Since launching TerryStorch.com, I have become passionate about how blogs can truly impact lives. With that in mind, blogging has become a big part of my life as well as Fellowship Church, and I am seeing blogging become a part of a lot of other churches. A church that I know quite well has started a blog, and has seen some great impact with it.

Shawn Wood has created and maintained the Seacoast Church Blog since May of this year.  He first stumbled across www.terrystorch.com and the  idea of  a  Seacoast Church  blog  was on his mind!  A week after we launched the Fellowship Church blog, Shawn launched the Seacoast Blog.  The Seacoast church blog is mainly informational, and the response to this blog has been astounding  with nearly 6000 hits thus far!  Most of the people reading the Seacoast blog are tech savvy, and since the launch he has recruited three volunteers who are interested in helping in the web/tech area .  These volunteers contacted Shawn through the blog email to express their interest!

The Intercoastal, which is the church weekly email newsletter has been promoting the new blog and has been so successful for the blog that the newsletter soon will be going out monthly instead of weekly. It also has not hurt that Seacoast's senior pastor, Greg Surratt, has embraced the idea and mentioned it twice during messages. Seacoast currently has an intranet message board for varying departments, and has found  log-in and updates difficult to keep up. They will soon be moving towards departmental blogs for a better solution of communication. How exciting to see blogs play a big part in ministry communication! Seacoast's Blog will eventually have guest authors (who will be staff members) but for right now, Shawn is ahead of schedule by one month by pre-posting the upcoming events. Blogs will play an even bigger role in the future. Currently with 9 campuses Seacoast is  adding 2-3 campuses in the next year or so and Shawn's vision is  to have  campus specific blogs! 12  blogs sounds like a daunting task, but actually maintaining a blog is much easier than maintaining 12  unique websites. Seeing the creativity Shawn has displayed thus far, he should be up for the challenge!

The blog explosion had begun. Is your church a part of it?