Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

My wife Amy has decided to kick off her 29th year of life by starting a blog of her own.  About time!

Check out her (hilarious) inaugural entry: Snow Cones and Ovens. Drop by and leave a comment (and a birthday wish) or two.

(Also – I’m well aware that it’s been two weeks since Day 1 of Heidelberg Musings. Day two is coming tomorrow. Seriously.)

Just doing a bit of a blog-pimp here . . .

For some intelligent, insightful, winsome, and often humorous reviews of live shows here in Columbus, be sure to take a look at my friend Joel’s blog, Just Standing There. He contributes to the local “alt-weekly” paper here (and is pretty much the only reason I pick up said alt-weekly on lunchtime trips to Chipotle. Well . . . him and the “Other Variations” personal ads in the back. Those are disturbingly hilarious at times.)

Check it out . . . even if you don’t live here. Joel will tell you if your favorite band is worth seeing live when they come to your town or if you should just stick with hearing them on your iPod.

Just saw this on Mark Driscoll’s blog . . . read about Re:Lit (Resurgence Literature), an upcoming book imprint from The Resurgence and Crossway. Looks promising.

(Post #2 in the baptism series is coming soon. Seriously. It’s mostly done, actually. Been a busy couple of weeks.)

WordPress 2.2 is go!

Let me know if you run into any problems with the blog.

Hmm.

Joe Thorn says that you guys hate SnapShots (those preview bubbles that pop up when you hover your cursor over a link).
Steve McCoy agrees.

Is it really that bad a feature? I personally dig it and it doesn’t detract from my likelyhood of re-visiting a blog at all. Then again, I do most of my blog reading via RSS on Google Reader.

So tell me . . . should I get rid of ‘em?

I’m breaking up with FeedLounge.

It started out as a whirlwind romance over a year ago, but in its last days was one of those relationships you just know isn’t right, but you try to fix it out of hope and loyalty. FL is beautiful . . . gorgeous, even. Her way of “tagging” feeds instead of just throwing them into traditional folders was the wave of the future. Unfortunately, she’s also a bit of a whore . . . demanding $5 for every month she gives to you. Even then, she doesn’t always perform her expected duties — leaving feeds un-aggregated, giving “Server Errors” every few days and making the site unaccessible for hours, or even days. It just got to be too much. These differences are irreconcilable.

So, goodbye FeedLounge. All things must pass. As Sandra sang, “sunset comes for everyone”. Google Reader is my main squeeze now. She’s not as pretty as you, but she gets the job done, and for free.

Best of luck to Scott and the rest of the FeedLounge crew. Listen to your customers, and act accordingly, or you’ll lose them.

I blog for all the wrong reasons.

When I first started this blog, I was moving from a generic evangelical, uninformed, fiercely individualistic, barely post-youthgroup understanding of Christ to an understanding that was more scholarly, more communal, and decidedly reformed. I was reading and having good discussions, and wanted to share my new-found Calvinist intellectualism with the blogosphere. (I could almost certainly have been lumped in with what Mark Driscoll often mocks as “20-year-old Calvinists with blogs and nothing better to do”, except I was 25 and possibly should have known better.)

Since then, I’ve written about a few things . . . from my family’s search for a new church after moving last year, to the Southern Baptists’ freak-out over a coffee cup, to my disgust with liberal “Christianity”, and varioius other things. Recently, though, I’ve been asking myself two big questions about my blog . . .

1) Why am I doing this?
2) Have I said/am I saying anything worthwhile?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the answer to number 1 is ultimately “pride”, which is sin. I wanted to be the next “rock star” in the reformed blogosphere . . . in league with such folks as Tim Challies, Steve McCoy, or my friend Mark Traphagen. For a brief moment about a year ago, it looked as if my falsely humble blog might be on its way there. Comments were moderately high . . . I was being linked and hat-tipped by the likes of Phil Johnson and Wayne Leman . . . things looked good. It wasn’t long before all that came to a stumbling halt, and I was exposed (even if only in my own mind and heart) as the self-serving ingrate that I am. Readership was down. Comments were down. Thoughts on what to post were almost non-existent. Reading blogs from my friends and acquaintences shows me that I’m still just as uninformed and immature as I was in my pre-Reformed days. Christ seems to be less of a person to be treasured and more of a set of propositions to be cognitively apprehended. My passion is gone.

My pride, however, is amazingly resilient.

(By the way, the answer to number 2 is “maybe at one time, but definitely not anymore”.)

There’s a lot of sanctifying work that needs to be done in my life. There’s a good amount of maturity that needs to take hold. I need to learn how to love my wife as Christ loves the church, how to be a worthy father to my daughter, and how to lead my family as the Lord commands me to. There is much sin that needs to be killed daily.

If and when I manage to get over myself, and then find something that might be worth reading, I’ll write here again. Could be sooner, could be later. If you happen come around to this post, pray for me. There is much work to be done.

(Feel free to come around to my LiveJournal in the meantime. I don’t really post there too often anymore either, but it’s the place to get updates on my personal life and such. And don’t forget my Flickr.)

I like this one a lot . . . plus the last one was causing trouble (I think) with Technorati pinging.

It’s pretty bare for now (for instance, the sidebar links are gone), but I’ll be tweaking in the coming days.

First, a couple of new(-ish) blogs from pastors w/ Jackson, TN connections . . .

Oversight of Souls – Thoughts and conversation on pastoral ministry from Dr. Ray Van Neste, Associate Professor of Christian Studies and director of the R. C. Ryan Center for Biblical Studies at Union University (and a pastor at Cornerstone Community Church, a great Reformed SBC church, in Jackson)

Blind Man’s Fancy – Great pastoral musings from Barry Maxwell, pastor of Southern Hills Baptist Church in Copperas Cove, TX (and a former pastor at my old church, Northbrook).

And now for a few that have nothing to do with Jackson, TN, but are still worth reading . . .

Funky Presbyterian – aka: Greg Blosser, my pastor at Grace Central. I probably mention Greg’s blog more then even he’d like me to, but it’s that darn good. Great thoughts on art, music, theology, ministry, and various other things.

The Resurgence – Mark Driscoll, from Mars Hill Church in Seattle has finally started blogging. About flippin’ time. Only two entries thus far (it only opened last week), but I have high hopes for this one.

Episcoblog – Father Bishop (!) Leo Michael, rector (that’s Anglican-ese for “pastor”) of St. Gabriel’s United Episcopal Church in Springdale, AR. Thoughtful writings from one of the rare doctrinally sound Anglican pastors in the blogosphere.

Josh Harris Blogs – Not the most creative title in the list, but that’s alright. Josh Harris, the guy who kissed dating goodbye ten or some such years ago, is now the senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD. I wish he’d blog more often . . . his entries are great when they show up. Guess he’s busy being the international evangelical sensation that he is.

Anyone have other good pastoral blogs? Share ‘em in the comments!

As some of you already know, Microsoft recently announced that the next version of Internet Explorer, IE 7, will use the well-known orange icon Firefox’s default theme uses for RSS and Atom feeds. As a dedicated Firefox user, I’m pretty excited about the atmosphere this creates for further collaboration among broswer developers to create (and abide by) standards for the web.

You can help to establish the new standard by simply using the icon instead of a text “RSS” link or the graphic. If you haven’t already, check out FeedIcons.com. Download. Customize. Use.

Check the bottom of this site for how I’m using it.

(Tags: RSS, RSS icon, RSS icons, feed icon, feed icons, syndication, really simple syndication)