::Leading With A Limp::

How Much Control Over Your Blog Do You Want?

This morning I received an invitation to a network/widget called BlogRush.  Not just one invitation, I actually received an invitation from several, unrelated people. The premise?  Drive traffic to your site by having your feed (your posts) advertised on like blogs all around the world.  In theory, I like the premise.  In practice, I'm not so sure.

When you join this network you put a widget in your side bar that displays links to other "like" blogs.  Here is where theory and practice collide.  As I went to various Christian blogs that are using this service, the links that they are showing in their BlogRush widget are far from Christian.  In fact, many of them are anti-Christian.  In the dozen or so blogs that I clicked through looking for information, I noticed that about 3/4 of the advertised links were either Eastern Religion, atheist, New Age or paranormal/occult. I have posted up a couple of screen shots of random  pulls from the feed.  I took these pictures from Christian blogs.

So here is where the conversation gets interesting.  What do you think is best?  I see two school of thought, please feel free to weigh in with comments choosing A or B, or create your own other thought. Frankly, I haven't decided if I will add BlogRush or not.

A)  This is a terrible idea!  In essence I am advertising very anti-Christian thoughts on my very own blog, which is designed to educate people about the love of Christ.  This is going too far to drive traffic to my site.  It is my site, and I want absolute control over it.

B) This is a great idea!  Those other blogs already exist all over the internet, so why not shine a little light on them...that is, the light of the love of Christ.  Even though my site might have links to these other anti-Christian sites, conversely those same sites will have links to my Christian site.  Perhaps this is a good way to share The Gospel with those that would not normally hear it.

So what do you think? A, B or other?

iPain

Apple just rolled out some security upgrades for the ultra-coveted iPhone.  Things aren't going very well for users of this new patch.

The savants that unlocked the phone to use on networks outside of AT&T now have $600 bricks.  It seems that the new upgrades "likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable."

Robert Scoble is reporting that even peoplo without unlocked phones are having problems.

In other news, Halo 3 walked all over entertainment industry records for opening day sales.  Seems the video games have a little more pull than movies.

For those keeping score at home, here is today's tally: Microsoft 1, Apple 0.
 

Happy Birthday!

I recently swore off personal entries in favor of a greater ministry focus here.  I'm already failing, but for good reason...we're in the middle of the birthday season!  (Eat your heart out, Dr. Suess)

Last week my "little brother" Michael had a birthday.  You can read about his wife giving him an Xbox 360 Elite if you go to his blog.  Wow.  She has really raised the bar.  Michael?  He has mad geek skills.

Today is my good friend Jenni's birthday.  She is my Mexico partner and without a doubt the most talented person that I know.  She can play 117 musical instruments and speak 22 languages.  She's also added more than 100 friends to her Facebook this week, so she's pretty much "that" popular girl.  It doesn't hurt that she was in youth ministry for 7 years.

Tomorrow is another one of my "little brother's" birthday.  Thomas Walters!  I love this guy.  He doesn't blog, so I can't link him. That's too bad.  I still love him like crazy though, so I'll send you to his Facebook.

Then on Thursday it's Michael Dooney's birthday.  Another non-blogger, but my best friend since college.  Michael and I have done everything together.  Don't ask me to elaborate what "everything" means because I won't....but we've been through a lot. 

Friday...happy birthday Don Marble!  My former co-leader of my small group in Portland and a recent convert to the madness called Hood to Coast.  Take care of the group, Don!

We skip just a couple of days...then Jenny James, another long-time Mexico veteran, celebrates her birthday on Tuesday.  Wednesday?  Dear old mom adds another candle to the cake, and she'll be in Los Angeles to celebrate.

Wow...that's a lot.  I wanted to give each and every one of you a birthday present, but I thought that a mention on my blog was worth so much more, so consider yourself gifted. ;)

UPDATE:  I was a very, very bad friend by not mentioning Daniel Valeri, who will be 19 next Thursday.  I love this guy!  We have gone to Mexico together for 4 years or so.  So Dan...happy birthday!

YouVersion.Com

I got my beta invite to YouVersion.com today.  My first impression?  Amazing!

The premise is this:  a social networking site for the Bible.  What does this mean?  I went to Ephesians 6:10 and added a link to a short devotional that I wrote for a Mexico mission trip.  This is now discoverable by others.  I think this is great.

With other Bible sites I have leaned heavily on traditional commentaries.  I like the idea of being able to see what others say about a verse, a chapter or an idea.  It's like a nice marriage of Wikipedia, blogs and The Bible.

I think this is a great undertaking from Terry Storch and the fine folks over at LifeChurch.tv.  I'm curious to see if this gets the leverage it needs to take off.  I think it will.

Focus

I redid the look of my blog today, it's plain black and white.  No frills, just like a newspaper (remember those?)

Why?  I'm going to refocus.  I've gone back to Facebook and am going to use that as my primary social networking tool.  Please, feel free to add me as a friend!

I will refocus this blog, back to its roots.  The purpose of this little niche of the internet is to communicate, educate and interact.  I've been leaning too heavily on personal posts lately, breaking my own rule of a 4:1 ratio of business:personal life.

So I'm going plain for the weekend, then coming back next week laser focused.  Emphasis will be on communications, administration and technology.  Again, if you want to pal around online, you can find me over at Facebook.  See you there!

Are You Too Busy Taking Care of Your Own House?

In my Bible reading this morning I found myself in the tiny book of Haggai.  Over the years I come back to this book again and again, I think it is profound in its direction from God.

"You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little.  What you brought home, I blew away.  Why?" declares the LORD Almight. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house." -Haggai 1:9

The people had been asking for favor from God, but had essentially turned their back to Him.  You see, they spent so much time trying to build their own homes, trying to make themselves comfortable, trying to get ahead in life, that they quit pursuing God and giving him glory. Then, when things aren't going well for them, they ask for a blessing.

This ninth verse of the first chapter summarizes things well for me.  God calls us to bring honor and glory to Him alone, not to ourselves.  Is it any surprise that when we ask for God's blessing, that we first must look at our motivation and our own lifestyle?

I confess to being apt to focus too much on myself, on my own well-being, on my own direction.  Within these things of course I include the pursuit of happiness for my family, the welfare of the church, the well-being of my friends.  All of those are noble pursuits!  But I must remember to first pursue God in all that I do.  I'm not always so good at this, but I'm getting better.

god-answers.com: Satan's Bio

Is the devil real, or is he just a made up "character", designed by The Church to scare people into their way of thinking?

Continuing our god-answers.com series this weekend, Pastor Mark will be taking on this issue, and it should be a good one!  If you are in the Los Angeles area please come by and check it out.  Please note that Mark is only presenting this at our 6pm service, we have guest pastors at the 9am and 11am as part of a pulpit exchange with other churches in our region.

Back to satan.  Check out this video that was produced by B.A.D.D., it uses a bit of humor to take on this controversial subject.

Kathy Griffin Emmy Speech

Thanks to Cassie for the link to this.

At the Emmy Awards Kathy Griffin gave an "acceptance" speech in which she bagged on Jesus and those that mention Him during acceptance speeches.  Watch the 22 second clip below.  What do you think? Humor for humor's sake or bad taste?

What Are You Giving Up?

I just read an article that cites a recent survey about internet use.  The bottom line?  People are turning their backs on a lot of things (friends and sex among the top losers) in order to spend more time online.

Do you think this is a snapshot of how it is now, or a preview of more of what is to come? Are you turning away from human interaction in order to spend more time online?

SpiralFrog

SpiralFrog is getting a lot of buzz on the internet right now.  Two reasons:  first, it is offering free downloads of the most popular music.  Not a bad gig.  Sure, you have to put up with 90 seconds downloads, banner ads and surveys, but hey...it's free.  And 90 second downloads?  C'mon...does anybody remember the original Napster?  I was happy with 5 minute downloads back then.  The second reason it's getting buzz is because it's not compatible with iPods.  Oh no!  Say it isn't so! :P

I would love to give you a full review of the SpiralFrog music service, but I can't.  Why?  I cannot register.  I open up my trusty FireFox browser (yes, I'm 100% on FF these days), but I couldn't complete registration because the CAPTCHA wasn't showing up.  It just said "SpiralFrog Security Letters".  Weird.  I refreshed.  I tried to add in some missing plugins (FF tells me that "no suitable plugins found, unknown plugin (application/x-spiralfrog)).  No dice.  I couldn't register.

So I went back to the old standby of Internet Explorer.  Guess what?  I had the same problem!  No CAPTCHA.  Bummer.

So instead of a glowing (or not so much) review of SpiralFrog, all I can tell you is that it does indeed exist, that (in theory) you should be able to register and download a bunch of music, free and legally.  </review>