I began blogging in late December as a kind of experiment. My hope was that this would be a forum where people would contribute to rich discourse on a variety of subjects, and where Christians who identify with the ideas of Seeing Gray would pursue what Wesley called, “Christian conferencing.” I was hoping this blog would be a resource for people who had found themselves unable to fully connect with the Christianity they heard and saw on the right and the left. I hoped to provide resources and a safe place to dialog and discuss questions and ideas.

We’ve had a good readership of the blog so far, about 2,000 unique visits per week, sometimes more. We’ve had some rich discourse. I’ve been grateful for all who have contributed to the discussion. I’ve also been okay with the criticisms of sermons - I’ve felt this was actually good for the soul (mine, at least) - a great source of humility! I’ve been okay with the occasional personal jab - again, good for the soul.

But here’s where I’ve become concerned: A handful of people occasionally seem to take over the blog. Sometimes as their own personal soapbox, sometimes in tit for tat arguments with each other, and sometimes in ways that were uncharitable.

I know this is how many blogs work. But my sense is that there are a lot of places you can do this on the web without me hosting it.

I’m reminded of some small groups I’ve led where one or two people do all of the talking, and occasionally go at it or converse in ways that lack the spirit of Christ. When I lead a small group like that I am able to gently ask the dominant voices to let others speak, and then engage the quiet folks in the conversation. And when an inappropriate comment comes up I can raise questions of it. But I don’t have time to do that here on the blog. Most of my blogging time is late at night.

My hope was the kind of discussion we would have here would not require this kind of moderation. So, after talking with several colleagues and staff members, I’ve decided to delete the 40 comments that came through in the last couple of days and suspend comments on this blog for now. I’ll reconsider this later. I appreciate some of the comments that came up over the last couple of days, and I appreciate the passion each of you bring to the table.

I’ll keep posting, but for now, the comments are off. Thanks for understanding. Stay tuned - another post later this week.