An Open Letter to T4G

by Frank Turk

To my Dear Friends in Christ at T4G.org;

I waited and waited, but
nobody would join me for coffee

Everyone has an idiom in which his voice is most clearly heard, and unfortunately for all of us, mine is "Hitler Reacts" videos.

Just kidding -- mine is obviously the Open Letter.  I have taken a lot of flack from all sorts of people over the years for having the audacity to use a blog like this to write letters like that.  It has even made some wonder whether or not the Open Letter is a dead medium, a dead form.  Personally I love to write them because it gives both me and the readers of this blog the sense that we are actually speaking to certain people and not merely about them.  Moreover, I think I have a long record of using both gentleness and reverence in them (with a handful of exceptions that, frankly, prove the rule), so I am taking a break from my hiatus to write one to you.  I hope it finds you well, and in good spirits.

We're closing in on the early bird registration deadline (well: it's a month off), and it has caused my friends and I to have off-line chats about whether we are going.  I'm sure that's a common discussion happening right now as everyone tries to decide whether or not they have $1000 (registration, room & board, travel) to spend a week with 5000 (7500?  How many?) brothers and sisters in Christ.  I have gone in the past, so for the record I'm not casting any shade on those who will chose to do so this year.  (For those reading: if you choose to go this year, God bless you; may it bless you greatly; may it make you better disciples and better body parts in your local church [whichever part you may be]).  But, I'm not going this year.

Someone suggested I should have expected an invitation since other bloggers have been invited and I am an allegedly-famous blogger.  I think that's absurd on the face of it, to be honest: the "bloggers" invited to this event are actually proteges of the fellows instrumental in creating T4G, and I am not that; I'm not from SBTS, or CHBC, or from what used to be the Sovereign Grace network of churches, or a Presbyterian.  Given my close relationship to Phil Johnson, both public and private, it would seem more likely to see me invited to something GTY/GCC put on -- but Phil and I have discussed that, and I have no interest in being that guy.  And more to the point, I really am on hiatus from all things blog-related in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Maybe what those asking me that question were really asking me is this: since T4G is now a decade old, is it time for you to freshen up the mix?  For example, when we listen to the recording of Band of Bloggers last time, how fresh was that?  Was it really worth the price of admission -- even factoring in the Chick-fil-A and the free books?  Once we get past aggregating other people's work, and being famous for assisting better writers with getting their works into print, what are we seeing at BoB -- and why?  Would it help to include someone from outside the echo chamber those fellows represent to see what else could be helpful?

Personally, and to be as clear as possible, I have nothing to add that would freshen up that mix.  My currently-jaded perspective on how Christian celebrity works, and whether or not it's legitimate to cultivate such a thing, would not make that hour of discussion more helpful -- because I am self-aware enough to know that I am, currently, very jaded on that subject.  I am very weary and squint-eyed from disappointment in the public face of our faith.  I'm not yet 50 (but almost), and I would sound like a one-eyed centenarian misanthrope if you put me next to Colin Hansen and asked me anything about which both he and I could comment.  That would not be worth bringing me there to perform, or be worth anybody's money to pay and see.

But that question is still worth considering: what could refresh T4G and it's ancillary services?  What would revive, in the intellectual, catechetical or phenomenological senses, the vibe at T4G?  Maybe if you brought in that fabled faithful pastor who has been at the same church for 4 or 5 decades ...?

I can remember the first time I went, which was the second time it ran.  We were not filling the YUM Center yet but were still in the big room at the Convention Center in Louisville (I think it might have been the room the bookstore is in now, but that may be a faulty memory of it). You could hear the other men singing (and yes ladies: sorry, it was something like 99.9% men) in a way that (if you will forgive me for saying it) sounded like church.  It sounded like we were there together, and not merely there in attendance.  I actually accidentally one morning walked into the conference center next to CJ -- though I am sure he didn't know me from Adam, and I didn't realize it was him until we reached the end of the skyway.  It still had the sense, as you still propose it to be, of being a conversation among friends.

It's not really that anymore, is it?

Maybe it is.  Maybe that's what actually causes some of the comments like the ones sent to me about who gets invited and who doesn't: real friendly relationships can cause those on the outside of them to feel somehow left out.  People feel like maybe they have something that belongs with such a thing as T4G, and when T4G ignores it (intentionally or accidentally; and sometimes "intentionally" can even mean "because there's no more room for stuff here" rather than something more tawdry like "not invented here") it seems like a sleight because other people and other "stuff" get included when others did not.  But that's what happens when people or things get famous: fans mistake fandom for friendship, and when it turns out that Mark Dever really has no idea who I am or whatever, it seems like a slight when it's not anything like that.

Yet when we think about it that way, the riddle of what T4G has become still doesn't get puzzled out. It actually gets harder to unpack because we're really not talking about church here anymore, are we?  We're not talking about real human relationships but the experience. We're talking about something that looks and acts more like the other events that fill the YUM Center.  I mean: it costs $1000 to go to T4G if you live right.  It could cost one $2500 easily by simply picking different meal options and hotels.  To the average pastor, $1000 is more than a week's salary -- in some cases, it's more than two.  It stops being a conversation between friends when the first checkpoint of self-selection into the conversation is which quintile of income can afford to join in, doesn't it?

Now, look: this is not an attempt to heap scorn on you fellows for price or venue or any of that.  I think that the audio files from T4G are worth the price of a decent double album (note: I just dated all of us since most of the young fellers reading this have never seen the glory of Pink Floyd's The Wall in real vinyl in real dust jackets), and I have honestly been edified by every T4G since its inception.  The words of the message are clear every time.  I am worried that maybe there is something else being said by the medium which needs to be worked out more completely than by a sidebar panel discussion.  One speaker self-exonerating himself and the panel by saying his wife keeps him honest and there are no superstars in his household is not a solution to this conundrum.

So as people think about attending your event, and follow it on Twitter, and look forward to the able-bodied messages and the impressive line-up of powerful speakers both new and time-tested, I'm asking you to consider what you have become -- which is somehow both more and less than a conversation among friends.  You have become influential across denominational lines, and somehow have also lost the physical appearance of a local church.  And in doing these things, you are shaping others in ways that are probably unintended -- and as with all unintended consequences, it is the father of all manner of children.

Please be good fathers to the children you have made here.  Be good servants of Christ, because I know your faith in Him is both real and good, and your hope for His final victory is the same as mine, and the only real reason we should care about what we are doing personally, both privately and publicly.  He's our savior, our king, and also our judge.  Let's all be judged worthy by Him when we at last see his face.

In His name, and for His sake, I thank you for your time and attention.

---

Tag-ons to Frank's BoB2012 post

by Dan Phillips

Don't have anything ready to serve at the moment, nor the time to finish cooking what's on the drawing board (how many mixed metaphors is that?). So I'll point back to Frank's, and add a couple of tight-lipped thoughts.

I could not have said all that I think about BoB2012 (nor the, in equal parts, response and non-response to David Kjos' post) as politely as Frank did, so at the moment I'll mostly say "amen," and join you all in waiting to see if an appropriately substantial response is forthcoming, adding only these:

1. Luke 12:48b is surely germane in this connection, is it not?
2. I would also point out what Thabiti Anyabwile said about celebrity pastors at T4G12, if I understood him correctly: Actress X would not be a star if truckloads of people didn't buy tickets to her movies. Transferring the metaphor, readers must take responsibility that Blogger X would not have the prominence he enjoys without truckloads of clicks, retweets, follows and links. Just sayin'.
3. Even granting that serious, weighty, dire, intense and personal discussions were being carried on behind closed doors, is there anything in this post or this post that relied on "facts not in evidence"?
4. What would have happened differently if, instead of taking a posture of unawareness of (or sullen resentment towards) all such posts on various blogs, TGC blogs and leadership and other leading voices had taken such concerns seriously before (to quote Frank) "all the wrong that could be done was actually accomplished"?
5. And finally, this can't be pointed to enough, if only for a needed sad chuckle:

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BoB2012 - How the Other Half Lives

by Frank Turk

UPDATED:

OK - you came here for the fireworks, but there are a couple of things I need you to do before you start playing John Phillips Sousa for the Grand Old Flag.

1. A young friend of our family, who is named "Daniel," is going into surgery on Thursday, 9 May 2012, at about 5 AM, to have a pacemaker put in; his surgery is postponed one week.  When I say "young," I mean he's not old enough to drive.  Please pray for Daniel and his family, his doctor and the support staff, and that God will be merciful.

2. My beloved friend Mark Lamprecht, known to many of you as "Here I Blog," has a friend who is in dire need of medical treatments he cannot afford.  I haven't been given the liberty to share all the details, but I can say that Mark and I are trying to find a way to create a donation campaign for this fellow who is a father and a husband in order that he gets the minimum urgent care he needs, which will be about $12,000 to start.  Until I can find a way to make the donations payable to this fellow's church so that we know the funds will be property administered, I'm not linking to a donation site.  But for now, if you would be in very serious prayer for this man and his family, it would serve them well.

Well, I find myself with a LOT left to say after cutting some slack on section 2 of the outline last week, but I'm going to rein it in (a little) and stick to one last bit of what's left of the BoB2012 panel discussion, which we find thus:

[30:19]
JT:I think the one with [Jefferson Bethke], who is here someplace, I think that one was in some ways an easier thing because Jefferson does not represent a movement per se.  He's an individual person doing a video and received some, you know, hurtful comments, and also some iron sharpening iron push back.  I think that's in a little bit different category that, say, some of the controversy  with Sovereign Grace, or with Elephant Room.  Um, so much to say, about both those that could be said.  I take a little bit of a contrarian perspective on both of those in that there is so much dialog going on behind the scenes that not everyone is privy to.  Take Elephant Room as an example: There was just a lot of conversation going on behind closed doors, private communication, and some of the people in the blogosphere were saying, y'know, "why isn't TGC saying more?  Why isn't Carson or Keller saying more?"  I think if you're not privy to those conversations, it can seem like stone-walling or sweeping something under the carpet, and y'know, why aren't we being communicated to.  Some of that is that we're conditioned to, when there's information, it should be made public. 

OWEN: Immediately.  Now. 

JT: And I think in the Sovereign Grace one, which I think is its own animal, very complicated, but there you have an example with uh, the wiki-leaks sort of mentality and strategy among some people who had left the movement, some who were still in it, just saying, "That's not good enough, we're gonna take this into our own hands.  We're gonna go public, make documents public, nothing's off limits."  There's literally no ethics involved.
[32:20]

The reason for it, to be as clear as possible, is that I think there's something to be said in defense of David Kjos' sparse review of the panel in which he said:

The debacle of the Elephant Room, according to the representatives of The Gospel Coalition on the Band of Bloggers panel, was the objections of numerous bloggers, and the criticism of The Gospel Coalition, of which MacDonald was a founding member, for its silence on the matter. We were scolded for expressing opinions without being privy to the inside discussions of The Gospel Coalition, as if that was at all necessary, as if T. D. Jakes was an unknown quantity instead of a public figure whose heresy is well known through multiple publications. Bottom line: if you’re not on the inside, you’re not qualified to speak.

Justin Taylor specifically said that this is a bad distortion of what he personally said, and I want to consider that as well as a further issue regarding the problem of transparency and disclosure overall.

Let's start where Justin starts: the Jeff Bethke incident which, as he rightly assesses, is an "easier thing".  But Justin's assessment is that it was easier because Young Jefferson is just a guy with a YouTube channel.

That is: a YouTube Channel that has received 20 million pageviews.  Just for comparison sake, "David after Dentist" has 110 million views in 3 years; Jeff has 20% of that in 4 months.  At this rate Jeff's video will have 100 million views by next summer and will be parodied by Chad Vader before the Fall.

My point being: Justin classes Jeff and his video as "just a guy," when in fact Jeff has captured more viewers than any one time Mark Driscoll has been on national TV.  Justin's view is an understatement at best -- and it minimizes what followed.

Jeff, who is not a pastor, or the leader of a movement, but who has gotten more views for his video than Jon Stewart gets for the Daily Show in any given 10 days combined, received some criticism for his video -- some of it constructive, some less than helpful.  But Jeff did something which, it seems to me, is instructive: he listened and admitted his mistake(s).  Of particular use for this teachable moment was the pastoral poking of Kevin DeYoung; Jeff's response to Kevin was, it seems to me, not just edifying but exemplary.  Jeff made some clear mistakes, Kevin lined them out clearly and fairly, and Jeff accepted them at face value.

Some things Jeff didn't do:

• Jeff didn't pipe up on twitter toward nameless people who were vexing him
• Jeff didn't delete posts he was thereafter ashamed of, or the original video because it took some hits
• Jeff didn't ignore the comments, and didn't ignore Kevin in particular who was trying to point out his errors
• Jeff didn't go into seclusion or go into radio silence while urgent and necessary private conversations were conducted for the sake of his soul and the real people who might somehow be damaged.

See: Jeff Bethke, when he put his foot in it publicly, took public criticism, and made public amends for it.  He even accepted that people criticizing him meant it for his good -- even if some of them were somewhat not good at goodness or at speaking the truth in love.  Let me say this clearly: if that's what we receive from a young fella with a YouTube channel, why would we expect less from the heroes of the reformed blogosphere?

Let's face it: saying nothing at all is actually less than what Jeff did.  Ignoring the public spin of those doing the wrong thing, which were tantamount to lies and obfuscations, is less than what Jeff did.  Failing to speak up until all the wrong that could be done was actually accomplished is far less than what Jeff Bethke did.  And doing less than Jeff when your position in a movement or in a coalition or in a band of men joined together for some para-church sake is less than what ought to be expected.

Yet here's where those I am talking about, and their advocates and surrogates, will start sniffing at the criticism.  JT has already hinted at the tactic in his statement, above: not everything has to be public.  In fact, as JT said, public statements would hurt the private conversations.

Therefore, let's think about the perfect example of that -- the mud fight surrounding SGM -- as it is also instructive.  JT, as the insightful and helpful blogger that he is, actually nails it in his statement: what happened to those with the (in my view: unreasonable) hunger and thirst for justice is that they gave up on any kind of ethics in order to make public every jot and tittle of perceived wrong-doing and to demand a pound of flesh because they said they were offended -- and not because there was any substantive offense.

From the AoR report:

One of the greatest factors that inflamed the conflicts and increased people’s wrath and clamor was the extensive use of sinful communication in talking, emails, blogs and meetings. 

While every Christian would agree that gossip and slander are sinful, many in SGM failed to recognize when they initiated, participated, or listened to and read sinful communications. 

When we met with people, they often justified their own judgmental and damning words with dangerous thinking such as:
• “It’s just the truth!”
• “I am loving this person by revealing this person’s sins to that person or to the community or even the world (e.g., through the Internet).”
• “Since I’m being ignored, I am justified in saying these terrible things about others.”
• “I need to protect the church or the world against these evil people.”
• “Because I was hurt, I am justified in how I hurt others by whatever kind of words I use!” 

As mentioned above, AoR has often seen sins of the tongue in conflicted groups. But in working in this situation, we experienced first-hand an unusual severity of this grievous sin. It was simply shocking. 

For a people who take pride in humility, who claim to have been totally indoctrinated in biblical peacemaking, and who brag about the way they share Christ and his love, we were saddened that so many of these same people minimized sinful talk, justified gossip and slander, and refused to see how such activity itself exaggerated their troubles.

My point being: if this really is the only other choice as what "some bloggers" were demanding, then I agree with Justin: maybe we'd be better off just minding our own business.

But, in fact, that's not the only other choice -- and in a very specific sense, it's not what "some bloggers" were suggesting, and exhorting, and pointing out was missing.

One blogger (since we are not naming names) started an open letter to Carson and Keller when the ER2 hoopla was just getting ginned up by saying this:

As I begin to write this, I do so with a personal sense of indebtedness to both of you.  I am not merely grateful for your books and lectures and sermons which have taught me so much: I am grateful for the spirit with which you have done it all.  That is to say: while I am well-known through a reputation of being quite a pill for the sake of the Gospel, you both are known as fatherly men who have a graciousness I am certain I lack, and it is that spirit from which I learn much all the time.

And then this:

Recently, you have both penned a detailed statement about the nature of the Gospel Coalition, and about its duties or relationship to its readers and also its council members.  I found this essay instructive, and useful, and clarifying in the context it was coming from, but in my view, it misses the point of the concerns of almost all the critics of the dust-up over the Elephant Room.  I wanted to offer to you an outsider's perspective on what just happened and why it is not enough merely to say what you have said so far.

And then this admonition:

Now, here's what's not necessary: we don't need the reality TV version of whatever it is that has happened, is happening, and will happen between the various parties at TGC, including any trumped-up drama.  But when someone publicly makes an error of this size, the broad stokes of the public resolution are, frankly, necessary for the sake of those you started your internet site up for in the first place.
...
Saying what you might do is an interesting approach -- and it is the approach of the essay you have already written.  But showing the rest of us how to actually do it would be invaluable.  It would actually put into play something the Evangelical church lacks -- an education on how to exercise spiritual responsibility, and turn a brother away from wrong-doing and toward the right path, the right orbit in our center-bounded life which is around Christ.
So I ask you as a fan, and as your far-removed student, and as a Christian who is indebted to you: help us understand how to resolve this matter.  Please do not let the weak single tweet from James MacDonald that the parties #AgreeToDisagree stand as the milestone to this event.  That activity would be helpful to so many people for so many reasons that they cannot all be listed, but the one most important must be said: it will glorify Christ.

That's not badgering.  That's not unethical intrusion into private conversations.  But that's also not one of the choices JT is willing to proffer. See: what is said by JT (and to be fair: I think it is at least partially unintentional, partly a function of unprepared remarks) is that we can expect one thing from a young fellow with a YouTube channel, and we should expect that same thing from people with complaints about their churches, but we can't expect it from men like the guys who sit on the council for the Gospel Coalition.  These are important men, and they represent more than themselves, and we can't just expect them to take public rebukes for public misdemeanors and mistakes as if they might actually be wrong.

This is why David Kjos was offended by the table talk at BoB2012.  In fact, this is why I am offended by this little kaffeeklatsch of fellows under 40 who know things they wish they didn't know: there's no question they have a different standard for a James MacDonald or a D.A. Carson or a Mark Driscoll or a John Piper or a Mark Dever than they do for a Jeff Bethke -- and it's not a higher standard.

It really doesn't get better as you listen to this discussion: it gets worse.  Collin Hansen, God bless him, pulls back the curtain for us and makes it transparent what this means, ending around 34:50.  Again, to be utterly fair, I think he didn't intend to say it this way, but he said what he said.  In his view, in the same way that Christianity Today would never publish anything but nice about Billy Graham and his kin, the same barrier exists at TGC for the council and its members.  When you link this to Collin's foundering around about what's so bad about comments (negative comments being, on the one hand, welcome for the sake of "openness", but on the other hand, being from "parasites" who don't have any other platform or readers), it's sort of ghastly.  It's like finding that darned cat which has been missing for a few weeks behind the appliances -- it's not what one wanted to find, or meant to find, but you have (for good and ill) found it.  It answers a lot of questions.

But the choices are not to either do nothing or to produce a reality show that runs after Keeping Up with the Kardashians: a real third way could be to be like Jeff Bethke even though one might be James MacDonald or Mark Driscoll.  Or better still: specifically because one might be the leader of a movement, somehow one takes Jesus' admonition to be unlike the world but to instead save the world (or your demographical piece of it) by dying for it rather than jockeying for position.  The real third way is to be like Kevin DeYoung or Thabiti - to say what is right regarding what is wrong, in a clear and cogent and compassionate and public way so that what is actually wrong with a brother is made clear to those one intended to attract in the first place, and so that what is right about public discourse can be modeled for the plethora of hit-piece writers and undiscerning discernment bloggers.

There are more lessons to be learned here than the really-superficial and rudimentary issue that somehow Keller and Carson are aware that Jakes is a Modalist - and those lessons are actually lessons in applying the Gospel.  When a James MacDonald publicly embraces, from bad to worse, panderers, demogogues, and then a modalist, the least one can do is say, "I think my friend has made a mistake which, I hope, he will repent of."  And the least he can then do in return is to say, "I have received a general critique of what's happening here, and I hope I can resolve it with my friends."  And then let all the private enclaves and secret meetings which have jaded and disillusioned these poor young fellows with thoughts that cannot be mentioned ensue.  But that cannot be demonstrated because these men are, it seems, too great to be burdened with running the parachurch ministry they sought to build to this high a profile.  It's no wonder both James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll got a fond farewell from TGC rather than a sorrowful public final plea to repent of their terrible mistakes: there is a different standard for men like them, and men like Carson and Keller, than there is for men like me.

The proper standard, however, will be upheld in the comments, which are open. Play nice.

---

BoB2012: The Gooey Center

by Frank Turk

For those curious, the audio of the event is still stored at the Southern Seminary archive (click to listen; right-click to download)

The  most interesting thing that happened last week after starting this 3-part series on Band of Bloggers 2012 was not the passive-aggressive tweets which, when called out, got deleted.  It was this tweet stream I received literally yesterday:

OK: STOP a second.  I have been advised that, for the sake of good order, it ought to be noted that the tweets below are utterly false -- that the people mentioned here are not and have never been members of Tim Brister's church.  


That is actually my point in saying these tweets are a "parable" of how comments work on the internet.  If that was not clear, please let it be clear now: in no way were these tweets clipped and posted here to reproach Grace Baptist Church, its members, or its elders for any behavior in their local church.  These comments, as they say in the KJV, stinketh, and ought to be a lesson to the rest of us as to how not to behave on the internet.


As evidence of such a thing, note that these comments are now evaporated -- as is the habit of people who can't engage the "edify" filter before hitting "post".


You know who you are.

Timmy, whom I could not identify in the first two minutes of the audio, was attacked -- according to this person who fled his church.  Mull that over as a monument to how the internet works.

Anyway, I was going to undertake an extended consideration of the reflections on how blog comments work and ought to work according to the young men of Band of Bloggers, but this example and the tweets which got deleted last week will have to be a parable of the whole thing.  I'll lay off for a week and just post my rough outline of BoB for you as a PDF you can download, right here.

Next week, in our final installment, I'll undertake to discuss, in a helpful way, section 3 of that outline.  It's the part you're dying to read anyway, so consider today a breather.

---

This is where I am today

by Phil Johnson



ook the redeye from LAX to Boston last night. (I'm sure you'll be able to tell that when this video is complete. I'll be the character asleep in the corner.) The video promises to be intriguing: a free-ranging conversation among three very intelligent men and one jet-lagged blogger. I proposed calling it "Band of Curmudgeons" or "The Emergency Room." Abendroth didn't go for my suggestions.

---

BoB2012: Nice Guys with a Hobby

by Frank Turk

Just because it happened, as I started writing this little fiasco, my wife asked me what I was doing, and I told her, "I'm drafting the blog."

She looked at me and said, "You mean you're riding it too close to the truck in front of you again?"

Since she put it that way, yes.

Let me confess a few things about this topic before I start the disreputable and unhelpful blogging.  The first is this: I had a hard time following the audio of the Band of Bloggers 2012 session because I only know Tim Challies' and Justin Taylor's voices, and I can't tell the rest of them apart by voice.  Collin Hansen sounds like Timmy Brister, and one of them sounded like Tullian Tchividjian to me even though I know he wasn't on the panel.  And you would think that I could pick Kevin DeYoung's voice out of the crowd, but honest to pete I just couldn't tell [UPDATED: Turns out KDY was absent that day, so I am not utterly deaf].  So the attributions in this and the next few pieces of bloggeration presented on this subject will be muddled at best because except for Tim and Justin, I can't tell who is who.

The second is this: I am obligated to say that there is not a group of less-offensive men in the whole world who actually speak out loud.  You couldn't find English-speakers who were more concerned with avoiding offense if you tried -- and that includes all English-speaking practitioners of Jainism and Catholic Trappist monks.  You can't catch these guys intentionally saying something barbed in public unless a large thumbtack and a mischieviously-placed stool was involved, and only then the most sharp-edged epithet would probably sound something like the Beaver would say.  God bless 'em for being such nice fellows.

So why blog this audio?  I mean: I simply couldn't be caught walking past the session, and I said my piece via GoAnimation the day of the event, and that should be enough, right?  There's enough evangelical fire-power involved in this panel discussion to see to it that I never publish anything ever except via blog if I somehow irk them.  And may it never be said that they somehow "overlooked" a finalist for best new author of the year because of his associations -- but it could in theory happen.  It would be wrong of me to expect they would behave that way, but it would be foolish of me to think that these guys owe me any favors when I seem to be usually at odds with them and their flavor of edification.

That is to say: blogging this audio is marginally-dangerous -- and some would say, done simply for the controversy.  It draws traffic, after all.  But here's the thing: it seems rather ill-considered that a handful of reasonably well-known bloggers would chat about blogging as such and no other blogs would have anything to say about it.  In some sense, if no one ever brought it up again, it would be too fantastically ironic.  The Band of Bloggers assessed all of Christian blogdom and no one heard it?  No one was edified? Or perhaps: no one cared?

May it never be: I cared.  Or rather, I care.  So let's begin: one of three posts on this interesting event.

The right place to start is with my dear friend and fellow blogger David Kjos who is one of the most gifted bloggers having at it.  David gave his brief assessment of the event here, and it elicited Justin Taylor's response -- to the negative, if you can believe that.  So while I didn't pay my $15 for Chic-Fil-A and the free books, I was a little intrigued to find that David would not think it was entirely satisfying and Justin would find David's comments worthy of disavowal.

The audio, it turns out, is stored at the Southern Seminary archive -- for which we are all grateful.  I gave it a listen or three, and I commend it to all of you for review and discussion.

So here's the transcript of the first few minutes:

(Starting at 00:00)
Owen Strachen: Let's just kick it off with the state of Blogging.  A few years back, I think it was in 2009 at the Gospel Coalition, at that iteration of Band of Bloggers, we wondered whether blogging would continue.  There was a lot of talk in 2009 about whether Blogging was dead -- and Tim (Challies) for example said it wasn't and it seems that he was right.  What is the state of blogging today in 2012 both in terms of the general market if you're interested in talking about that and in terms of the evangelical blog scene.
I start with Justin and go down the line. Any thoughts you have. 

Justin: I'd rather hear from Collin first.  I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that question necessarily.  I do think it's right that blogging is not dead; it will probably never die as long as people want more than 140 characters.  I think twitter is a great gateway into reading longer-formed content which blogs tend to specialize in. I don't think its going anywhere, I think Collin is more gifted at looking at the whole lay of the land.  But it's what I like to do; I'll keep doing it as long as I still enjoy it and people continue to read it.  And my blog is just more of a gateway to other things out there, so I think as long as people want content, blogging in some form will exist. 

Challies:  I just wanna ask a question - how many people here subscribe to the print version of Christianity Today? raise your hand if you would. (pause) How 'bout World Magazine? (pause) Blogs aren't going anywhere. Right?  How else are you going to know what's going on in the Christian world?  That's just the way ideas are carried.  It's the way people are finding out things now -- through the blogosphere.
(Ends about 02:00)

Now, it would be wrong, really, to criticize them for speaking briefly -- the whole session is only an hour, and everyone there was really there for T4G which started hard upon the end of this pre-conference huddle, so what I'm not going to do is pelt these guys for keeping it inside the time they had available.  Good on them, to be sure, for honoring other people's time.

But here's what strikes me about the fellows lined up here: they are all of one stripe.  Here's the list of who was there (in Alpha order):

Tim Brister
Tim Challies
Kevin DeYoung -- Absent, so noted!
Collin Hansen
Owen Strachen
Justin Taylor

Except for Timmy (who is his own brand among Southern seminarians, SBTS being the general host of T4G) and Challies (who is his own brand in the larger internet ecosystem, ranking about the same as the Sport blog for the Boston Herald, and just slightly ahead of this very blog), these guys represent "The Gospel Coalition" brand of Christianity.  You should bookmark that for future reference in this series, but to say that these fellows are anything but one slice of bologna (let's be fair: probably a decent yard of beef and not some skimpy hors d'oeuvre) in the deli of Christian writers -- let alone Christian thinkers or Christian bloggers -- is unreliable.  And in that case, it seems to me that the ice breaker here is a little much.

However, it does give us some stellar foundations by which to track the rest of this discussion.  The core connection (that they are rather monolithic) is the first foundation; the second strikes me as rather obvious: Tim and Justin see this stuff as a rather conspicuous hobby.  You know: neither one earns a living via blogging, but somehow they have both gotten into their current professions via blogging.  They have somehow made a name for themselves which carries over into something else more lucrative, and I credit them for it.  But they do this sort of thing because they like it -- which is an important motivation which we'll need to review in another installment.

The last foundation is that they don't have any illusions about the state of the medium: it is what it is, and it is here to stay.  It is exactly like moveable type amped up on Red Bull and a megadose of B-Complex vitamins, and the great leap forward in terms of the democratization of information and ideas is more like a quantum jump.  "How else," ponders Challies, "are you going to know what's happening in the Christian world?"

And that, I am afraid, is the first fantastic irony.  If you read the blogs these guys publish and link to -- and because you're a Gospel menace you also read this blog -- tell me: what's going on amongst the 1200 Calvary Chapel Outreach Fellowship churches these days?  Whither the BBFI and it's 1.2 million members in this day of trouble?  How about the lowly Methodists or Anglicans?

What they must mean, of course, is, "what's going on in our corner of Christendom," which is not all it's cracked up to be.  It's a pretty narrow and fallow patch of the harvest compared, for example, to what's happening in Africa and South America -- and a patch the world thinks needs more missionaries sent to it.

So is it a fun hobby?  Sure it is.  But it's a clever little hobby that makes us into something terrifying and untrustworthy: it makes us into the center of attention.  And when we become the center of attention, we seem to forget that most people are simply not like us.

Anecdotally, as I was preparing to go to T4G a couple of weeks ago, one of the guys I worked with asked me how I was going to spend my vacation.  "With my wife," I said rather coyly as I was seeking to get my desk sufficiently cleared prior to leaving.

"Ha." he said.  "I mean 'where'?"

So I looked away from the customer car wreck in my In-Box and took off my glasses.  "We're going to a conference called 'Together for the Gospel,'" I said simply.  "It's hosted by a seminary in Louisville, and we're going to see some old friends and listen to a week of talks about whether or not we take the Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously.  Al Mohler will be there; Mark Dever; John Piper."

He looked at me blankly, thinking.  "Amy Grant?"

I put my glasses back on.  "No." I said, returning to my work. "Bob Kauflin."  I might as well have said, "Armin Shimerman."

My point being: even our heroes in that circle of influence are pretty much unknown by the world at large.  And for us to think that our blog reading (let alone: our blog writing) is somehow expressing "what's going on in the Christian world" is, at best, poor accounting.

So maybe the first stop in my tour through the 60 minutes which was Band of Bloggers is this: let's not kid ourselves about the size of the teapot in which we think we are tempesting.  It's not hardly the world -- and not hardly the whole Christian world.  It's a narrow band of blogging, and would be better off expressed that way rather than as something more influential.

That's enough for today.  Comments are open; mind your manners.

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T4G Day 1: Band of Bloggers

GoAnimate.com: T4G 2012 Day 2: Band of Bloggers by Frank Turk

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