Category: Blogging Tips

Looking Back, Looking Ahead: My Blog under Review

~ fundyreformed ~ 6 Comments

Wow. Is January 2008 half way over already? My how time flies!

I’ve been blogging now for 2 years and 2 months (mid November 2005 was when my blogging really started in earnest). In that time this blog has seen 437 posts, over 2800 comments, and anywhere from 104,000 (Statcounter/Sitemeter) to 150,000 (WordPress‘ calculations) pageviews. (My stats start from when I switched to WordPress in July of 2006).

Blogging has definitely been fun. I’ve discovered hundreds of great blogs and been discovered by scores of like minded bloggers. I’ve received encouragement and thanks for what I do, even as I’ve occasionally been criticized or discouraged by others. Through this whole process, I’ve made online friends and I’ve explored many topics I would not have otherwise. It’s been great.

The new year provides an opportunity for me to step back and assess my blog. Some of you are wondering if I’ve really been assessing my blog since it is now mid January and my new year post has only just appeared. Truth be told, we’ve been battling 2 rounds of sickness since Jan. 1 in our house, and life has been busy. Which brings me back to my purpose.

Looking Back (2007)

2007 was a year of multiple blogging personalities for me. In April, I jumped on the Mike Huckabee bandwagon, eventually creating a tumble blog accumulating Huckabee links and videos — Go Huckabee! (On a side note, tumble blogs promise to be the best way for many of you still on the fence — Larry! — to create and maintain a blog with almost no effort. Check out this post about tumble blogs.) Then in the summer, I started a team missions blog, Kingdom Surge.

The competing blogs hindered my focus on this blog, as did daily life with 3, and now 4, kids. With sometimes serious and prolonged debates, this blog can wear me out at times. My own character flaws have also contributed, resulting in the many loose ends left unfinished around here in 2007. I started a series on The Bible and the King James Only Debate, only to get about 1/2 way thru and stop. I have only blogged through 1/5th of Piper’s What Jesus Demands of the World. And I’m not yet finished with my series blogging through my church’s confession of faith. Add to that my series on man-centered Christianity that is stuck in the middle, and my entry into the atonement debate which never actually panned out. (The debate has continued without me).

My mind has always been a haven of loose ends and a hodge podge collection of thoughts. And my blog has reflected this. The dual nature of my blog complicates things as well. On the one hand, my blog chronicles my journey out of extreme fundamentalism and spends a lot of time dealing with various positions and issues related to fundamentalism. But on the other hand, I blog about general Christian topics, Reformed themes, and (now) political ruminations — like most normal Christian blogs.

Looking Ahead (2008)

So here comes 2008 and a chance for me to do a better job blogging. To do this I’ve determined to try to focus more on my own blog’s content. I’ll continue sharing posts that I’ve read and enjoyed (check my sidebar for “My Latest Blog Finds“). And I will interact with other blogs out there from time to time. But I am purposely not going to 1) interact with every comment left on my blog, 2) follow every blog I’d like to as closely as I would really like to, and 3) get drawn into fruitless debates in other venues as often as I have in the past.

If I can restrain myself in this way, then I can try to tie up the loose ends this year. I aim also to continue fine tuning the design and user-friendliness of my blog (which means completing my “topics” page, and perhaps explaining what I think about fundamentalism better). I also hope to deal with other topics that haven’t been thoroughly addressed here but which bear on my general theme. Oh, and I’d love to do some work on my KJV Only Debate blog.

Besides continuing with my missions blog (which needs some work and focus too), I still plan on continuing to blog for fun. That means I will continue to be spontaneous, and I’m sure some people appreciate that from time to time. But in 2008 I hope to finish some unfinished business, with the possibility of gearing my blog up for a transition away from dealing with fundamentalism so much and focusing more on Reformed matters and general Christian themes.

One more note of caution. As I try to become more intentional with my blog, I may post less frequently. I can’t let my blog consume me and take me from matters I really should attend to. I must nourish my spiritual life and lead my family first, and blogging can be detrimental to this.

Before I finish, let me encourage other bloggers to assess your blogging. Be sure you are using blogs and not being used by blogs. No one will be perfect, but we can’t be afraid to focus on real life and let our virtual realities slip.

In my next post, I’m going to highlight the best and the worst of Fundamentally Reformed‘s 2007. I’ll try to be as self-serving as my first post of 2007 was, because hey, this is my blog and it’s fun to look back!

Online Gospel Resources

~ fundyreformed

Today’s online world presents a great opportunity for Christians to spread the gospel electronically. I want to highlight a few online gospel resources here, and encourage you all to share them via email, or promote them on your blogs.

2ways.png

“Two Ways to Live: The Choice We All Face” is an excellent online presentation of the gospel. It uses clear visual illustrations as it presents the heart of Christianity. I really appreciate its perspective and emphasis on following Christ as Lord. It also connects people to many helpful resources for further study.

2 Ways to Live, an online presentation of the Gospel, the heart of Christianity -- why don't you click it to learn more? You've got nothing to lose.I found the button on the right at Justin Taylor’s blog, and it is a great way to link to 2 Ways to Live. Feel free to save the button and use it on your blog.

2 other helpful tools are needgod.com and proofthatgodexists.org. The buttons below can be found at their websites and can be used to link to their presentations. Both are great resources to share with others on the web.

Are you a good person? Proof that God Exists, check it out!

Finally, let me post a video clip of John Piper sharing the gospel in 6 minutes. Video clips like these are something people can easily share and promote at video sites like YouTube. You could easily put that video in the sidebar of your blog too.

Podcasting for Pastors

~ fundyreformed ~ 4 Comments

Most of my readers are aware of the myriad of helpful resources that the web offers. For Christian pastors and lay leaders this means classic Christian books and commentaries, whole Bibles with concordance/verse look up tools, Greek & Hebrew lexical helps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and myriads of helpful Christian articles, not to mention the plethora of thoughtful and helpful blogs. [See my online study tools page, and recommended links.]

There are probably still some people out there, however, who have not yet realized the abundance of audio files available online. There are literally hundreds of thousands of sermons available for free download, with more and more each day.

And then there is the Ipod. I don’t have one yet, but I know how much this has revolutionized audio on the web. Largely due to the Ipod and other digital media devices which rely completely on digital files (i.e. they don’t play CDs or tapes, instead they play digital files you can get online), audio messages now come in podcasts which you can subscribe to. Much like subscribing to your favorite blogs, you subscribe to podcasts and receive the latest audio messages from various preachers, churches or groups.

So for pastors this means…

You have all kinds of access to great preaching which can help improve your own. And with an Ipod or just with your computer, you can easily subscribe to your favorite sources for good preaching. AND, you can create your own podcast! You can spread the influence of your church and your messages via the web. And Christian Podder is one site which will help you upload your own mp3 (audio) files and both host them and create a podcast for you—all for free.

Christian Podder also lets people easily manage subscriptions and synchronize their online list of messages they have favorited, with their computer’s software for easy access. So for pastors, this one site could host your own podcast and help you keep track of other great messages.

And what works for pastors can work for bloggers too of course. If you want to record some audio occasionally, you can then create a podcast to go with your blog. I’m sure there are other sites that do this for free, but Jason Skipper, a blogging friend of mine, recently pointed this particular site out to me.

For those looking for more info on podcasting, check out this helpful explanation from Christian Podder. And you can click here to learn how they can help you create your own podcast.

Recommended Sermon Audio

Before I go I should list some of the great sermons out there you can get for free. For a more complete (and long!) list of recommended online audio sermons and lectures check out the sidebar of Mathew Sims’ blog.

My New Tumblelog

~ fundyreformed ~ 1 Comment

Just a quick post to introduce my new Huckabee blog: Go Huckabee!

I wanted to have a feed of just posts about Huckabee, rather than having them interpsersed throughout my blog finds. So Go Huckabee!, let’s me easily create such a feed (see it on my sidebar, now), while at the same time setting up a separate blog to help promote Mike Huckabe for president.

I just heard about Tumblelogs this week, and they are a great idea. Particularly for those who aren’t sure they want to commit to a full fledged blog, a tumblelog presents an excellent second option. They are designed to basically just be a steady stream of shared links, pictures, videos, quotes, etc. with little to no editorial comment by the blogger. Check out my new tumblelog, and read up on them at Wikipedia. This post on tumblr.com‘s blog is great on explaining the whole conecpt, as well.

The posting bookmarklet is so absolutely simple and easy. In a few seconds you can create a post for your tumbleblog. So now there’s no excuse to not be blogging! Larry Lawton, I’m talking to you!! 🙂

Facebook For Bloggers

~ fundyreformed ~ 6 Comments

Bob Hayton's Facebook profileI’ve taken the plunge! I’ve joined Facebook.

If you are a Facebook user already, you can add me as a friend by clicking on my mug shot to the left. If you are unfamiliar with Facebook, let me try to convince you to join!

Facebook

Facebook is like instant messaging (IM), email, photo/video sharing, and blogging software all rolled into one application. You can have as much content or as little as you want. And best of all, it is extremely safe. You have the option to allow or disallow people to become your friends. And you can share all, some, or none of your information with various friends.

Facebook is also designed for people who already have friends. Sure you can meet new friends through Facebook, but it works best if you already have networks/community and friendships to begin with. For those you know, it makes it easier and more fun to stay in touch. And you can get in touch with old friends (I have already spoken to people I hadn’t seen/written to in over 10 years.)

Facebook is totally unique. Rather than multiple pages or posts, it is one simple home page–your profile. And you can add boxes, which have content to your heart’s content. You can easily edit the layout and remove anything you don’t want. And it is very user-intuitive (i.e. its easy to learn).

Facebook is also growing by leaps and bounds. It is up to over 100,000 new users a day! Yet the policies of Facebook are very careful to disallow any false identities. They don’t let you post pictures or videos you have not created, and are very protective of privacy. So for most of these users, Facebook is a legitimate safe way to connect with real live people they know.

For more insight into the idea that is Facebook, you may be interested in reading the company founders first interview with Time magazine.

Facebook For Bloggers

I’m sure a lot of you might care less about Facebook. Then again, if you are blogging and reading my blog, you are already internet savvy and so you might be interested.

But for you fellow bloggers, there is no reason to avoid Facebook. WordPress.com has a very nice application that brings your latest posts right into Facebook. Each time you create a new post, Facebook also posts a note about it with a link. I’ve already seen some friends view my blog which had not previously, just because I set up Facebook.

For other blogging platforms, there are a variety of blog applications you can add to Facebook. I use Flog, to input my mission blog posts. And through Facebook directly I import all my photo blog posts as notes.

Once you set it up, Facebook can work on auto-pilot, promoting your blog. And periodically you can search for people you know, to see if they’ve joined Facebook. Then again, they might be searching for you too!

And if you focus on Facebook a bit more closely, you can join causes and network with others around common interests. I’m promoting Mike Huckabee through Facebook. And I’ve joined other groups. Already I’ve had someone become a friend through one of my groups, and that might lead them to my blog.

Now granted, Facebook could steal more time away from family and other concerns. Josh Harris has an excellent post on prioritizing family time in relation to Facebook. But it doesn’t have to. I view it as basically an additional email program, with a few extras I can tinker with now and again. Interestingly, Josh also encourages those who are single to get busy and use Facebook as a tool to find a potential mate!

So now you can head on over and sign up, if only to check out my profile. You can always abandon ship if you think its not for you!

Note: the picture above is from the online version of “The Future of Facebook” by Time (Paul Sakuma / AP).

On a completely unrelated note, I’m still looking for a few more guys to join a Fantasy Football league. We probably have another week or two before we cannot do this, without more people.