Category: Blogging

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.

Fundamental Reformers, an Update

~ fundyreformed ~ 7 Comments

The Idea

Just over 1 year ago, I created an aggregate feed which I called Fundamental Reformers. I wanted to bring together the blogs that I see as reforming fundamentalism, and make it easy to follow them or learn more about them. The goal was to make a webpage with the latest posts from these blogs all together in one place. Plus you could subscribe to the feed and be notified each time one of these blogs posted new content.

Technical Issues

At the time, Blogdigger Groups and xFruits.com seemed to provide an easy aggregate feed (for free). But Blogdigger had some problems, and I never liked its format. I liked xFruits but it had problems too. So from time to time since then, I’ve been looking for an alternate method to create my aggregator.

In my latest search I came across Server.com’s NewsApp service (this is what Adrian Warnock uses for several of his blog groups, see sidebar here), that service looked great, but I couldn’t get it to work for me, with the blogs on my list. But then I discovered the solution was in front of me all along. xFruits.com allows me to easily create an aggregate feed, but it also can take any RSS feed and turn it into a static webpage. So I took my xFruits’ aggregate feed and made it into an xFruits’ webpage, and I think I’m in business. Although it still doesn’t list the blogs on the side of the page, it does provide a very easy format to read the blog posts in (with links to the blogs themselves), and if someone clicks around they’ll quickly find a link to a page on my blog with the complete list.

The Aggregator (& A Little About RSS)

So, here is the link to the new aggregator page: Fundamental Reformers. If anyone is interested in linking to it (especially you all who are listed in that feed), you can use this button I created a while back. Copy the button and use it on your blog (make it link to the aggregator, by the way). Fundamental Reformers--the blogs reforming fundamentalism

And for any of you who don’t utilize feeds, you really should. It is like getting an email every time a blog posts, except the post (pictures and all, usually) or an excerpt of it appear in your feed reader program. Google Reader and Bloglines are 2 of the most popular. I’ve been using Google Reader and it lets me follow many more blogs than I could without a feed reader, and it lets me do other neat stuff for my blog.

The List of Blogs

Some of you were waiting for this part. Here is my new list of the blogs reforming fundamentalism.

Many of these are new additions, and there were some blogs that are no longer in operation. Of course right now you’re wondering what are my selection criteria. Why these blogs?

What Do You Mean by “Reforming Fundamentalism”?

These blogs all, from time to time, aim to help reform fundamentalism (the independent Baptist variety). Of course they post on a variety of other topics, but they deal with the problems of hyper fundamentalism in one degree or another. John Chitty, for instance, primarily blogs about all things Reformed, yet he often mentions his past as a hyper fundamentalist. And he has several posts devoted to the King James Only problem.

There is a wide spectrum here in this list, too. Some, like Josh Gelatt, have never had an actual history within the IFB movement, but he is confronted with these issues and addresses them. Others, like the Big Orange Truck and Will Dudding are still quite the conservative fundamentalists. They have a desire to reform and stay within the movement. Scott Kay, Ryan DeBarr and myself, with others, now find ourselves outside of mainstream fundamentalism (IFB). I guess I should use Joel Tretau’s taxonomy and admit I have type A, B, and C fundamentalists in this group.

I didn’t include other blogs because I either don’t quite feel they belong (or that they would want to be included), or most likely, I’m not familiar with them. Sharper Iron is not included because it is so big. It is a mixed bag, so to speak, and of late most of the posts seem not to be directed toward these issues. Lots of the good stuff on Sharper Iron is in the forums anyway. I also want the aggregator to promote blogs that could benefit from the promotion.

(I am open to being convinced that I should add other blogs that you all may know — even to add Sharper Iron. Just comment below.)

So How Does Someone Join This Aggregator?

If you think your blog qualifies, just let me know in the comments here (or on this page). Explain why you think you qualify (unless it is very obvious from just checking out your blog). I can’t guarantee I’ll include everybody, but I will consider you. Oh, and if someone is on the list and wishes to be removed, I’ll be glad to do so.

Now that you have the scoop, be sure to check out the aggregator! Here is the webpage version, and here is the actual feed. Enjoy.AddThis Social Bookmark Button