Excerpt from The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs
BRIAN BAILEY with TERRY STORCH, John Wiley & Sons, 199 Pages, Paper, $19.95
There are two very different types of blog: professional and personal. The former is the focus of this book. A professional blog is largely defined by your ministry role, whether or not it is an “official” church blog. You may write often about your family and favorite television shows, but the main substance of the blog is your thoughts on ministry and your church.
Personal blogs are defined by audience and content. It is written for friends and family rather than church members and ministry peers. The content comes from hobbies, family life, and interests that fall outside of ministry life. What you do for a living might be mentioned in passing from time to time, but no more than what might come up in a conversation with a neighbor at your mailbox.
Depending on your church, you may have many more personal bloggers on staff than professional ones. If they’re not writing about the church, there’s nothing to worry about, right? Wrong.
Though we may try to erect a wall between our personal and professional lives, our readers fail to see the same distinction. We may wish it were otherwise, but what a staff member writes on a personal blog reflects on the church. As believers and church staff, we are on a public stage. People want to see if your walk matches our talk. We represent the church in all that we do, but certainly in the words we write online.
“Will passionate political beliefs make someone on the other side hesitant to try the church? Will an ongoing diary of favorite wines cause any complications? Is it a good idea to write about being underpaid and unappreciated?
This is not a black-and-white area; the lines are unclear. As blogs begin to play a growing role at [our church] and more staff started personal sites, we thought it would be best to lay out guidelines before they were needed, rather than after. We developed a blogging policy to address personal blogs and websites. It’s made up of a few simple principles:
- Let us know
- Include a disclaimer
- Respect confidentiality
- Respect the church and its staff
- Respect copyright
- Respect your time
- Respect your beliefs
- Check the employee handbook
- Use common sense
If you decide to have a policy, develop one that matches your unique culture, personality, and challenges. Remember that a church and its staff are rightly held to a higher standard than other organizations are, and the responsibilities must be taken seriously. The most important thing is to be aware of these potential issues and have a plan in place to address them.
Does your church need to have a blogging policy? Microsoft is one of the largest public companies in the country and has thousands of bloggers on staff, but they don’t have a formal blogging policy. They do, however, have a simple, informal one: be smart. There is both an underlying trust in an employee’s common sense and a common understanding that the same behavior that would get you fired off line will get you fired online.
Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons
