RHETT SMITH

Scot McKnight has a great post, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, which is a take on the classic book of the same name by Helmut Thielicke.

The premise of the post:

Bloggers pastors or students or theologians, especially young ones, need to listen to the wisdom of this little word by Thielicke. Why? Let me begin with this: what you say on your blog is international, permanent, and universally accessible. It’s not that I think you need to hide your ideas; it is that some of your ideas are not wise to be aired in public. Keep them to your closer friends and give them time to dig roots. Some of them you may toss into the bucket before too long.

Recognize that you will change: I’m asking our pastor readers today to weigh in on this one. Here it is: Did you change your mind on something that, when you were a young pastor, you thought was absolutely important? What was that? Had I been blogging 25 years ago, I would have been harsh on the grace emphasis of a writer like Yancey.

Have you changed your mind on anything absolutely important? What was it?

For me personally, there is not one specific thing, but my theology has constantly been in a state of development over time. Some believe that we should have it at a fixed place, but I think as we grow, mature, gain wisdom our theology changes as we come to understand and know God in new ways.

When it comes to blogging, where have you made mistakes? What would you do differently?

I think I would be less critical. I have too often written posts critically about thinkers, pastors, I don’t know. And though there is a place for criticism, I really try hard to be more constructive than critical, but often fail at that. Even this last week I wrote a post about another pastor (Driscoll) that really didn’t need to be posted.

So I’m working on being more constructive.

What thoughts do you have on thinking differently, or blogging differently?

I’m convinced, that just like working out our theologies, mistakes and differences has taken place in communities and groups for thousands of years, we will see this same process happen online as well. More people will be privy to it, but it’s part of the “publish, then filter” that Clay Shirky talks about in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

Please share with us some of your thoughts.