Collide Magazine

Sneak Peek: The Ragamuffin Man

Scott McClellan - Originally posted Monday, December 8, 2008 -

He’s the worship leader with all the tattoos, including the one that landed him on an episode of L.A. Ink. He’s the blogger who readily admits he’s a ragamuffin soul, who posts family pictures, intimate confessions, and blunt truths about our selfish tendencies and then invites his readers to talk it out. He’s the social media ninja with 2,500 Twitter followers and 6,500 daily visitors to his personal website. In many ways, he’s the Big Man on Campus of the burgeoning faith-based social media scene--the guy who smiles big and laughs easy and always seems to be posting, tweeting, or uploading something new. By now, you know I’m talking about Carlos Whittaker.

I had the opportunity to talk with him on the phone as he made his way home from Buckhead Church, where he is on staff, about his role at the church and the inspiration behind his enormously popular blog, ragamuffinsoul.com.

Whittaker on why Buckhead Church is more than a satellite campus:

Advertisements

When we first came, I honestly thought that I was going to have a hard time being part of some three-headed monster, three-campus thing, but the way Andy [Stanley, pastor of North Point Ministries] has set this up, it's a little bit different than a lot of the other churches that I've seen do multi-site campuses. Buckhead Church is called Buckhead Church for a reason, as opposed to North Point - Buckhead Campus.

I think right there is an initial shift in philosophy, saying: "Your campus isn't just a campus. It's its own church. We want you to be autonomous, we want you to have the freedom to do things differently and change things up.”

[At North Point] there are only three campuses instead of 20. I think that if we went to 20 or something like that, it would start to look a little bit different. The way they do it really works well. I feel like it creates synergy and yet while leaving autonomy.

On how Ragamuffin Soul has evolved:

Initially, it was just a way that my team that I was leading at Sandals Church could get to know me and we could cheat time because we only have 24 hours in a day and so I knew I couldn't have lunch with everybody each week. I literally made my team read my blog and they started realizing what was going on in my life. We cheated time and shrunk the gap in our need to meet face to face--although that's really essential, I didn't have the time to do that.

It started there and then it shifted, obviously. I realized some other people from outside of Sandals Church were reading my blog, and I started getting some more worship-leading questions, and so [Ragamuffin Soul] turned into a community of worship leaders.

I went through this worship-leading phase--it was about a year a half of worship-leading posts. Then I went on a journey [to Korea] to adopt my son and took my readers with me there, and I think at that point is when I realized, "Oh my gosh, this is a lot bigger than I had ever anticipated." And then I started seeing people that were actually--they would tell me this and I didn't believe them until I started to see some stories--people would tell me that their lives were being changed because of things I was doing in my life and then sharing. All I'm doing is sharing and they were taking that authenticity and applying it to their lives.

On how a blog can be like a church:

I honestly get about two or three emails a day from people thanking me for the community--and not for anything I'm saying anymore, because now people are just talking to each other on [my blog]. It's like they don’t even care what I have to say, they just want get in the comments section and find out who’s saying what so they can talk to each other. It's almost like a church. I talked to Terry Storch [from LifeChurch.tv] last week and he told me: "Your blog is actually like an Internet campus, but it's not like a campus of another church. It's its own church, and there's healing that takes place there. There's community that takes place there.” It's just a crazy concept to even try to wrap your head around, but it works and I love it and that's why there's so much passion behind it.

To follow Carlos’s daily thoughts and adventures, visit www.ragamuffinsoul.com.