Blog Shutdown

NOTE: This is a very long post, but if you're actually here, I want you to please take some time to read it.

When I first got involved in this youth group last December, my main concern was helping Gary rebuild this youth group after everything that had gone on, or hadn't gone on, before. I wanted to find a way to show you all what a youth group should be - bonded, united, purpose-driven. I realized that I needed to show you guys that being a part of a youth group extended beyond our Wednesday and Sunday meetings. We were to be a single unit standing strong together - even when we were apart. I needed to devise some kind of tool that would keep this youth group operating 24/7.

This blog was developed with that goal in mind. It was not the only tool for meeting this goal, but I figured it would be a good tool - and considering I felt the Lord leading me to do it, I was pretty certain there was a purpose in it.

Unlike Xanga, MySpace, or Facebook, which unite select friends through personal journals, this blog would be a group effort, meant to bring us all together for blogging which extended beyond just our own selves and cliques. It would be a blog with a larger and deeper purpose - the purpose of uniting and growing our youth group and sharing with the world what God is doing for us and with us.

I searched around to see what the possibilities were. Blogger was the only provider that I found that could really do what I was wanting. No other blog providers that I know of offered group blogging. Now, Blogger is in no way the coolest blog provider there is. It's a little too formal and complicated and not very popular among teenagers, but it allowed for the kind of group effort blog that I felt would make for a good online version of our youth group, and that was the important thing.

Efforts to get people started on here were slow. People weren't accepting their invites, or they were making mistakes in accepting them and were giving up without even asking me for a new one. Once people started getting on here, things started moving a little, but not much. I tried everything I could think of to get people to start sharing. For the most part, as many of you know, it just wasn't happening. It could be very aggravating when I would try to encourage people to get involved only to be responded with absolute refusal. Responses like that were rude and disrespectful and very discouraging to me as I was trying to find my place as a leader.

Over time, a select few started using it. I wasn't getting the kind of revolutionary discussions I was hoping for, but I was starting to see people grow and communicate. It was through the blog that I was able to really get to know what an awesome person Melody was, and reading the thoughts of certain members could be a real blessing, especially when we had the opportunity to see something insightful from members whom we never heard much from. There was even a period near the beginning of the summer when this blog was really alive. Seems like every time I logged on, there was new post - Ryan's desire for more ministry opportunities in our youth group, Ben's expression of his relationship with God through poetry, Melody's pictures of us on one of our crazy adventures, etc. Things got moving so fast that I actually had to make a post suggesting that we move slower so as to give posts a chance to be read.

Then things just kinda stopped. I figured that things would slow down during the summer, but I didn't expect them to slow down as much as they did. There were excuses, of course - several people, like Ben, lost access to the Internet, and with much happening in our youth group, such as the blessing of a new leader, there just wasn't much thought about our little online youth group extension. But I still felt that the blog was a great ministry opportunity, and I thought it should be maintained.

Many of us began putting more effort into our personal blogs. A community began developing there. Communication was happening. This was great, but the communication happening on our personal blogs is just that - personal. On my Xanga, I talk about me and my life. That's a great thing to do. But the purpose of this blog was specifically to grow and develop our youth group. It was a place to share and discuss anything and everything God was laying on our hearts concerning our ministry. An opportunity like this should not be substituted by our own personal journals.

I tried to keep encouraging usage, but I didn't get much response. In fact, it seemed as though some members were starting to resent me for it. Some felt I was being too pushy about it. I've apologized for any misunderstandings in my tone of asking, but even after that, I felt like no one wanted to have anything to do with this blog. I started to think that people just don't think of me as a leader in this youth group - that my ministry efforts don't really have to be respected or taken seriously. If this is the case, I can accept the blame for not asserting myself enough. But I can't help but feel like that wouldn't be enough. Even were I to be more respected as a leader, I still don't think the blog would come to life in the way that I had wanted it to.

The advantage of having this blog setup in this way is that, ideally, were every member to be truly active and to truly understand and respect its purpose, then anytime God laid something on a member's heart, they could share it here and rest assured that it would be seen and responded to by all members. Maybe God wants to use someone in this youth group - use them to lead out a specific ministry - but they don't have any opportunity to get started. If the blog were being used to its full purpose, this person would be able to start here by telling the rest of us. But if the blog is only being used by a handful of people, it's not really meeting its purpose, is it? Someone posts a thought, no one sees it, no one responds, nothing happens. It's just a waste of everyone's time.

For this reason, I have come to a point where I'm ready to shut this blog down. Rather than wasting my efforts any longer on something that isn't working, I should just accept this failure and move on. Do I really feel the Lord leading me to do this? No. I feel the Lord leading me to consider it, to post about it, and see what the response is. I will pray about it. Will you?