{"id":36080,"date":"2026-04-22T11:30:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=36080"},"modified":"2026-04-22T11:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:29:11","slug":"this-blog-will-be-a-changin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/this-blog-will-be-a-changin\/","title":{"rendered":"This Blog Will Be A-Changin . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Thirteen-and-a-half years after starting this blog, I find myself thinking and praying about its future path. Here are some of the things I\u2019ve been thinking about\u2013at the end of this reflection, I\u2019ll describe briefly a few important changes that will be coming in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

During a sabbatical seventeen (1) years ago, I began writing in a personal, non-academic essay style that was a sharp break from the academic writing that I had been doing (because I had to) for twenty years. I liked writing in this new way, found it both therapeutic (in a spiritual practice sort of way) and stimulating, but had no idea what do to with the essays that began to accumulate. I shared them with friends, who invariably said \u201cyou\u2019ve got to get these in print,\u201d but I knew that no self-respecting academic journal or publisher would consider such material from a person whose \u201cbest sellers\u201d (not) to date had included books like Foundations of Cartesian Ethics<\/em> and Weaving the World: Simone Weil on Science, Mathematics, and Love<\/em>, along with articles such as \u201cCognitive Science, Naturalism, and Divine Prototypes\u201d and \u201cOckham and Skepticism: The Intuitive Cognition of Non-Exis\u00adtent\u00ads.\u201d What to do?<\/p>\n

Fortunately, one of the friends with whom I had been sharing my essays occasionally was the former editor of Christianity Today<\/em>; as such, he had his finger on the pulse of non-academic publishing. He told me that no publisher would bite on a collection of essays such as I was writing without first being convinced that there was an audience for them. The best way to establish evidence of such an audience, he said, was to start a blog\u2014although he quickly added that he would never do such a thing himself. Neither would I. \u201cFuck,\u201d I thought. I never read blogs at the time (still don\u2019t read many of them\u2013I prefer podcasts), which struck me as the most narcissistic of all forms of writing. \u201cShit,\u201d I thought, knowing that the last thing I needed to introduce into an already overwhelming schedule of teaching and administration was blog writing.<\/p>\n

\"\"Still, I felt that these essays might be for more than my family, friends, and me. So reluctantly, a few months after my conversation with my friend, I decided to give it a shot. I told Jeanne that I would blog until it became just another damn thing I had to do, which I figured would happen within a few weeks or months. More than thirteen years later, with over fifteen hundred posts, well over a million-and-a-half words under my belt, and thousands of visitors to my blog every month, I\u2019m still going. And by the way, my friend was right\u2014my blog has been the jumping off point for three books, published in 2017, 2019, and 2025.<\/p>\n

In no particular order, here are a few things I\u2019ve learned\u2014mostly by trial and error\u2014along the way about blogging.\"\"<\/p>\n

Make it a habit.<\/strong> The first piece of advice that every successful writer offers is that the key to becoming a better writer is to write. Regularly. Habitually. Anyone who waits for a moment of inspiration to start writing is unlikely to ever start writing. Set a schedule for how often you want to post on your blog\u2014once a week? Twice? More or less than that? Then stick to that schedule. I post three times per week. That means I cannot go more than a day or two without paying attention to my blog\u2014which means writing. Make it a priority, not something to do in \u201cdown time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have something to say.<\/strong> Be clear about why you are doing this. Although I am now an experienced blogger, I seldom read blogs\u2014primarily because many blogs are simply stream of consciousness meanderings. I am very clear about the overall theme of my blog; when I wander too far from it, my regular readers let me know. For example, one of my Facebook friends is a gatekeeper for two large progressive Christian Facebook pages. I send her my newest blog essay three times a week for her consideration right after posting it on my site. She almost always shares it on her sites within a few hours; if she doesn\u2019t, this tells me that in this particular essay I have wandered a bit from my blogging mission.\"\"<\/p>\n

Experiment.<\/strong> For the blogger, everything is possible material for an essay. Once you have established what your blog is about and who it is for (see above), you\u2019ll find that everything is relevant. My essay writing hero (and the inventor of the essay literary genre), Michel de Montaigne, put it this way: \u201cI take the first subject that chance offers. They are all equally good to me. And I never plan to develop them completely.\u201d I have tried to take all of this to heart. Once I learned that a blog essay is not a philosophical argument, I was free to explore and experiment. I want my blog to invite people to think, not to tell them what to think.<\/p>\n

Be patient.<\/strong> I suspect that my blog was read by only my family and a handful of no more than a few dozen friends for the first few years of its existence. This is why you need to be writing for yourself, not for others. Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014I am as obsessed with my blog numbers as any writer is. I rejoice when a post catches fire, and I am bummed when it doesn\u2019t. But if you have something to say, people will find you. What I used to think of as an extraordinary day or week in terms of traffic is now a slow day or week. Blogging is like the parable of the sower from the Gospels\u2014you throw it out there, and occasionally it lands in the right place.<\/p>\n

Give them what you<\/em> want, not what they want.<\/strong> Take control. The best piece of writing advice I ever read was from Anne Lamott: \u201cWrite what you would love to find.\u201d Write for yourself, in other words. You\u2019ll be surprised to find out how many other people love to find the same things as you do. To commenters on my blog who suggest that I should have written about (fill in the blank) instead of what I wrote about, I always suggest that they should start their own blog. Someone once asked me in my early blogging years who my target audience is. I surprised myself by saying \u201cI\u2019m writing for people like myself.\u201d But it\u2019s true. Don\u2019t write for someone else\u2014write for yourself. If it is meaningful to you, it is likely to be meaningful to others as well. And remember, you get to set the tone for your blog. Will you tolerate rudeness from your commenters? Self-righteousness? Misogyny? Racism? Remember that this is not a democracy\u2014you are in charge. Feel free to throw people out of the discussion.<\/p>\n

Temper expectations.<\/strong> Blogging is a humbling experience. Posts about your dog or the tree in your front yard, accompanied by the right picture, will always attract more traffic than a post filled with your most profound insights. Don\u2019t take it personally. Remember the parable of the sower\u2014you\u2019re throwing seed out there and hoping that it will occasionally land in the right place. A helpful thing for an academic who blogs\u2014a person like me, in other words\u2014is that a blog gets your writing out into the world much more effectively than anything in hard copy is ever likely to do. I estimate that more people read my blog in one month than have read all of my published books and articles combined.<\/p>\n

So now for some news about some changes coming over the next few weeks. Since the new year, and even before, I have wondered with increasing frequency whether this blog has run its course. The majority my of recent posts have been updated reruns of older entries. After the publication of my latest book last October, I was feeling that, like Forrest Gump, it might be that \u201cThat\u2019s all I have to say about that.\u201d I don\u2019t get a lot of comment traffic and my numbers have be slowly going down.<\/p>\n

So, I reached out to my email list and Facebook friends asking them to share their thoughts and experiences (if they had any) related to the blog.\u00a0I received a significant number of positive testimonials from readers old and new, so many that it became clear this is not the time to end the blog. But . . . some changes are coming that I hope will inject new life into what I write and your reading experience. These include:<\/p>\n