DET – 6th anniversary reflection

It is my custom here at DET to take a moment to commemorate the passage of another theo-blogging year. Today marks six years of DET. Drifting back over those six years in my mind feels like a very, very long time. So many things have happened. On the personal side: 2 apartments, one rental house, first-time homeownership, three cars, a cross-country move, and to top it all off in every sense, two little boys. On the professional side: two graduate degrees – going from being a bachelor to a doctor with incredible amounts of reading and writing in between. On the blog side: four Barth Blog Conferences, lots of serials, a bunch of other miscellaneous reading guides and such, and – all told – closing in on 700 posts.

But all this is now in the past. What of the future? I can honestly say that I have come close to shutting DET down in periods of low blog activity (i.e., high offline activity). But I have never done it because I always saw some kind of a future here. That hasn’t changed. I have been very excited this past year to move DET into a more collaborative format where a number of different angles and perspectives can find their voices in the theo-blogosphere (check out the about page for more). So I heartily recommend the contributors page to any of you who have not yet read it (and even if you have, go read it again), and check out some of the new contributor’s posts (each contributor has a category tag in the list on the left sidebar). What’s more, be sure to leave them comments of encouragement, appreciation, and / or – even better – critical engagement!

So on this 6th anniversary of DET’s founding, I want to issue a hearty thanks to all those who have read and commented over the past six years, and who continue to read and comment. I look forward to the conversations that we will have in year seven!

And if you raise a glass tonight, raise it once for good ol' DET!

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Comments

Anonymous said…
I've been a lurker for the past several years and have greatly enjoyed and profited from the blog. So glad that it still exists. Thank you for the gift that it is. And thank you for giving me a reason to pour a pint and raise my glass this evening: "Long live Die Evangelischen Theologen!"
Hello Anon,

It's definitely good to hear from the lurkers from time to time, although I wouldn't mind putting a name to a comment... :-)

In any case, I'm happy to supply you with such a reason. Here's more happy years of blogging and blog reading!
Andy Rowell said…
Good to have the blog so that if there is Barth or related stuff from your Princeton Theological Seminary Ph.D. contacts that you hear about ("Aha! I should really recommend that to other Barth/PTS friends!"), there is a place where it is listed. I often read the reviews you link to. I don't think the blog needs to be updated regularly (e.g. my own blog is the same way) to be useful as long as you are committed to posting stuff you are aware of. It seems to me there are blogs that people blog on every day (like Scot McKnight, Daniel Kirk, and Rachel Held Evans) that are almost like mini-magazines like Christianity Today or Christian Century and Books & Culture (and which require almost a full-time commitment and often end up crashing and burning spectacularly in burnout and personal issues) and have far more uneven quality than the established magazines. And there are blogs which have been chastened down over the years to a more realistic function of connecting readers to worthwhile resources wherever they may be found: journals, conferences, books, and online. I see yours as the latter and thus really valuable to me because I think it is interesting and useful to see what you and your friends recommend. I think there is a need for academics to have something like a blog or Twitter or Tumblr (some other outlet besides journals, magazines, conferences, classroom, Facebook) to update fans (people who want to learn from them) what they would really recommend others don't miss. And Twitter and Tumblr are unreliable an flawed (you can only access 300 most recent tweets in Twitter and Tumblr has worthless support) that blogs are still useful. So don't worry about the haters who say "you should really blog more" or "I have been checking your blog and there is nothing new there." They should get an RSS feeder. Tell them you will probably have something up once a month and if they truly need stuff to read, then they are probably are not likely readers of this blog. I say keep writing your journal articles, and popular articles and books and teaching and if there is stuff where you say: "Hey, some people who think like me or like my stuff should really know about this!" blog about it. This is my own approach to my own blog. My two cents. Warmly. -Andy
Jason Goroncy said…
Happy anniversary DET. I very much appreciate you as a fellow sojouner. Your dad does a great job.
Andy, I agree with much of what you write. But my goal is to fall somewhere in between the options you delineate.

Jason, very many thanks, and to you!
Bobby Grow said…
Congrats, Travis. It's your fault that I became The Evangelical Calvinist, and all because I came into contact with you through DET. ;-) Blessings, man!

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