I have a friend (well, probably several) who told me he doesn’t believe in New Years Resolutions.
“If I want to change something, why wait for the New Year?”
Fair enough.

At the same time, there are passages of time that allow for natural points of reflection for me, personally. The beginning of a new calendar year is just another point at which to think over the past year and to ask what rhythms I sense a leading to continue or adopt.
All that to say, one of my resolutions this year is to blog once a week or so, at least.
As you can see, I’m off to a roaring start.

A few reasons to get back into blogging regularly…

• Authenticity. Blogs are just a better place for hashing out actual thoughts than Facebook. Let’s be honest. Typically if I see a status where I have to click see more and it’s longer than the height of my screen, I might scan it, but typically I move on. You expect to read more on a blog. And the commenting tends to be more civil. Not that I haven’t been freaked out by the stay-at-home-mom blogposts that have hardly any readers and then go viral because of something they post, but hey, might as well throw it out there.
• Therapy. I’ve finally given into journaling a little bit after years of hating it. I’m actually finding it a good practice. But as an extrovert and a verbal processor, there is something therapeutic about sharing and conversing. In a way it is a bit of a spiritual discipline for me.
• Communication. In the past my blog has been a mix of dumping my deeper thoughts and just sharing what’s going on in our lives. I’ve had friends comment about missing both of those things and I’ll try to keep em both going. A lot of the daily life posts are now easier on Facebook or Instagram, but it’s nice to have a place that I can look back on a bit easier after a passage of time.
• Ministry. In a way a bookend to the first one. One of the upsides to sharing my thoughts is having a place where the people I do ministry alongside or those who want to get a better understanding what we’re about and what our ministry is up to and what is important to me, both recreationally and spiritually.

So 3 weeks into 2016 I’m finally giving a go at starting my New Years Resolution.
And a bunch of you may have already stopped yours.
So better late than never, I figure.
Did you make any resolutions? If so, what and how is it going?

But that's not it.
I think we just go through different seasons in our life.
And rather than taking a lot of time to blog recently, it's just been more of a season for silence.
A time for listening.
Reflecting.
Seeking.
Hangin out more with Jesus and with family.
In a way, this blog is like an extension of me.  So when I'm in that season, my blog kind follows suit.

And it's not that there's nothing to say, either.
There have been some blog posts bouncing around my dome, but just haven't taken the time to pull em out.
All that to say, that's why it's been slow.
So I'll probably start posting some more here and there.
But it's been nice being quieter for a little bit.
And it's nice to not feel too pressured to blog for the sake of blogging.

Thanks for stickin with me.

As I was reading, I came across the following lines:

But little by little, Twitter is starting to resemble a high school
popularity contest, where people campaign for votes and can tangibly
see how liked they are by how many people follow them or respond to
what they say.

As more celebrities and important people have come to the party
(fashionably late, of course), they see their peers already have tons
of followers, so they feel they should too. There is open campaigning
to “RT this” or straight-up asking for people to help them get more
followers. Left and right, even normal users are signing up for Twitter
sites that guarantee to get you “400 new followers a day.” (Just so you
know, you can’t do this without people knowing—it sends out a tweet in
your name to everyone saying you’ve signed up.) I’ve even seen pastors
sign up for those.

Which begs the obvious question—why? This Twitter shift is adding
fuel to the MySpace/Facebook culture that places value (and for some, a
means of self-worth) in the number of followers you can accumulate,
even if 90 percent of them are incognito spambots.
[read the whole article]

Some really great points there.  I'm just not sure that it's all that different from culture before all this technology was introduced.

He mentioned that pastors he knows have signed up for services to up the number of followers they have.
He talked about the culture of placing value and self-worth in the number of followers you can accumulate.
But is this really any different from how pastors and churches have operated for the past 50 (at least…probably more like hundreds of) years?  

So many pastors I know find their self-worth in the numbers.
How many people I can get to show up on Sunday.
How many people attend an event.
How much money was in the offering plate this month.
Even if the people sitting in those seats are proverbial "incognito spambots."
And I've been just as guilty as the rest.

Perhaps this is just a greater reminder that there are much better ways to measure effectiveness than the "number of followers."
Perhaps we should look at the deeper issue of where we find our self-worth.
Perhaps social networking and technology isn't creating new problems, but simply surfacing the issues that already there.

Let's try and care less about how many people are following us.
Let's care more about the quality of what we're doing and saying.
Let's care more about the amount of transformation in ourselves and the people we journey with.
Let's find our self worth not in everyone else's measure of success, but by the trueness to our own calling.
Or better yet, in being, rather than doing.

I'm still figuring out how to do all that.
You're invited to join me.
We can't do it alone.

This particular reading for reflection was exactly that.  A list of resolves.  This was one of them.

Last week I was tweeting about some randomness I was doing and had a moment of nostalgia.  I remembered back to a time when I didn't assume that everyone wanted to know everything I was doing and thinking.  Crazy thought, eh?

I'm one of the last guys you'll hear decrying social networking and proclaiming the evil of it.  But there is a challenging thought there about how we choose to use blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

Are the things you talk about simply focused on you, trying to create your own little rock star world where you are the center of the universe?
Or are you saying things to encourage, challenge, highlight, and better the people around you?

I want to try to do more of that.
Our culture already has enough consumers.
Let's create a culture that inspires people to become producers.

We all have something worthwhile to say.
Now figure out what it is, and go say that.

I’ve read several posts recently that have commented on the number of high profile bloggers who have quieted their bogs for good or for a time.  There are a couple that I read that have done this.  Perhaps it’s time for a season of blog sabbath on the web.
So after thinking about that, and since I know you all think of me when you hear the phrase “hgh profile blogger” (sarcasm noted), I thought I should let you all know, I am not taking a break.  (Collective sigh of relief?)  It’s been more unintentional here.  I’ve just been lazy.  But the posts will be coming and I’d be happy to take some of their traffic during the hiatises.  ;)  (I don’t think that’s a word.)

I realize I haven’t even properly introduced you all to the new addition to the family, and it’s been over 3 weeks.  So I’ll work on gettin the posts rollin some more for y’all.

In the meantime, here’s a little cartoon from Naked Pastor to provide some food for thought.  Feel free to share those thoughts with us.  See ya…tomorrow?

But there is one thing in particular that Charlie has sucked at in the past.  It’s called blogging.  This was his first attempt.  But he’s giving it another go.

So if you don’t know Charlie, get over to his new blog and get to know him.
If you do know him, and even followed his last attempt at a blog, go weigh in on this poll and encourage him to keep it up!

So go check out his blog and encourage him to keep it up!

The highlight had to be getting a little face to face with another worship leader, Ben Abu Saada.  Ben was probably one of the first worship leaders whose blog I started following.  For the past 3+ years we have interacted by email and blog comments, so it was great to have some good conversation in person.

I also got to connect with Todd Rhodes and talk ministry for a little bit.
Touched base with Ben Arment after Jon Tysons session on the church planting track.
And at the end of the evening, I ran into Jonathon Herron, a church planter I respect highly and have been following since before his church launched.  He also has an adopted kid right around Caleb’s age.

And of course at the very end of the evening I got to hang with all my old ministry partners from Revolution.

How about you?
Do you have anyone you are “friends” with as a result of online communication?
What blogging friend would you like to hang with sometime?

That being said, I still haven't been able to get the Google reader app on my Google page, but hopefully we'll figure that out soon.  Rather than export all my feeds (which I didn't realize I could do when I started, but I can always find a reason that what I did was better) I went to each blog and subscribed again.  Here's a few things I noticed:

• A lot of you changed your feed at some point.  So while I thought you just slacked off of blogging, I just wasn't getting your feed.  I'm back now.
• Some of you, however, haven't blogged in forever.  So, if you haven't blogged in over 3 months, you are no longer in my reader.  If you decide to get back in the saddle, let me know.
• Pet peeve.  Didn't realize this just now, but I really want you to know.  If your feed only sends me the first few sentences, CHANGE IT PLEASE!!  I am not reading your posts.  Maybe you did that to get more traffic to your blog for your stats so you could feel better about yourself.  Outside of a few family members, and maybe some people at my church, I love you, but if I have to go to your site every time to read you posts, I'm just not gonna read it.  That's why I have an RSS reader!  When I want to comment or see your flash widget, I'll come visit.  Otherwise, please share your content with me.
• And finally, but most importantly, make it easy to subscribe to your blog!  I was amazed at how difficult it was to find a subscribe link on many blogs.  Some from people who I know should know better.  There were actually several that forced me to copy and paste the URL.  Generally, if I find a blog I think I might want to follow but I can't subscribe easily, it probably won't make it onto my blogroll.  Some of you may think it's ridiculous to think you care if you're on my reader, but most of you are so dependent on stats to make you feel better (it takes one to know one, unfortunately) which is why you do things like the bullet point above.

Just some thoughts from my RSS switch.  One other thing.  I realized it's about to update the links on my blog as well.  So perhaps I'll have some time in the ATL hotel at Catalyst next week to do so.  Which means 2 things:

1. Again, if you haven't blogged in more than 3 months, you will be removed.  Of course, you probably don't care much then and aren't even reading this.
2. If you link here, and I'm not linked to you, I owe you some serious link love!  Sorry I'm behind.  Leave me a comment so I can be sure to get you on here.

And again, if you don't have an RSS reader, go get one and subscribe here.  It makes life much easier!

How about you?
What RSS reader do you read?
Agree with any of those thoughts?  Disagree?
Do share.

Not everyone believes me that it really isn’t that bad.  Hey, that’s cool.  I’ve got my own pet peeves, too.  Like chicks who do their eyeliner while they’re driving.  So is there a point to this rambling?  Yes, in fact there is.

After a nail biting Yahtzee tourney before bed tonight, (which I won, getting a Yahtzee in all 5 games we played) she asks me if I have seen the poll on my cousin’s blog.  When I say no, she insists that I go look at it, refusing to tell me herself what it is.  This is the blog for my cousin’s family.  They live in Arizona and have an awesome family with two awesome kids (although Zach could get them killed someday since Travis has taught him to mouth off at every Raider fan he ever sees in public).  I started laughing when I saw it.  Here’s what I saw:

I think she thought of it cause she was calling me lucky after the dice rolled my way.

So yeah, I’m kinda honored that there’s a poll in my name over at their blog.  Right now there’s only 3 votes, though.  So go on by their blog and weigh in!

What d’ya think?
Will the Po-Po crack down on me and my SD1000 or Elura 100 one of these days??