Toongabbie Anglican Church Blog

Review, Web Guide The Sola Panel

The Sola Panel

Saturday 10 May, 2008 · Posted by Ben Atwood

‘Self-absorbed’, ‘banal’, ‘opinionated’ and ‘trivial’ are words which usually come to mind when ‘Christian weblogs’ are mentioned. Indeed, the ‘blogosphere’ (whatever that is) is home to everything from intimate first-person devotions to theological mudslinging. It is generally quite difficult to find Christian blogs that aren’t slanted, self-absorbed, or divorced from reality.

The Sola Panel

The Sola Panel

The Sola Panel is a newish weblog which describes itself as “a bunch of Reformed Evangelical friends who love the five ‘solas’ of the Reformation who want to work together to promote a Bible-driven passion for theology, holiness, and gospel ministry.” You would be forgiven for thinking that this sounds a bit like the inner musings of a tightly-knit Sydney Anglican clique – and, in a way, it is – but the Sola Panel is refreshingly different from many Christian blogs for a few reasons:

  1. It’s collectively authored by people such as Tony Payne, Ben Pfahlert, Sandy Grant, Gordon Cheng, and Peter Bolt, so there’s always a variety of content which appeals to different audiences, from the intellectual theologian to the Christian who just wants a bit of thought-provoking discussion.
  2. Because the authors are generally writers, academics, or ministers, the articles come across as well-written, considered things, rather than emotion-charged, reactionary sentences. The topics are also of relevance to Christians -  no trite ‘On the weekend, I did’ posts, but instead there are discussions of ethics, how to ‘do’ church, reviews of books, and prayer going on.
  3. The content holds the Bible as authoritative, and each author makes efforts to allow the Bible to speak to the topic in question and focus on how this might apply to us.

It will be interesting to see how the Sola Panel develops over time, but it looks to be an encouraging and fruitful use of weblogging. Recommended.

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