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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Shane Raynor's revolution Andrew C. Thompson, Mar 11, 2009
Andrew C. Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
When the winds of history blow away the accumulated chaff of the early years of Internet blogging, very few names will be remembered. For United Methodists, that name will be Shane Raynor.
Shane once dominated the cyberspace neighborhood that Methodist bloggers affectionately call the Methoblogosphere: His widely read Wesley Blog ran from 2004 to 2006.
He eventually took a break from blogging to focus on youth ministry in his local church. But before Wesley Blog had seen its last post, Shane had tied together countless bloggers from throughout the United Methodist connection.
He was only half-jokingly called the “blogfather” by many, due to the way he seemingly created the Methoblogosphere out of thin air. Shane’s evangelical leanings came out unapologetically in his posts, but his spirit of charity drew people of diverse perspectives. Add to that Shane’s insight and his willingness to take on tough issues, and you had everything a techno-savvy Methodist would want: an interactive, online forum to discuss faith and the church from a Wesleyan perspective.
That was then.
But Shane’s back now. And his new Wesley Report is like the Wesley Blog on steroids.
The Wesley Report site is sub-titled “United Methodist News, Life, & Culture.” It offers a wide variety of content that includes a daily survey of Methodist-related blogs, commentary by Shane and interviews with such Methodist luminaries as Bishop Will Willimon and the Rev. Adam Hamilton.
With featured links to other blog posts and news articles, the Wesley Report serves as a user-friendly clearinghouse for anyone interested in the church and spiritual life from a Methodist perspective.
Shane describes the Wesley Report’s goal: “to ask tough questions, explore different sides of issues, bring together the best of mainline/evangelical Christian thought, and promote making Methodism a movement again.”
The medium his message uses is critical. The church puts great hope in its rising Gen-X and Millennial leaders, but sometimes has a hard time connecting with them. Shane understands that most young folks march to the beat of a different drummer. They aren’t going to read the church newsletter and they’ve probably never had a subscription to a magazine or newspaper.
But they will gather around online content that looks sharp, reads smart and invites them into cyber-community. Wesley Report has that in spades.
Make no mistake: Wesley Report represents something crucial to the future of the United Methodist Church. Shane has worked for Cokesbury, and he’s a volunteer youth worker who reaches out to at-risk teens in inner-city Austin, Texas. He knows something about communicating in a variety of forms. And he’s trying to put that knowledge to work in helping United Methodists through the media revolution that is going on around us. The church should listen to him.
The “net heads” writing their own blogs and commenting on others are the bellwether for their generation. They write about worship and Wesley and a whole host of other topics. And they’re Jesus-loving, young leaders (clergy and lay) with the potential to gather in other young sheep by the flock.
Shane’s work is key because he recognizes that role and is doing the hard work of establishing a vibrant arena for Wesleyan Methodism in the online frontier. Connecting young people means equipping them for ministry in a new paradigm. And it means a more hopeful future for the church, too.
Shane recently told me, “Online community should be used to supplement real community, not replace it.” That’s a crucial point. We are flesh-and-blood people, and we need to be grounded in real, physical communities.
But the Methoblogosphere and its motley crew of blogging pastors and laity are already part of local churches. They just need a forum to connect, debate and discuss—and to figure out how to carry the gospel forward in a revolutionary new age.
Shane’s old Wesley Blog was the widely recognized leader among Methodist blogs. His Wesley Report is still new. But its quality is already catapulting it to the head of the pack.
Andrew C. Thompson
But Shane’s back now. And his new 
