As I have mentioned in my blog, my previous life as a student of sociology of religion has stood me in good stead in my current profession.  For example, today it struck me that what we need in the nonprofit blogosphere is a bully pulpit exchange.

In mainline North American protestant congregations, the "pulpit exchange" is a widely practiced custom.  For example, in a given town, there might be a Sunday in which the Methodist pastor leads the service and preaches a sermon at the Presbyterian church, while the Presbyterian pastor takes the pulpit at the Congregational church, the Congregational pastor takes the pulpit at the Episcopal church, and so on.  Sometimes Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, Muslim imams, or other clergy are shuffled into the mix as well.

This can be a lot of fun, since everybody gets to see some new faces and get exposed to some new ideas, not to mention that it's nice gesture toward ecumenical (or even interfaith) understanding.

At any rate, today I had the notion that a blog is a kind of bully pulpit, and that it would be fun and possibly even edifying for nonprofit bloggers engage in a bully pulpit exchange.  In other words, we should get a group of folks who work for or with mission-based organizations, throw their names in a hat, and randomly assign each one to be a guest blogger for a day on somebody else's nonprofit blog.

I'd love to see everyone publishing short blog articles on some aspect of his/her work that might affect a completely different area of the nonprofit sector:  environmentalists posting to child welfare blogs, economic development advocates posting to public health blogs, international disaster relief workers posting to historic preservation blogs, education activists posting to election reform blogs, and nonprofit technology assistance providers posting to human rights blogs. 

Just for one day.  Just to see what happens.

Your thoughts about this experiment are eagerly solicited.

So are you still wondering what a bully pulpit is?  For enlightenment, let us turn to that great savant of historical linguistics, Dave Barry:
(Theodore) Roosevelt was a Man of Action, not words.  The public loved the way he took on the business men who ran the big monopolies, or "trusts."  Roosevelt would invite these these men to the White House and speak very softly, forcing them to lean forward, straining to hear, whereupon Roosevelt would hammer them over the heads with a big stick that he always carried.  This was just one of his famous mannerisms, another one being that he often referred to the presidency as a "bully pulpit." Nobody knew what on earth he meant by this, but nobody asked him, either, because of the stick.  

- Dave Barry Slept Here
I trust that this makes everything perfectly clear.