Blog Review (1)

On occasion I will post a review on a blog I either visit on a regular basis or have by chance intersected its path. Reviews will be brief and attempt to describe, contextualize and express an opinion about the work. Each blog I review will be rated by the following blog-o-meter system.

*blog must die
**resurrect this blog
***the wavering blog
****very good blog
*****excellent blog
If you feel your blog is worth considering for an upcoming blog-o-meter rating you can leave a link to your blog in the comments.


Stephen Shields of emergesque'

Stephen Sheilds’ blog ‘emergesque’ has a blue-easy appealing layout, visually simple and effective. No amazing graphics of any kind, but appealing nonetheless. It's a two-column layout, very tidy and the links include the usual recent posts and sites plus a long list of articles Stephen has written.

The blog boasts a very complete "bio" page with excellent insight into Stephen’s background. Stephen is marketing manager for USA Today. He is married and the father of three daughters. He was on staff with Brian McLaren at Cedar Ridge Community Church from 1999-2001. He is the founder of faithmaps.org and moderator of the faithmaps discussion group.

He comes out of the Methodist heritage where he says he started following Jesus at eighteen years of age. Stephen has been blogging since June 2002 and says the reason he blogs is because he loves to write and pull things together from different areas into a unified whole: example: neurology, philosophy and discipleship.

On inspection of ‘emergesque’ it soon becomes obvious that Stephen is a great thinker. Become a regular visitor of ‘emergesque’ and you’ll quickly learn a new language. Words like praxis, transpropostional are communicative words Stephen has adopted and uses regularly in his writings. You can depend on a daily post from Stephen and this is important for readers to become and remain ‘regulars.’ His entries vary in length and his writing style is intelligent, simple and direct with interesting links that usually take you deeper into his subject.

The blog is mostly of the emergent church venue but at times ventures into technology, neurology, and philosophy. Stephen has put a great deal of thought into building an appealing site of his own self-expression that allows a visitor to have their own unique emergesque experience as well.

On my blog-meter emergesque gets -*****stars