How We Make it Easy to Come Back

Consistency is the key.

I’m old enough to remember when they were called weblogs¹ before the name was abbreviated to blogs. In my years as an online author and publisher, I’ve seen online writing sites start, thrive, sputter, and die. I’ve launched and buried a few blogs of my own over the years. Much like you can’t call a man a leader unless he has followers, you can’t call a WordPress blog an online publication without online readers. And that is what all of us online editors must remember: we’re not writing to write; we’re writing for our audience. Sola Ecclesia is published for you. We want to make this online theological journal valuable for you and easy for you to come back to.

Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash

So, in the vein of giving you a peek behind the scenes of online publishing, here are three types of consistency every online publication has to provide to serve its readers.

1. Consistent Content - Whenever someone tells me they want to start a personal blog, I remind them that the rule is not “content is king.” The rule is “consistent content is king.” If you stop publishing content, especially if you stop publishing content when your readers expect it, they won’t come back. So, one of the things we’ve committed to at SE is new content weekly. We’re not trying to inundate you. But we are trying to provide a steady stream of consistent content. Right now, you’ll find new pieces published every Monday.²

2. Consistent Topics - Whether they like it or not, every publication is styling itself as a subject matter expert in certain topics. You don’t go to ESPN to read about the volatility of the S&P 500. Here at SE, we’re building an online library of articles around three major topics (with several subtopics) that reflect the general categories of historic Christian education. They are,

   1. Theological Studies

      1. Systematic Theology

      2. Historical Theology

      3. Philosophy of Religion

      4. Ethics

   2. Biblical Studies

      1. Old Testament

      2. New Testament

      3. Biblical Theology

      4. Hermeneutics

   3. Applied Theology

      1. Homiletics

      2. Pastoral Theology

      3. Biblical Counseling

      4. Missiology (including Urban Theology)

      5. Leadership

      6. Church Planting

      7. Contemporary Issues

3. Consistent Point-of-View (POV) - The last thing an online publication must maintain is a consistent POV. The New York Times, VOX, and The Federalist may cover exactly the same topic, but you also know that they will produce radically different content. Point-of-view matters. When you come to SE, you know you’ll get articles written from the POV of a historic Reformed theology that loves the church and sees seminary education best done in local churches. That POV will be an ingredient of all our articles.

This isn’t so much about branding as it is about serving you, our reader. We want to be a comfortable landing spot in the chaos that is the Internet. Even within the sphere of individuals and organizations writing theological essays, we want you to know exactly what you’re going to get when you visit our site or see one of our articles shared on social media.

We want to make it easy for you to come back by providing the consistency you expect from us as our readers.

A Look-Back

In case you missed them, here are some articles that we published since the last time I sent out one of these updates.

• On Choosing Digital Tools and Why Churches Should Cancel Their Livestreams, Yours Truly

• Is Sermon Application Even Necessary?, Matt Cohen

• Exegetical Concerns to Address Before Preaching a Passage, Mark Becton

• Should Pastors’ Conferences Even Exist?, Me Again

• Spurgeon’s Pastor’s College: A Model for Pastoral Training, Aaron Lumpkin

Speaking of pastors’ conferences, we’d love to see you at our inaugural pastors’ conference at the end of August. There is still room. Several of our faculty and visiting guests will teach on different topics related to the intersection of orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice).³ This is a great event for ministry leader teams of any size or kind.

Coming Up

In the coming weeks, you’ll see regular essays and a number of interviews. The interviews are an interesting genre for me to edit. During our last intensive, I sat down with Carl Ellis first and then Matt Cohen and Tony Merida. I interviewed them for thirty to forty minutes and am now turning those transcripts into posts. So in the coming weeks, you’ll definitely see some essays on the history of the African American church in America, along with pieces on Christ-centered preaching.

1. I was an early blogger on Blogspot. Though, in my wisdom, I never had a MySpace site.

2. In fact, they are usually published a little bit after midnight on Monday morning. So, you night owls can get a sneak peek of the week’s new content if you stay up late on Sunday night.

3. I’m giving a short lecture on the importance of mentoring in the local church.