The Rev. Heather Kirk-Davidoff, who is married to my cousin Daniel, is the author of an article in Congregations magazine this fall about successful blogging at her church. She is the enabling minister of Kittamaqundi Community, an independent church in Columbia, Maryland, USA. She is also the founder of her church's blog, Grounded and Rooted in Love.
The title of Heather's article, which is available only to members of the Alban Institute (a not-for-profit think tank for congregational development), is "Entering the Blogosphere: One Church's Journey from 'Heaven Forbid!' to 'Why Not?'"
I've been reading Kittamaqundi's blog occasionally since it was started, and I've been impressed by the number of authors who have become involved. I like this statement by Heather concerning the blog's success:
Our church's blog has enabled us to both open up our communication and also streamline it. Within six months of starting our blog, we stopped publishing our newsletter, which had been limping along for years. Between the blog, a once-a-week e-mail of announcements, and printed announcements in our Sunday bulletin, the newsletter had become completely redundant and no longer worth the administrative time spent on developing it or the cost of printing and mailing it. ... When our blog had been up for about nine months, I began my report to our Church Council by saying, "Guess what? One hundred and twenty-seven people stopped by our church yesterday!" Everyone was stunned and when I explained that was how many people had read our blog, they all started to smile. They knew people had begun to use the Web to find information about churches in the community, but since our website is largely static, once a person has read what is on it there is not much of an incentive to return. But our blog is so dynamic and so engaging that people come back to it again and again.
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