Here I Go.....

Welcome to my BLOG....That sounds very funny to me. I have said for the past few years when the fad hit that I would never BLOG. To be honest, I don't read BLOGS, I don't spend countless hours surfing the web reading more information than my brain can handle. I don't have a My-Space account, Face-Book or anything like it.

As a husband, father of three kids under nine-years-old and a pastor, I don't have expendable time to read about other peoples daily lives. To me, the few BLOGS I have read over the last few months as I tried to decide if this is what I should do, fall into one of three categories.

NUMBER ONE: BLOGS are the markings of the ME Generation we live in. We have a generation of adults who think so highly of themselves that we believe that complete strangers around the nation actually care what we ate for breakfast, what we thought of the movie we saw last night and what are sweet little kids did in the backyard that made us laugh and so on.

NUMBER TWO: BLOGS by pastors and church leaders is the new way of doing what my profession has been doing for years in the American church. What used to happen at pastors luncheons, local barbershops and denominational or associational meetings now happens over the World Wide Web. Bragging, comparing and sharing with the world how great we are as pastors and what our statistics are each week was nauseating as I read through BLOGS of pastors that I did not know and some that I am familiar. Moreover, I was astonished of the apparent connections. One pastor would say he had "X" amount of people baptized and sure enough the next week another pastor who had read it would have had the same amount or just a few more....crazy! What is placed under the spiritual title known as "Networking" has turned into high-tech ego caressing.

NUMBER THREE: BLOGS that are helpful and insightful. I was challenged to read a few BLOGS by pastors and leaders that I found to be very useful. These BLOGS gave useful insights to biblical passages, current events as they happened around the world and most important to me...a few pastors were using their BLOGS to infuse the specific DNA that makes up their local Fellowship or ministry on a daily basis into the people they lead.

After being directly challenged to at least think about doing a daily BLOG I began to rethink my ideas of never doing a BLOG. Moreover, a young man that I meet with to mentor and have a Bible study said that our times together were helpful and that others would probably enjoy the same practical Bible sharing about daily challenges we all have.

So.....I am going to make a commitment to BLOG. My BLOG will be designed for the people who attend Charlotte South Fellowship. I believe it has the potential to help all the new people of Charlotte South Fellowship to really hear, read and experience the DNA of our Fellowship. I will also make my personal daily Bible reading/learnings a part of my BLOG. I will start the daily stuff on August 8th....the day our weekly Chalk Talk has gone out for the last 8 years.

My BLOG will not be filled with personal stories about my family unless it helps to teach a point. It will not have stats from our weekend services. I will not use the BLOG to try to impress my friends that I have in other states or other pastor leaders who scurry around BLOG world trying to keep up with who is doing what. I just feel like this is a wise "Free" tool to use to continue leading the people of CSF.

I have called it Chalk Talk because it is designed for the people of CSF who are passionate about helping our TEAM be all God has called us to be as a Fellowship. I hope and pray that this venture is helpful to the great people who make up our Fellowship.

Last two things:
1) This post is much longer than anything I plan to write on a daily basis.
2) I will only post M-F. I have no intention of spending time on the weekend writing a BLOG nor expecting people to read it on the weekend......

See you tomorrow....