complaints and truth be told agreed with nearly all of it, but our intent was to expand the influence of the blog and the blog doubled in page views in two years at Beliefnet.

But Tim Dalrymple at Patheos contacted me when Patheos was just a start-up and I really liked what he was doing. It didn’t even cross my mind that someday we’d move to his site. So let me say this: in spite of some of the hassles at Beliefnet’s humungous site, I appreciate Beliefnet. Ansley Roan was my contact person there and she was amazingly helpful and prompt, and I can be demanding at times with what I think the blog readers want for Jesus Creed. My reasons for leaving had little to nothing to do with Beliefnet and everything to do with Patheos.

Ju-Don Roberts at Beliefnet was as kind and helpful as anyone moving could ever ask. I wish Beliefnet every blessing and I hope their site and blogs flourish.

In short, it’s a better site for me. (Besides having WordPress, which permits us to go back to our old design.) It’s shaped for conversation about religious and theological topics, and it isn’t concerned as much with all the other stuff.

The Jesus Creed blog will not change. I’ll be doing my regular stuff — books and theology and travels and some of my middle-of-the-road and don’t-try-to-figure-me-out politics thrown in. Saturday will have Weekly Meanderings.  RJS will continue to be a major contributor, and others will continue to write posts at Jesus Creed as they have been doing at Beliefnet.

Here’s what will change for you: better design and immediate appearance of your comments. I’m not sure how it will work the first week, when we may have to clear names and get possible kinks worked out, but once we get settled, you comment and the comment appears … that creates fast and easy communication and conversation.