I am still trying to figure out what my role is here at Elect Exiles. As many of you know, for the last year and a half I have been writing at Christ and Pop Culture. More recently I have taken on a larger role there as an editor. On a personal note, I think CaPC has benefited my writing tremendously due to being surrounded by an active community of writers and taking on the added challenge of editing. I grew weary of the random nature of my posts here at Elect Exiles and needed a more challenging and creative platform on which to write. CaPC has proved a fertile ground for such endeavors. Even more recently, I have begun writing a monthly column on Christianity, culture, and videogames for Relevant Magazine. This project has been incredibly rewarding as I believe the world of videogames is a pretty massive field that Christians are failing to adequately discuss, criticize, and interact with. These writing and editing endeavors along with being a husband, pastor, and soccer coach, have left me with little to no time to spend here at Elect Exiles.
At one point Elect Exiles was a fairly well read blog–at least in the sense that we had a number of subscribers, a regular rotation of weekly posts, active contributors, significant weekly hits, and the occasional article that blew up and spawned a lively discussion. However, life got busy for our other writers and eventually I was more or less the only active writer with Kevin Schaub posting the ocassional article.
So where does that leave Elect Exiles now? I have often thought about starting an entirely new blog where I write mostly personal things about life, marriage, family, ministry in the local church, and the like–things that don’t require extensive research and/or multiple drafts. However, most blogs die almost overnight it seems and I don’t see the point in starting something new when I have a blog I could resuscitate. Maybe I should let go of EE–it at least had a handful of productive years. And yet I haven’t been able to shut EE down, I feel like I still have something to say here.
For now my intention is to at least post a couple articles a week here. They will likely be personal rather than professional and reflective rather than academic. I know I have made commitments to this blog many times that I have failed to keep, so I am not making any promises but I do want a place to share what is going on in my life, my family, my church, and occasionally expound on my writing endeavors. Google+ may prove to be a better place for such endeavors but for now neither Facebook nor Twitter is sufficient for what I want to do, so I am going to try to pick EE back up.
So that is the tentative plan. Maybe Kevin Schaub will join in too and share his experiences–it was his blog in the beginning. Who knows maybe Tyler Whitman will resurrect his presence here as well–I can only hope so because blogging with Kevin and Tyler was a tremendous privilege. With that said, sometime this week–hopefully tomorrow, I plan to post a reflective piece on the birth of my daughter, Evelyn Jane Dixon, who was born last week and is precious!
I hope what I write here profits you but if not just remember the internet is a really big place ;)
Dude, I totally feel ya. :) It’s so hard to burn the blog bridges behind you, haha. If you ever consider having occasional guest writers on politics or ethics, you just let me know! ;)
Hope y’all are doing well brother! I miss the old days but thankful for the new days as well! Congrats on the wee one!
Drew –
Just now read this post. Sorry dude. I would love to enliven Elect Exiles in the weeks and months to come. However, I just don’t know if I’m up to the task. I still write quite often, but most of it is devotional in nature or a lesson that I plan to teach to small groups in the church. So, I don’t know if anyone would even like to read that kind of stuff on a blog.
We’ll see. Let me know if you want to develop a particular focus here, and I’ll let you know whether that’s something I could try to do. I mean, sometimes I want to squash controversialist bloggers, sometimes I want to be ecclesial, sometimes I just want to address matters of culture and life from what I have been learning in recent years, and sometimes I just want to write on mission and stuff like that. Perhaps if I would trim the fat, I would feel less like a dude with nothing to write.
BTW, you are welcome to add/delete writers. It’s up to you. It’s definitely your blog now.
Kevin
I’m too busy with life, work, school, and the occasional effort at Erēmos to be of any help here, bro!
Plus, I like to work with people who can spell my name!!
;)