Al Mohler Notes

These are my notes from the keynote session at GodblogCon in Las Vegas. They are rough notes, not direct quotations. I apologize in advance if I accidentally misrepresented anything.

Opening Remarks, John Mark Reynolds… says “skepticism is a Christian virtue.” That’s the philosophy of the Tory Honors program (a great books degree program).

Introduction, Dustin Steve says… Las Vegas is a city of promises.. but they often come up short. For many, new media works the same way.

Some fellow Christians see us chasing new media as if the medium is more important than our message.

What do GodBloggers bring to new media? Teleology. Purpose. We understand that things pass away. Cutting edge technologies today will be replaced by cutting edge technologies of tomorrow.

This expo is more than just another tradeshow. It represents the birth of an entirely new industry… that will change the way news is distributed, ideas are exchanged and stories are told.

Our motivation for blogging is not rooted in technology, hype, or hysteria. It is a high calling for us.

Throughout history, Christians have engaged in culture through a variety of media with one message.

We need think how we ought to convey the timeless message of Christianity through this medium.

Keynote, Al Mohler says..

It is an incredible anamolie for a Southern Baptist to be in Las Vegas… especially when I tell people

“We are here in LV because we believe that the Lord will hold us accountable for our stewardship in this new media.”

“We come to this place of deception in order to talk about the truth.”

Calvin Coolidge had very little to say and he was proud of saying very little. When he died, Dorothy Parker was told, “Calvin Coolidge is dead.” She said, How can you tell?

The Christian faith is tied to words. To be a Christian is to bear a responsibility to communicate, and to communicate in a way that bears witness to the truth of what we believe.

Christianity and the mandate of communication—imago dei. We are linguistic creatures—we communicate in symbols and abstractions. That must be at least a part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

The gift of language is one of God’s good gifts. Genesis three describes our communication difficulties. Sin affects every dimension of our lives, including communication.

Communication can now be measured in terms of whether it is a truth or a lie.

Biblical faith involves words.

God forfeited his own personal privacy so that his own creatures might know him.

We are here [at godblogcon] because we have confidence that God has spoken to us. Before we spoke, we heard. Before we speak, we are confident that we will be heard.

Francis Schaeffer’s most important book… He Is There and He Is Not Silent. I read that when I was fifteen and I don’t know how much I understood. I lived on the title for a long time.

The incarnation is more than communication, but it is never less than communication.

The church is a speaking and communicating people. Teach, learn, preach, tell.

The church is a communicating people of urgency. We are to be ready to speak. Ready to give an answer.

Romans 10. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. Speaking, hearing, word.

“Wherever you go preach, if necessary use words.” Words are always necessary. Let our words be righteous, true, but let our words be words.

The missionary movement is a wordy movement. It is more than that, but it can’t be less than wordy.

2) Christianity and the technologies of communication
Heb. 1 God himself utilized various means of communication. A pillar of fire. A column of smoke. Balaam’s donkey. God uses whatever mechanism is to his holy choosing in order to communicate. Tablets. Scrolls. Letters. Books and the early age of the codex, a book between covers.

The jewish people were among the most literate and literary of the ancient world. And continue to be.

The first four centuries of the Roman empire, nearly all of the written material is Christian material.

Paul warns that rhetoric is not to overcome the message. He uses a classic Greek rhetorical style to suggest that you can’t trust rhetoric.

Guttenberg press was the emergence of a technology whose future was very uncertain at the time.

Books are less expensive now than they have ever been in all of history—especially in terms of consumer buying power.

Jerome was able to pull the library together because of some rich patrons.

Gutenberg made the cost of a book go down, but it was a massive undertaking to produce a book.

It was the movement it became until it became unstoppable. If you can do this with one press, you can do this with many presses.

Luther was one of the first people to publish pamphlets. Normal people could hold in their hands what was previously only available to the elite.

300 years after Gutenberg… first newspaper… nothing like freedom of the press… Kings knew printing press was not to their advantage, and they were right.

About half of all material printed until about 1900 was explicitly Christian material. Devotional, theological, moral…

Go back to the highwater mark of printed age in Victorian England. 16 daily newspapers in London.

Spurgeon’s sermons preached on Sunday were available by Wednesday. Called “penny sermons.”

The average Victorian home had at least three books. KJV. Shakespeare’s Plays. Pilgrim’s Progress.

Mass market paper backs were originally an embarrassment to publishers and early authors. Paper covers were undignified.

30% of all books published now are never in hardcover, only in trade paperback.

Radio had many early adopters. It spread very fast. It’s secret was its simplicity. Early Boyscout movement had the badge: how to create a radio. People discovered that they could listen while they did other things. Radio allowed communication to be part of the background noise.

30% of people who listen to radio are doing so while they are driving.

It can be used for good or for ill. Christians have often misused radio for hateful speeches.

Revolution of the cassette tape came in the 1970s. And finally there is didactic material available.

Film is often an embarrassment to Christian communication because of two great deficits in the Christian community: money and artistic ability.

Microprocessor changes everything. It is made out of silicon. Sand! And a little bit of wire. It is beyond inexpensive. It is freely available almost anywhere.

Just twenty years ago, you’re looking at the introduction of the IBM pc. And even then IBM wasn’t sure most homes needed one. The market was to nerds. They thought businesses might consider the PC dangerous.

78% have immediate access to a personal computer. The younger you go, the higher it gets. It is just as likely that an adolescent will have his own computer as that he will have his own tv (almost one to one).

Current Rolling Stone has an interview with one of the founders of the internet. It was anything but inevitable that there would suddenly be a system for connecting normal people to this, much less making it possible for anyone to find anything.

We needed the necessity for an economic incentive to drive this. That was apparently email. If you have the capacity for email, then you have the capacity for an internet browser.

Blogging platforms are just seven years old. Ipod is only 5 years old.

You are not human anymore if you are not pod. Cogito ergo pod.

1990 new media vs. old media. Old world was atoms. New world was bits. Old world was static and very expensive. Highly edited because it was highly controlled. New media is poorly edited, relatively edited, or completely UNEDITED. Often, nobody sees it. That’s the problem with blogging. You are posting to the world, what no eyes have ever seen. It is always possible to say something colossally wrong.

Control by elite in old media is becoming even more so with the big conglomerates. New media is democratic in the same way that the telephone is democratic. Everyone has access to the telephone. There is no way that the gov. can keep up with 5 billion people who have access to a technology.

Old media is old generation.
New media is new generation.

There is no sixteen year old in America that can’t have a blog or a myspace page. It isn’t even remarkable. They have the expertise and the time and they are really good at. They can tell us what breakfast cereal they had this morning.

Old media hires creative talent. New media IS creative talent.
Old media was always delayed. The process requires delay.

New media supplanting old media?
1) It’s never as fast as its prophets predict. Television is still a very valuable commodity. Newspapers are declining, but profits are not. More books are being sold right now than ever before. Radio is still a hot commodity because you can multitask. When you blog, are you blogging in silence? [I do…]

WORD OF CAUTION: Don’t forget old media! If you want to reach large, strategic portions of the population, you have to use old media. New media is highly segmented. Old media is mass market.

TWO METAPHORS: Wild Wild West. Unclaimed, untamed territory. There is no sheriff and this is a problem. It doesn’t mean we don’t go there, but it means we need to be careful.

In new media there is a tremendous danger of misrepresentation and manipulation.

Making mistakes in old media is costly. In new media it is just not that way yet!
Should Christians go into the wild wild west? YES! But don’t be stupid. There isn’t a sheriff out there.

It is a mission field.
Concern: quality. Pay attention to quality in terms of the content (more so than images, etc.)

Christians and the ethics of communication. Our words will judge us. James warns against the power of the tongue (and printed word by implication). Chrsitians are to be compassionate, courageous truth tellers. This is just as true for the blog as for the book. Any media can be misused. A book can be Mein Kampf or the Bible.

We need to make very certain that we are not manipulating. We should persuade, but not with half truths and faulty logic.

We need to resist snarkiness and sarcasm and amusement.

Quality. Credibility. Accountability.

In old media, the accountability was always who can fire you if you get it wrong. In new media is you get it wrong, there is no one who can pull the plug.

We need to make sure that our blogs are accountable to the Christian church. Someone ought to be able to call us on this. Our fellow Christians in the local church need to be reading our blogs and holding us personally accountable.

Credibility must be personal. There should be no anonymity. Walter Cronkite was a real person. We knew who he was, where he came from. We knew his story and it gave us a filter for how to listen to him.

Anonymous blogs are a scandal. More about me: My name is Daniel. That is a crime.

Intellectual credibility. We must make serious arguments. We can’t post something and just say, “Isn’t that stupid.”

This is a time for serious intellectual engagement from the Crhsitan community and that means a rhetorical argument.

Regardless of length, make an argument. Put yourself on the line. Don’t just be a commentator. Be accountable to the larger world of

Cultural credibility. This is a big issue. We need to talk to people where they are.

Theological credibility. Don’t be a heretic! If you are going to pose as a Christian writer, know what Christianity is! We need that on a bumper sticker. Don’t Be A Heretic.

We need to have technological sophistication and credibility. Our links and pictures need to work.

Don’t write anything you don’t want your parents, children, friends, or pastor to read. Use language that you can live with over time. Write for more than today.

Someone, somewhere is going to find your blog in the future. Don’t do things that will embarrass you.

The digital generation is the most unevangelized generation since the beginning of the 19th century.

Blogging is here to stay. The revolution is going to expand. It is the wild, wild west. There is no sheriff, but we will answer.