Abraham Piper has been criticised for his 22-word posts. I’ve a less ambitious word limit of 250 and desire to justify briefer forms of blogging:
- People will read: People don’t read long posts. I write to exhort my readers to come to Christ or walk closer with him. Shouldn’t I make that information as accessible as possible?
- I’m not Jonathan Edwards: I have much less of interest to say than the greats, so I’ll give them the words. I’ll keep my posts the size of my intellect. It’s good for my humility.
- I’m not Paul: I want my readers to read their Bible more than they read me.
- Long posts can be discriminatory:
- Against workers (including mums): At Uni I could read essays about Justification. Now on placement in school, I struggle to do Bible. Busy people need shorter posts.
- Against the less educated: It’s hard for us middle-class evangelicals to get, but some people find reading quite a chore (that’s why video and audio are great).
- Against “lay” people: The reformed blogosphere is dominated by pastors and pastor wannabes. Such people have the time and inclination to read long posts. “Lay” people don’t. Bloggers should read the greats and summarise for the masses. Pastors should read the greats themselves.
- Variety is great: As I said at Piper’s blog, the Bible is a varied place. Why shouldn’t Christians be varied? Some are called to be 22 word bloggers, others are called to be 2,000 word authors. All are Christ’s.
Feel free to disagree.
Tim Wilson is a primary school teacher in the North East of England. A Bible-believing Christian, he's committed to putting Jesus at the centre of everything he does.
3 comments
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May 5, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Dani
Good points!
September 4, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Adam
Tim,
As you know I’m new to the the blogging world. I found your thoughts interesting! However, I guess the length of a post should be guided mainly by who your intended audience is and not so much by a prescribed word limit.
I would also caution against the notion that in today’s busy world people don’t have time to read long articles. I believe that this is a fallacy as (a) people in general make time for what is important to them (b) people are more than happy to sit and watch a movie for a few hours.
I also think that Mark Driscoll has demonstrated that in certain contexts length is not an obstal to engaging people, but rather an necessary ingredient if you are going to meaningfully offer gospel truth to them.
September 6, 2008 at 8:36 am
Tim Wilson
Hi Adam!
Sorry it took so long to authroise this post I’ve only just got my internet back.
I agree and since I wrote this I have written longer posts than my prescribed limit if needed. I agree that the idea of shorter is always better in this busy world is a lot of baloney. When I preach I never keep to the 20 mins most preachers in our church stick to, but because it’s Biblical content people don’t care.
However, the medium makes it better to go shorter.
Reading on the internet is difficult. I’ll search monergism.com and find an excellent article but half way through have to either leave it or print it off because my eyes can’t concentrate. I’m motivated to do it, but I can’t necessarily keep going.
Moreover, people surf the web and so have been proven to spend a short amount of time on a page. For example, the average visit length here is 52 seconds. That really isn’t long for me to get my point across.