So over the past few years I’ve had a number friends who have said they wanted to start a blog but they didn’t know how. There is always the “here is why I have a blog” approach and often people start out saying “i don’t know why I am blogging” or “I am not sure what to say” but others start out pretty well.  

So, because I am kind of a nerd, I went through some of my favorite bloggers and checked out their first post.  I figure, if you want to have a successful blog, learn from the best.  Here is a run down of how some my friend’s first posts: 

  • Uber-blogger Scot McKnight just jumped right in with a post about praying with the church and he hasn’t looked back since.
  • John Chandler went with the “why I named my site the way I did” approach on his first post.  This is a decent approach but you later have to explain your name change.
  • Eugene Cho has terrible archives (sorry dude, its true!) so I can’t really tell when his first post was or what it is about.  But, it looks like it might be this one. 
  • Al Hsu, the Suburban Christian fittingly started off with well, a post about him being a suburban Christian.  Al did do a little bit of the usual “I’ve decided to blog routine” but I’ll let him slide since he’s such a nice guy. 
  • Alan Hirsch, the Aussie blogger wrote a deep, long, and engaging blog post to kick things off in a big, big way.  Check it out here. Give yourselves some time.  It’s deep. 🙂
  • Bob Hyatt, who has been blogging since way back in 2004 and wondered if today he’d be thinking “what were we thinking” about his new church plant.  I talked with Bob last week on the phone and I’m pretty sure that while he probably is thinking, “what were we thinking” he’s also thinking it was a great move to plant his church. Well, done Bob and Evergreen!
  • You have to go way, way back to early… uh… July 2008 to read Gary Alloway’s first blog post. Man, he’s behind the times! Gary had a riviting post about the five reasons he’s starting a blog. Good luck with #5 Gary.
  • Your friend and mine, JR Briggs started his blog on the last day of 2004. Which, apparently was the year documentary.  Little did JR know that was actually the year of the monkey according to the Chinese calendar.

Oh, and I just jumped right in too…