Brian Bailey, who blogs at leaveitbehind.com, is the web director at Fellowship Church (Texas and Florida) and part of the AlamoFire team who produce social games such as PackRat on Facebook. Together with Terry Storch, terrystorch.com, he has published a book on blogging for church leaders.

Why Blog? Is blogging a toy or a tool? Bailey strongly recommends that churches only invest their leaders’ time in blogging if it is genuinely going to be useful. He suggests that blogging can be used for sharing news, casting vision, reaching out to the community, connecting staff with one another, volunteers and church members, learning from others, spreading the Word.

The book includes practical chapters on getting started, building a better blog, pitfalls to avoid, using RSS feeds, and podcasting.

Bailey intersperses his content with chapters asking five questions with Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church Seattle), Perry Noble (NewSpring Community Church Greenville), Craig Groeschel (Life Church, Oklahoma), Brad Abare and Kevin Hendricks, (Church Marketing Sucks), Tony Morgan (Granger Community Church, Indiana), Greg Surratt (Seacoast Church, Charleston) and Mark Batterson (National Community Church, Washington DC). There’s also a few references to interactions Bailey has had with well known bloggers such as Robert Scoble.

I’d recommend this book highly to any church leaders considering launching a blog or improving the effectiveness of their online work. The tip I picked up and intend to use is including a disclaimer “these opinions are those of Duncan Macleod and not his employer”.