History of the Blog: Part One

I was maintaining a weblog before I ever knew what blogging meant. In College, circa 1998-2000, I kept a homepage (as we called them then) filled with random musings about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. Those who remember it will cringe a bit as I remind them of the frames layout, the sun in the upper left corner, and the picture of me with bleach blond hair. That’s not really the point though… the point is, I’ve been a this for awhile.

Sometime into Seminary I purchased my own domain (missing kevinyoung.com by about 2 weeks) and began blogging. Ben Mohler, whom pretty much amazes me, first introduced me to the wild world of ‘the blog.’ I’d been searching for Cedarville College alumni and came across his site (the URL and mission of which has changed more times than I count ). But it fired up something inside of me; it opened my eyes to a concept I’d never thought or heard of before: the online web log/journal. I followed his postings for some time and eventually decided that this was something I really wanted to get involved with.

Blogging in 2002 was a lot different than it is today. Though Blogger had been around since 1999, it really was only just beginning to take off. And this was before the Google owned days of Blogger. I think there were other publishing options available but Blogger was free, easy, and others were using it. So I signed up. A few days later I went Pro, which meant I paid a bit of money to acquire more features. I was king of the world! I had a blog (something no one else I knew personally was involved in) and my own URL, www.kmyoung.com.

It didn’t take me long to figure out, though, that more was involved. It wasn’t just about writing content… it was about figuring out what to write about and how to design the look of the site. As you might imagine, both of those are continuing pursuits to this day and beyond. Earlier pursuits may be purused at Archive.org.

The blog eventually evolved into a repository of my own musings on random ministry topics. Though you would occasionally find personal information, life stories, and current happenings discussed, most of them were written through the lense of my relationship with Christ and pursuit of service to Him. Over the years, those have sometimes been nearly impossible goals.

There was one instance, lasting months, where I didn’t post at all because I was in danger of losing my job with a very self-absorbed church over the possibility that I might post something that would be a bad reflection on them. Amazing. (Humorously enough, oft times they really didn’t need anyone else to reflect badly on them… they did well enough on their own ). But considering my vocational ministry more important than my blog, I took the high road and pulled the content and site down for awhile.

The Lord soon released me from that servitude though, and this website was given a new birth of freedom.

Over the last year and a half I’ve tried to take the content here to a new level. Targeted observations about ministry. No holds bared theology. Practical advice for everyone. I hope I’ve occasionally accomplished that. But more importantly, I hope that I’ve been a good steward of my personal call to ministry. I hope that in some way I’ve fulfilled God’s purpose for my 20′s.