>According to a report published by the Associated Press, the Pope has told priests that they should blog in order to spread the gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other cultures. The following is an excerpt from the press release:

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog.

The pope, whose own presence on the Web has heavily grown in recent years, urged priests on Saturday to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures.

And just using e-mail or surfing the Web is often not enough: Priests should use cutting-edge technologies to express themselves and lead their communities, Benedict said in a message released by the Vatican.

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web,” but priests are “challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources,” he said.

Read the story in its entirety here.

I think this is a great idea. If the Pope is telling priests to blog and spread the gospel worldwide, then pastors, ministers, and missionaries should also do the same. I am glad that more and more pastors are blogging regularly and sharing the good news through their blogs.

If every priest begins blogging and if at least half of their blogs will deal with biblical topics, then the list of Biblioblog Top 50 will be so long that soon we will have the Biblioblog Top 500.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Blogging

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