I read the latest issue of Youthwork and there’s an interview with author Philip Yancey and he is asked about blogging. I can’t link the article because the magazine don’t make that content available online. Here’s the Question and Yancey’s answer:
Christians seem quite fond of blogging – writing thoughts in an online diary that everyone can read. What do you think of that phenomenon?
I am pretty removed from that whole block of culture. I don’t read a single blog; I don’t think I’ve ever read a blog actually, unless maybe someone has forwarded one to me. I write long books by and large; publishers keep looking for shorter books and I tend to write longer ones. It just seems to me that there is a place for books that take time and effort.
So these blogs…I can’t imagine anything of worth coming out of something that was just spun off as soon as you got up in the morning. I guess the question for me is what will it look like in 50 or 100 years? As I age my question is; ‘what do I want to leave behind after I’m gone?’ If I have a collection of 3000 blog posts, then I’ve basically left nothing because no one is going to be reading them in 50 years’ time. My faith has been formed largely by people who are dead; Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gandhi, Chesterton, CS Lewis and Henri Nouwen. Their lives live on in their writing and I can learn from them; be moved by them.”
I found this interesting because a) I often write posts in the morning b) my blog is probably more important to me than it should be c) Adrian Warnock reviewed his blog and hit 3000 posts
in March (although to be fair he is also trying to write a book) d) Yancey has some points about bloggings weaknesses but he misses blogging strengths.
But before I say what I think Yancey misses, what do you think?
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