As for the question of Evangelism Committee being the only group to blog, I have already suggested that the Peace Team consider adding a discussion string to this general Pilgrimstpaul discussion area. We are going to discuss this Monday night.

Yes, setting up guidelines for “acceptable” posts is important. I think we could come up with some general guidelines, and then monitor this for a while. As people seek to post things, we can approve them, if they are innocuous, and the “administrator” who sees all posts, and approves all posts, could bring questionable posts to the attention to someone–probably not the vestry, because I think that would be micro-managing. A technology committee, with some oversight over the content of the blog–not just technology–would be a good start.

Thanks again for your post!

You’ll see that a visitor from totally outside of the Pilgrim “circle” posted a message–Tony Whittaker. While I don’t agree with everything posted by Tony, this is a good example of what might happen, if we open this blog up.

Notice, too, that Tony has included a link to a “christian evangelism on the web” site, which looks interesting,but, once again, we may not agree with everything on this site.

In particular , I’m not a fan of Tony’s strategy of enticing people to our blog, by posting messages about sports, the arts, etc. and then, when someone shows interest, give them the “message” about Pilgrim. I’m much more in favor of being straightforward with people, and telling them straight out what this blog is all about. No hidden messages.

Tony’s post is what I would call a “borderline” message–it’s not offensive, in the usual sense of the word (no bad language, pictures, etc.), however, it represents an approach we may not favor–so the question is, would we allow Tony’s post to be put up on the blog.

Please take a few minutes and take a look at Tony’s link, and tell folks what you think..

In terms of policies, procedures and content, we will have to come up with guidelines for “acceptable” blog entries for the administrator(s), and I’m assuming that those guidelines will have to be approved by vestry. Straight forward entries, such as newsletters, etc. should not be a problem, but comments/opinions/discussions are where it might get more complicated. I think if we come up with some general blog entry guidelines, it will make people more comfortable with the idea of a Pilgrim blog.

Finally, I’m concerned about the Evangelism Committee being the sole committee that takes on the blog. I really like the idea of having a technology committee, or one member from each committee that could be a blog “subgroup”. We’ll have to think about how something like that could play out.

All in all, I am much more excited about a Pilgrim blog after seeing a demonstration and how this could play out at our church!

Penny Bartz

blogging
but it also includes links to various tools and ideas

blessings

tony

1. I agree completely about posting items from the monthly newsletter. This blog is another channel to get info from the newsletter out to folks. I think Carol told me recently (and my political experience supports this), that you need to get a message to folks at least 5-7 times, before they really remember it.

2. Yes, we should add guidelines on language. I’m not sure about other guidelines for the kinds of posts you’re suggesting. Your ideas?

3. Yes, those other additions would be great.

Would we need some guidelines for these? The obvious, such as no swearing and then what?