Nevermind

Ok, i take it back. I just couldn't bring myself to feel good about starting a blog series whining about commercials. Any way i cut it it's still complaining, and i think if Jesus had a blog He wouldn't spend His time griping about commercials that disrespected him. Of course, he would have needed a blog and a television, or else he wouldn't have any commercials to complain about. Unless he went to a friend's house.

So if you are an executive or a marketing professional, I politely request that you respect the essence of Christmas in your holiday advertising. But beyond that, i don't think there's anything constructive i can say.

Stupid Holliday Commercials

I'm going to try to do this one lovingly, without spite or bitterness, but i think i'm still going to do it. Tis the season of one of my pet peeves - really lame Christmas commercials, and i plan to chronicle this year's crop here. For me, it's the ones that have nothing of Christmas left in them. My favorite from last year: "Happy Honda Days." This year's first installment: "Happy Holi-duh" (Hundai's new favorite word is "duh.")

For some reason i don't mind companies using Christmas to sell their product, as long as they leave some shard of the real thing intact. Something about love, or families, or giving, miracles, anything. Just more than a choir singing "duh duh duh duh duh, duh duh, duh, duh." This is a day that celebrates an event held sacred by about a third of the world's population. Can we show it a little respect, please?

It's gone

For any of you who might notice, my other blog with my old sermons on it is gone. Traffic to it was dismally low, indicating that it probably wasn't doing anyone much good. Realistically, would a person in need of spiritual guidance really take the time to read one of my long sermons? And i posted to it so rarely that probably most of the people who would have benefitted from it would have lost interest between posts. And, after reading an article about the perils of sermon plagiarism, the thought of having my old sermons out there seemed even more needless.

So yeah, it's gone, in case you noticed.

More Content

I've finally made the leap! I've been thinking for a while about adding a third collumn and RSS-ing some of my favorite blogs in it so that visitors here can quickly see what's new there. I figured something that could make my site more usefull and make people aware of some other good blogs couldn't be bad. So check out the feeds on the right, and if you have a suggestion for a good blog to add to the list feel free to tell me about it in a comment. I'm sure i'll get about three zillion suggestions but i figure it can't hurt to ask, right? Anyway, i hope this site helps connect you to what at least a few thoughtful people are saying out here on the web about life and ministry.

Automatically importing blog posts to facebook

Ok, so first i had blogger. Then i got a myspace and saw that there was room for a blog on it too. I posted a little, but i really don't like having two blogs. Then i got facebook too and it's basically set up to have it's own blog as well. Well, i finally figured out that i can set up facebook to automatically import blog posts from my blogger blog! My virtual reality has become slightly more integrated :) If you're in the same predicament, just go to your "my notes" section on facebook and there will be an option to import notes from your blog if you just type in your blog address. Now if only myspace would do the same thing . . . .

The problem of ministerial blogging

It's been exactly a month since i blogged anything substantial. Ironically, i've been getting more hits these days, probably because of the frenzy of new links to my blog created by everyone posting the list of bloggers who participated in that Christian bloggers survey. The increase in people trying to read what i have to say combined with the decrease in me saying anything is frustrating. Part of it is always busyness, but i think the big thing is a problem i'm not going to be able to completely fix - it's not easy blogging as a minister. Most of what i'm passionate about, what i read about, and what i could write about has to do with ministry. Some of it is abstract enough to blog about, but a lot of it, and usually the best material, has to do with real stuff i'm facing in my ministry - my concerns, struggles, theories, and victories. And since churches and ministries are made up of people, all of these things are directly related to real people that i know - which means i've got no business airing my opinions about these things on the internet. Unless of course i was blogging anonymously, but i'm not.

One of the primary ideas behind blogging is creating a window into a person's experiences in the world - but as ministers who genuinely care about the people they interact with, not to mention being obligated to protect the confidentiality of those people, there's actually very little left of our lives that's OK to blog about.

So i guess i'd better read another book to review :)

More hits

I'd probably get a lot more hits if i'd post more often. But i have no time! So in desperation i resort to petty tactics like posting about not having any time to post. It's a shame, i've got some good material lying around . . .

My First "article" on THEOOZE

Ok, it's really not much, and i didn't even get the idea for it myself, but I'm really excited that THEOOZE thought it was good enough to publish as an article. Here's the link:

CIVIL RIGHTS AND A CREATION WORLDVIEW

Finally fixed it

My apologies to the youth ministry blogring and all its users - when i changed over to blogger beta it deleted the code for the ring links and its taken me this long to get it back on here. Luckily it appears no one was checking up on me. But i didn't escape unpunished - my hit counts have been lousy lately and i assume its partly due to that.
God Bless.

Just a quarter?

Hello everyone,
I just looked at my salvation army kettle and its still empty. If you could "drop in" even a quarter, it would be awesome. the link is at the top of the page and looks like a kettle :) Thanks!

My very own Kettle

Today I got an e-mail that the Salvation army is now doing "virtual" kettles - and I got one for my blog! I'm actually really excited about this, because i know it's getting harder for them to find "physical" places that will let them set one up. I never thought I'd have a "space" that i'd be able to let them use. If you could donate even the equivalent of some pocket change - I'd really appreciate it. Just click on the link on the left.

If you want to put a kettle at your own blog - check them out at www.redkettleklub.org - and then let me know that you did. I just set mine up like a business one and put my blog name as the name of the business, i hope there's nothing wrong with that.

Labels!

Hey, check out the new labels list. This is a really cool thing for me since i blog more about what i think than what i do, so i'm glad they can be categorized by topic and not just date. I had actually considered switching to typepad so i could get this feature - but Blogger saved me the trouble.

Ok, so only a month of silence

I guess i'm finally back again. At the beginning of september i finally finished work on my capstone project for my master's, so life theoretically should have slowed down a bit as i am out of classes until the end of november. Ironically, even though i found time to blog during classes, once i was out it seemed to get prioritized out. I did manage to keep the house somewhat cleaner, though. But then this weekend on the way home from our denomination's youth worker's conference, i realized that i really do miss blogging. So maybe i'll be more regular now.
I'm still not really sure why i blog, though. The eg0-maniac who believes the world is hanging on her every word should be repressed. So should the ego-maniac who believes that if she keeps blogging, eventually the world will begin to hang on her every word. But i haven't found any serious fault yet with the part of me that just likes the thought of having interesting thoughts out on the web for people to see. Maybe something i say will start a thought process that will help someone else. And, perhaps most of all, i just like being part of the conversation on a bigger scale than just the people i see in person. So i guess that's a good enough reason to justify the time.
May God be with You.

I'm Ba-ack!

Ok, this post is based on the potentially flawed and pride-induced assumption that someone out there reads this blog regularly and has missed it these past several weeks. But i guess it's possible so i'll run with it.

Probably not a day passes that i don't think of something i could blog about, but i'm not always at a computer at the time. But, even when i get to a computer, i usually have something else that is both urgent and important to do. So for a while i limited myself to blogging only on my day off. That worked great for a few weeks. Then i discovered that my apartment looks much better if i clean it on my day off instead of blogging and other computer stuff. Then i discovered that cleaning my house takes all day and still doesn't get finished.

So, for the past few weeks my house has been much cleaner but the blog has been neglected. I guess it was worth it. But now i have a few minutes to blog about some of the things that have been simmering during that time, and to reassure my hypothetical regular readers that i do still exist and i don't intend to neglect the blog forever.

So what's been going on in my head?

• I read (for a class) Steve DeNeff's book Whatever Became of Holiness, which i highly reccommend to any Christian who seeks to follow God with his or her whole heart. I'm not sure if anyone's ever heard of this book outside of the Wesleyan denomination, but it is incredible. If you're anything like me it will make you seriously stop and think about where you are in your Christian life, and it will make you thirst for more.
  
• I've been pondering why our American culture has so many areas where direct communication is inappropriate. This makes it very difficult, it seems, to establish honest, open relationships or to address and solve many problems.
  
• I've wondered whether gardening is a spiritual exercise or just a hobby.
  
• I've discovered that blogging makes you especially succeptible to pride. You only blog if you assume that someone else will want to read what you say. Often you blog because you think other people would be better off if they would read what you have to say. And after you've been blogging for a while you start to wonder if it could lead to a career as an author. Even if you didn't have any desire to be an author before - you can end up fancying you'll be the next Donald Miller.
  
• I've wondered if buying an MP3 player would be an act of spiritual discipline because it would allow me to listen to Christian music that i enjoy in my car (as opposed to the radio options of oft-questionable secular music or christian radio that annoys me), or if it would be yet another frivolous purchase in the face of world hunger.
  
• I've wondered if buying a nice, new, leatherbound Bible would be an act of worship (since a nice Bible honors the sacredness of the Scriptures), or if it would be frivolous (see above) or prideful (look at me, i'm such a nice Christian, i have this nice pretty Bible).
  
• I've wondered whether keeping my house clean is a spiritual discipline or a distraction from seeking God and His kingdom.

On a roll . . .

And another : Wright off the bat

Blog of Interest

If you like my blog you might also like this one : Living Between the Trees. Not many posts yet but good stuff.

Things I Might Post About One Day

So, this is partly a memo to myself to remind me of potential future topics, and maybe a "teaser" for the rest of you. Feel free to comment and suggest additions. :)

-Real/appropriate patriotism.

-my obsession with any new "toys" i get and how i always think everyone else wants to hear about them

- when do you start to "feel" like an adult

- why i believe in happy endings

Attempted Philosophy

Welcome to my new blog! I've developed a tendency to think of myself as a philosopher since i'm always thinking and questioning things. Usually the people around me say i think too deep, but that's ok i guess. But I'm more of a philosophy student than someone who's earned the right to teach. So it's becoming obvious that calling myself a philosopher sounds like i think i know more and am a lot wiser than i really am. So, "attempted philosophy" seems like a better term for what i do. Kind of like "attempted murder" :)