I have now added a Writings page to the blog. You can find the Writings tab at the top of the blog just to the right of the Stats tab. This page will collect various writings that I have produced over the years – articles, poems, songs, etc. (Maybe I will even get around to posting my doctoral thesis here some day – a guaranteed cure for insomnia!) Right now I just have a few poems posted, but this is an area of the blog that I would like to develop in the future.

The winning entries from the Clever Blogging T-Shirt Contest are now available for purchase. You can read about my major award here. Here is a sample of my winning entry on a men’s baseball tee.

Here are some links if you want to see some of the other designs.

• Light-colored products
• Dark-colored products
• Use on your own product

Feel free to purchase if you want, but, no, I do not make any money from the sales. 🙁   This is just my own humble contribution to the blogosphere. 😉

Welcome Blogging Expertise readers!

Yes, it’s true. I just won 5th prize in the Clever Blogging T-Shirt contest put on by Sarah Lewis over at Blogging Expertise. I feel like Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story: “It’s not just a lamp. It’s a Major Award. I won it!”

My winning t-shirt slogan was this: “Don‘t stop me now, I‘m on a blog roll.” You can check out the other winning entries here. My prize?

Ray will receive Organic Body Wash, Organic Lip Balm and Organic Insect Repellent. (Provided by Tennille Chambers’ Organic Lifestyle Income Opportunity.)

Hmmm, I think I will put these on the same shelf as the Cherry Blossom Shower Gel. 🙂

Thank you, Sarah, for running such a fun contest and for providing such an excellent blog for your readers! And thank you, Tennille, for the great prizes!

For those of you who had trouble accessing or loading the blog the past couple days, I apologize. There was some bad code on one of the pages that was slowing the whole site down. It has now been fixed.

Check out the new and improved Archives page for this blog. You can access it through the Archives tab at the top of any blog page.

At the Archives page you can easily browse through all the blog posts on this site by date, title, or category. Click on a month’s name if you want to read all the posts for a certain month. Click on a post’s title to read a specific post. Click on a category in the sidebar to read all the posts in a category.

It is that simple and should make navigating and browsing this site much easier for all. A big thanks to Sean R. at Geek With Laptop who developed SRG Clean Archives which I am using for this page.

Tim Challies has a great article at his site on the history of blogging and the societal trends that surround it. Here is a key point from the latter section dealing with societal trends:

What we see in this Web 2.0 world is the downplaying of expertise and the rise of enthusiasm; the decline of the position of the professional and the rise of the amateur … Just as the most-visited political blog is not one run by a Presidential candidate or Senator, the most-visited Christian blog is not one run by John MacArthur or John Piper or another major ministry leader … Instead, the most popular sites are run by amateurs who are mere enthusiasts rather than necessarily being experts. Blogs have given a voice to the other people-to the people who elect the politicians or who sit in the pews and are taught by these ministers. Amateurs are gaining wide influence in the information people encounter and in the interpretation of this information. And in many ways this is the way people want it.

This is a reality that makes many Christians uncomfortable. After all, the Bible is clear about the importance of leadership and leadership that is duly-appointed and properly-qualified. We only have to read Titus and Timothy to realize that, within the church, God has dictated that there must be very clear patterns of leadership and authority …

So how do Christians react to a world where the power to teach is now resting in the hands of the many rather than in the hands of the few? How do we react when we see so many people attempting to have an influence over others and an influence that falls outside the usual context of the local church? And how do we react when we understand that these people are not chosen or elected but gain prominence simply by weight of statistics-of numbers of visitors and numbers of links to them?

This is an excellent point, and one that the church surely needs to grasp in today’s world. How about you? What do you think are the advantages and/or dangers of “the rise of the amateur?”

I have now added a Stats page to the blog. You can find the Stats tab at the top of the blog just to the right of the Sermons tab. I will be tracking the number of posts, comments, visitors and pages viewed on the blog, as well as the countries represented. (This is the world wide web after all!) Just click on the Stats tab above to see the monthly and cumulative totals.

Calling all bloggers – I need your help. I just completed my third week of blogging, and find that I am struggling with George Lucas Syndrome.

“What is George Lucas Syndrome?” you ask. George Lucas Syndrome is the compulsive tendency to continue working on projects after you have released them to the general public.

I find that I keep going back to old posts after they have been published and making small changes here and there – tidying up the grammar, reviewing word choice, adding extra ideas that came later.

I am trying to find the happy medium between viewing blogging as a conversation and as a form of written communication. I notice that some high profile bloggers are quite content to leave spelling or grammatical errors or typos or rushed thinking in their posts. This is blogging as conversation. When we talk with someone, we don’t have the luxury of going back and editing our words.

And yet blogging is also written communication, which means that someone may stumble across the conversation weeks or even years after the post was originally published. Should they encounter the conversation as it initially took place, or is it okay to sharpen and clarify your thoughts for future readers?

I would love to get the feedback of some more experienced bloggers here. Do you ever struggle with George Lucas Syndrome?

Related posts:

• Star Wars Pumpkins
• Yoda Promotes Small Groups
• Tim Keller and Darth Vader
• Darth Vader Plays a Mean Harmonica
• Jedi Squirrels

I now have the beginnings of a Sermons page up on the blog. If you click on the Sermons tab at the top it will take you to the Sermons page where I have posted a grand total of one message. I will add new messages to this page weekly. I will also be adding previous messages that were presented before this blog was started.

On Monday mornings I will be posting a quick recap of Sunday’s messages under Sunday Morning SoundBytes. I eventually want to create a Sermons page (tabbed right next to the Resources page at the top of the blog) where you will be able to access full text manuscripts of the messages. Now I’ve just got to learn some more HTML!

I know a number of you are new to blogs, so I thought I would take a moment to share with you why I have decided to blog. I began reading blogs about a year and a half ago and have benefited greatly from the information and interaction that the blog format provides. I am more of a blog reader than a blog commenter, but I have still enjoyed reading and learning from the comments of others.

So why blog? Here are three reasons:

1) Share information: This is one of the primary reasons to blog. There is a lot of information out there, and I appreciate the bloggers who have tracked down pertinent information for me and presented it in an organized and readable format. Information sharing goes both ways. Blogging allows me to share information with you, and you to share information back with me. This way we learn from each other.

2) Connect with people: That is – connect with old friends and meet new people as well. Blogging is a public forum and so any number of people may stop by and eventually become a regular reader/contributor at a particular site. I look forward to meeting new people through this site and hope you do too.

3) Capture and organize ideas: As a pastor I do a lot of reading – not just blogs, but books and magazine articles too. I often have lots of ideas while reading, but unless I write those ideas down someplace, I am bound to lose them. Blogging gives me a place to write down and share some of those ideas along the way.

Why blog? Those are three reasons that have motivated me to get started. What do you think? What are some other benefits of reading or writing blogs?

Related post: Calling All Bloggers – George Lucas Syndrome

You will now find three tabs located above: Blog, Personal Profile, and Resources. At the Resources tab you will find helpful on-line resources in the following categories:

• Bible Study
• Books
• Magazines and Journals
• Ministries
• Missions
• Movies and Music
• Newspapers
• News Media

I hope you find this resource page useful, and I will continue to add to it over time.