Shane Raynor's Revolution

For those who followed Shane Raynor's old Wesley Blog, his reemergence this past fall with a new online venture called Wesley Report was a breath of fresh air. In just a few months' time, Shane has proven that he wasn't spending his time away idly.

I review both the Wesley Report and Shane's place as a leader in the Methoblogosphere in my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. For those of you who are new to the community of blogs and bloggers that focus on Wesleyan theology and the United Methodist Church, you should know how great a role Shane played with Wesley Blog between 2004-2006. He blogged about anything and everything, and he had the grace to really listen to those who disagreed with them and give them a voice on his site. Through the Wesley Blog years, Shane did as much as anyone to build the community of bloggers who know inhabit the Methoblogosphere.

The new Wesley Report has already shown itself to be at or near the top among those blogs that cover UM issues. Shane not only does original commentary and interviews; he spends a great deal of time scouring the web to look for the best articles and blog posts from others. He highlights those daily, adds annotations, and even wraps it all up nicely in an e-mail summary for those who want to get it in their inbox everyday.

I've been wanting to profile Shane and WR for awhile now, and the reason is because I think he is doing something crucially important for the future of our church. Those of us who do this online thing each week are in a space that the old guard mostly isn't. We have the ability to reach sheep for Jesus that old methods and old approaches cannot. Shane has a real gift in creating an online presence that can serve as both clearinghouse of information and forum for discussion. That means that his work can amplify each of ours. He does that because he believes that the Wesleyan tradition still has contributions to make, in terms of spreading the gospel, growing the church, and bringing people into a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord.

So visit Wesley Report. Often. You'll be glad you did.

The Prodigal Son returneth...

A notable development: Not long ago, I posted about a few upcoming changes in the blogosphere. One of those is the return of Shane Raynor to active blogging, with a blog called Wesley Report: United Methodist News, Life, & Culture.

Now I ain't exactly an old-timer in the blogosphere (in fact, Gen-X Rising turns two years old tomorrow), but for those of you newer than I am, you should know that Shane played a crucial role in forming the Methodist blogging community - otherwise known as the Methoblogosphere - back when he wrote his first blog, entitled, Wesley Blog.

At the UM Reporter, I looked at the burgeoning blogosphere in this column in October of 2005, with specific reference to the impact that Shane's work was having. In the same issue, an interview I did with Shane ran as a companion piece to my regular column. Shane stopped writing the Wesley Blog because of other things going on in his life, particularly around his involvement in his local church's youth ministry. (He tells a bit of the story in this post.) I am glad to see him back and blogging again. Shane is an insightful writer who is unafraid to take on tough issues. He will be a welcome (re-)addition to our conversations about faith and the church.

Addendum: Clifton Stringer has written a biographical blog post on Shane that you can access here.

Say it ain't so, Shane, say it ain't so

Fans of Wesley Blog know about Shane Raynor's hiatus from blogging this past summer. But we were all thrilled when he came back at the beginning of the fall with the intention of blogging once or twice a week. So the news over at Locusts and Honey today came as quite a shock. Read it and weep.

I was first introduced to Wesley Blog sometime in early 2005, but I really got familiar with it when Shane skewered me for writing a negative review of an Adam Hamilton book in the United Methodist Reporter, back in July of that year. (And I stand by my review, by the way. Adam Hamilton is an important leader in the UMC, and his Church of the Resurrection does some tremendous ministry. But Selling Swimsuits in the Arctic buys wholesale into the "business model" of church growth, which is highly problematic in a theological sense.)

Shane and I e-mailed back and forth after I defended myself on his blog, and from that interaction, I came up with the idea of doing a "Gen X Rising" column on the Methoblogosphere, along with a companion interview of Shane himself. That project was a real watershed event in the life of my column. Up until that time, most of the contacts I had made through "Gen X Rising" were not, ironically enough, with Gen X'ers. They were with the rank-and-file readers of the Reporter, who tend to be older than Generation X. But Shane linked to the column and interview on Wesley Blog, and that caused a lot of folks to drop me a line saying they had 'discovered' the column. Like the book review, that column and interview are still on the Reporter's archive.

Why am I telling you this? Because Shane Raynor's influence on the community of Methodist blogs known as the Methoblogosphere has been huge. My own blog's existence is at least partly due to Shane and the Wesley Blog. The "Methodist Blogroll" which Shane created (and which is listed at the right-hand side of this webpage) has probably done more single-handedly to link up Methodist bloggers in cyberspace than all the individual efforts of bloggers combined.

Shane's approach to blogging gave us all a model to follow, and I'll always be grateful for that. He never shied away from tough issues, and he always let you know where he stood. But he also treated people who held a different perspective from his with a lot of grace. That includes the post about my book review, by the way. And it was nice to see such an attitude of honesty combined with courtesy in the blogosphere - a place that is lacking in both, oftentimes.

So now Shane reports that his work in youth ministry has led him in new directions. Good for him. I know he must approach local church ministry with the same attitude that he approached blogging. And while I am sorry to hear that some cybersquatter grabbed the Wesley Blog domain name, I look forward to the time when he gets the blogging bug again and jumps back onto the scene with a new site. Shane, blessings on you in your work for the kingdom.

FYI, you can still see what Wesley Blog looked like by going to this auxiliary site.