My first post on this blog was uploaded on 31 May 2005. I didn’t have much idea of where it was going to take me, but I think I’m one of those people for whom blogging is a natural medium and so, despite having all sorts of sympathy with those who keep it at arms length, or have abandoned it, I’m not going to stop. Rather the reverse, in fact – I have various plans for developing my blogging further, once I get fully well again.

In five years I have posted 3162 times here, of which more than a third were photos! I’ve also had thousands of comments – one of the most frustrating things recently has been the (hopefully temporary) loss of historical comments, when I was forced to shift from Haloscan to the new Blogger template. I still have the old comments on file, so if anyone comes across a straightforward way to import haloscan comments into Blogger, please let me know. I read and value every comment received.

A handful of highlights:
– Playing a very small role in the SPCK controversy, which led to me getting a mention in Private Eye
– Seeing some of my more autobiographical musings feed into an excellent book about ministry
– Having some of my Peak Oil posts published on Energy Bulletin

There are reams of advice on the internet about how to maximise your blog ratings and numbers, but whilst I did spend time on those a few years ago, I decided that wasn’t the direction that I wanted to take the blog in. This is my thinking space (my pensieve); as such, I have no wish to see it specialising in one area rather than another. That would feel like a form of gagging or self-censorship. It will continue to be a place where I think aloud about my ministry, where I make notes on the films and books and other culture I consume, where I continue to work out the implications of our ecological crisis, where I throw up the things that amuse and delight me. (The one exception to that was setting up my ‘daughter blog’, where my talks and sermons get posted; I’m still musing over whether that is the right thing to have done, but so far so good.) I believe that I have a small but dedicated readership, and that’s enough to keep me going.

In so far as things may change in the future, I am hopeful that I will have the time to write more substantially on theological and philosophical questions, especially book reviews, and possibly film reviews too (in other words, more reviews like this one). I hope to begin that quite soon – I have a particular debt needing paying on that score.

Thank you for reading.