Why did YouthWorkHacks take three weeks off?!?
Hi folks – we’re back – after a mammoth three-and-a-bit-week break!
I’ve been blogging since my very first year at Bible College, which was back in 2004. Since then I’ve managed blogs for clients, churches, charities, poets, photographers – and of course, myself. I know about the importance of consistency in the blog world, and I know how regular posting funnel-feeds hits into engaged readers. I get it! So why take a significant chunk of time off?
Because, simply put, sometimes my head hurts!
Because, less simply put, the digital world and the ‘real’ world are so unbearably overlapping now, it seems pertinent to take some real world habits into online spaces. A couple of years ago I took a ‘blog day off’, where I didn’t write, read, or interact for a day, last year I took a blogging sabbatical, earlier this year I stopped blogging on the sabbath, and now I’m taking a couple of blog holidays a year too!
It’s been a wild month. My blog won another award in London, I travelled to lecture at a Bible College twice, and I’ve had to do some writing and editing for other places – I’ve also still been working as a full-time youth worker. So it’s not been massively ‘restful’. However, being AFK with my own blog has meant that I’ve had to really trust it into God’s hands. Martin Luther once said, ‘I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.’
But don’t worry, we’re back now!
We’ve got posts coming up on:
- Theology vs. relationships – a false distinction?
- ‘Black and white’ issues in the Bible – not being afraid of grey areas
- Training our teenagers to be theologians
- How to deal with anonymous complaints
- Talking politics with young people
- How the ‘women in ministry’ debate is hurting modern youth work
- Reimagining mentoring
- Matching the message to the messenger or the messenger to the message?