Why I Blog

For the past few weeks I’ve been writing a different blog post once a week. I’ve received some positive feedback from many of you – and thanks to the ability to track visits to my blog I know many people have seen and read what I’ve written. Thank you so much for reading what I have to say. Most of it has come from thoughts presented to me while helping lead a Story Formed Life course at crossroads, but other thoughts have come to me as gifts from the sprit so I can share with you what I’ve been learning, struggling through, and being presented with in hopes of being a blessing to you and your faith as well.

Today is a day I’ve had circled on my calendar for a while now. My friend, Justin Boh, and I set out two months ago to create a place where we can share our idea with others and have others share their ideas with us. We spend countless hours online everyday, and most, if not all of it, is spent on things that aren’t very productive. There is a lot of content about God, Jesus, faith, and the like – but much of this is hit or miss. A lot of it isn’t aimed at a younger generation who are thinking about things on a deep level.

And so we created The Berean Complex.

We aim to do a few things, and I thought I’d share with you, the folks who have been reading these for the past month or so, why I write.

• I write as a way to share my thoughts with as many people as I can. I don’t get the opportunity to talk with many of my friends on facebook on a face to face level. A lot of people are old friends from high school, still others live outside of the Cincinnati area – and while we may have met serving at a young life camp and shared a month or more of our lives together, the distance just seems to drive us apart. I hope that the things I post online can be challenging – maybe presenting a side of the coin you’ve never thought about before.
• I write as a way to be a blessing to others. 1 Corinthians 14 talks about coming together with a hymn, or a word of instruction, a tongue or an interpretation. While the internet isn’t the best place to come together – it’s a way for me the share what the Spirit is teaching me and a way for me to bless others.
• I write as a way to organize my thoughts. While I may not take readers from point A to point B the best [I write more like a rollercoaster… I go through a lot of loops and twists and turns, but eventually get to where I need to go] writing is a way for me to put down on paper what I think about things. It helps me nail down a personal theology and while that theology will probably change and evolve over time, at the moment, it helps me say what I believe to be true.
• I write as a way to chart my growth. I really look forward to looking at my writing five years from now and realizing how stupid I was. I believe that as I grow in faith my thoughts about topics will grow and evolve as well. I want to give the girl that ends up with the gift of showing her who I was before we met. I want to be able to show my future children how stupid their father was when he believed all these crazy things.
• I write to practice discipline. I’ve never been super disciplined. But giving a friend the ability to give me a swift kick to the nads when I don’t post something on time is a great way to start becoming more disciplined. Writing blog posts, or being disciplined in general isn’t going earn my salvation – but like a solider entering basic training, building disciplined is a way to train myself to listen to my commanding officer better.

I thank all of you for reading these the past few weeks. From here on out most of my work can be found HERE Please look for content there, and "Like" become a fan of theThe Berean Complex on facebook to get updates about content there. Our hope for the future is to find like-minded people and have content updated on a regular basis. Of course when I want to post something on my own, I'll put a link to my personal blog as well.


Maranatha,


Mark