3 Reasons Why Christian Blogs Are Better
May 21st, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
Oh. I knew you couldn’t resist clicking on this one. Most of you probably showed up to bash the Christians and say how ridiculous it is to insinuate that a Christian blog could ever be better than a secular blog in any way. If that’s you, Jesus loves you.
For those who are actually interested in my take on this topic, keep reading as I lay out three good reasons why Christian blogs are better:
1) We’re using technology for it’s highest purpose. As with anything, there exists a hierarchy of purposes for any and everything in life. Take sand, for instance. You can go down to the beach and get a bag of sand for free. Take that same sand, process it a little, and glue it to some paper and you have to pay $5 bucks for it (sandpaper). Take that same sand, process it a lot, and turn it into a computer processor, and now it’s worth $300. Is it still sand? Yep. It’s just serving a higher purpose. So it is with the Christian blog. We’re serving the highest purpose in the universe, the cause of Christ.
2) An overwhelmingly positive message. There are so many gossip blogs out there, and political commentary, and war correspondents, and so many other negative things. A Christian blog, barring some of the obvious exceptions who write just to condemn other Christians, exists to express the positive and uplifting message of Christ. It kinda makes me feel all warm inside.
3) Our overwhelming sense of design and extremely talented writers. Ha, ha. Maybe if you got your blog and training from the Kingdom 2.0, but we’re working on making the internet a better place to write and read. Nobody’s perfect, but we sure do try hard.
OK. Let the onslaught begin.
| Discussion: 6 Comments »
Content Management Software Is Dead: Long Live The Blog
May 19th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips, Technology for Pastors
By now you’ve probably heard how relatively easy it is to get top-notch results in SEO and increased readership by leveraging the power of the blog. You’ve probably heard tales of people using blogs for all sorts of conventional website purposes with greater results, but you still continue to labor over your church website content management software and achieve the same results month after month.
What if I told you that we designed a new program that will revolutionize the way that Churches organize their websites and upload their content?
That’s right. We’ve figured out how to turn the average Wordpress Blog into a multi-faceted content management machine and, with the added SEO goodness of Wordpress, we’re going to score you a whole bunch of extra traffic in the process of liberating you from managing the beast that your website has become. What exactly are we talking about? Good question:
Think of your Church blog as the headquarters. The headquarters is where the Army goes to get information about what’s going on, to learn things, and to hear from the leadership. Beneath the headquarters, you have subordinate commands doing most of the work of the Army, right?
In your current website, it’s probably a separate page for each ministry. There’s a youth ministry page, a couples ministry page, a children’s ministry page…all of which are seldom if ever updated with anything meaningful and none of which pull their weight when it comes to bringing in traffic to your website. It’s a sad state of affairs.
We’ve figured out a way to turn a network of blogs into a super-powered church website application with complete content management functionality.
So, instead of having a youth ministry page, you’ll now have a youth ministry blog, and a seniors ministry blog, and a choir blog, etc. These blogs will each operate with complete individual functionality and, as blogs do, generate much more traffic than you currently experience.
Next, our code ninjas have figured out a way to re-syndicate the content of each individual blog onto all of the other blogs, resulting in a blog network that will keep interested parties in your network. The most recent articles will show up on the sidebars of all of your affiliated blogs. This has several advantages:
1) Delegation of content management tasks: For instance, the youth minister will now be responsible for updating the content on the youth ministry blog. No longer will one Pastor have to spend all day updating the pages for every single ministry at your church. Each minister will be independently capable of running their own portion of the network, freeing up valuable time and energy for the work of the ministry.
2) Added SEO benefits: The re-syndication, at least as far as we’ve experienced so far, has managed to boost the SEO profile of each site participating in the exchange. As if switching each page of your website to a blog wouldn’t do enough SEO miracles, our early research indicates that the combined synergistic effect of several blogs working together seems to be even better.
So, now you’ve got a church blog, and several subordinate ministry blogs.
The church blog would feature the following highlights:
- Fully Custom Design
- Unlimited Pages
- Full-Featured Content Management
- Re-Syndication of User Content
The individual, subordinate ministry blogs would feature:
- Unlimited template blog creation for as many ministries as you can think of
- Full-featured Author blogsites for each minister
- Customization Upgrades (custom design, domain, etc)
- Author-focused content
- Author-focused call-to-actions
If that was all we had done, it would be totally cool. But, consider all of the other added features that we’ve programmed into this world-beating wordpress upgrade:
Your blog network will also get the following cool options:
1) A fully-functioning intranet. We all know that communicating with your Associate pastors can be a challenge. Now, you’ll be able to communicate more effectively via a fully-functioning back-end blog that shows up on your dashboard. Use it for announcements, planning, meetings, or just to stay in touch between services.
2) One-click template creation. Starting a new dance ministry? No problem. One click and they will have their own dance ministry template blog. It’s as simple as checking your email.
3) One-site management for all users on all subordinate blogs. You can manage permissions, add users, create profiles, or anything else that you need to do from your custom dashboard. It’s just like the old Wordpress, but with a whole bunch more functionality.
Add, on top of that, the capabilities of a Gmail hosted email system, and you’ve got the complete church tech application for web 2.0 ministry. Now, tell somebody about it, will ya?
If you’re interested in getting a quote for this bad mamma-jamma, click here. I’m the man with the plan. Now, all you need is this comfy computer chair to take the world by storm!
We Build Blogs| Discussion: No Comments »
Five Reasons Every Pastor Should Blog
May 16th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
I understand that you need to leverage your time in order to meet your many, many committments. In my humble opinion, blogging will help you to that end rather than hinder you. Here are five cool reasons why every Pastor in American and beyond should be utilizing a Christian blog for their church and/or personal thoughts.
1) A personal blog makes every day a Sunday. You know, you’ve got so much that you want to say, and you’re always hearing from the Lord. Problem is, you’ve only got one, maybe two, days a week that you can share something with your church. If you try to get it all in before people start leaving for lunch, you’re going to sound like that guy at the flea market trying to auction off an old car. With a blog, any time is a good time to preach. Got a word of wisdom on a Tuesday evening? Blog it. Got an awesome prophecy at 3 am? Blog it!
2) Jesus loves Wordpress, and so does Google. You know that you’ve been secretly wondering what you have to do to become number one in google for “Churches in Lakeland.” Well, you need to either get a google adwords account and start buying keyword searches, or get a Wordpress blog and start writing articles about “church in Lakeland.” Either one will work. One is slightly less expensive than the other.
3) You might learn something about your flock. For instance, that they have opinions on spiritual matters other than those that you’ve given them. You might also find out that you have some Holy Ghost anointed writers in your flock who want an outlet to use their talents. Blogs can teach you all sorts of cool things.
4) Blogging will cause you to lose twenty pounds. Just kidding. Although, if you really get hooked, you might forget to eat, and that might cause you to lose a couple of pounds. You can thank me later.
5) Sharpen your sermon skills with a blog. Ever said anything in the pulpit and knew immediately that it was dumb? I know I have. Having a blog, believe it or not, can help. If you’ve got that one good friend who will always point out when you’ve just said something stupid, and you’ve got a blog upon which you write all of your thoughts, you’ve got a great filter for your sermon content. If you don’t have that friend, email me. I’ll be happy to tell you if you’ve written a sub-standard post. Just kidding.
For real though, you need a Christian blog. Stop skirting the outer limits of web 2.0 bliss and get your butt in gear. The Kingdom is waiting. Start feeding your sheep more than twice a week (hence the photo).
We Build Blogs| Discussion: No Comments »
Best Streaming Video Feed For the Lakeland Outpouring
May 14th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
My site meter tells me that lots of you are showing up on this site in search of the best quality streaming video feed for the Lakeland Outpouring or the Florida Outpouring, whatever we’re calling it today. I wanted to make sure that I actually direct you to the correct place. There are a couple of places to get the feed that I know of:
The Florida Outpouring Website
I hope that helps all of our internet bretheren trying to track down a link to the Lakeland Revival. Have a blessed day. I hope you get healed when you log on!
We Build Blogs| Discussion: No Comments »
Judgment Day: How Your Blog Can Save Your Tail
May 12th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
Many people don’t know this, but there are actually two different “judgments” listed in the bible. First and foremost in most people’s minds is the “Great White Throne” judgment referred to in Rev 20:11-15. This is the judgment of what the bible refers to as the “dead,” or those who don’t know Christ.
Then, there’s the “Bema” judgment, which is where all of those who make it through the pearly gates are called into account for their actions and for the gifts given them by God. Since I’m saved, this is the one that keeps me awake nights. If I wasn’t saved, I’d be slightly more worried about the other one.
So, how can you blog save your tail on judgment day? Well, if you’re headed for the white throne judgment, it can’t. You need Jesus. But, if you’re saved, the conversation with the Lord could end up going something like this if you play your cards right:
The Lord: “Jonathan. Step forward to receive your judgment.”
Me: “Ok. Lord.” (a huge *gulp*)
The Lord: “You missed some great opportunities to witness to people. You were selfish at times. You didn’t pray enough. You could have done more for the Kingdom….but dude, that blog was awesome. It touched SO many people. Well done.”
Now, that’s an exaggeration, right? We’re going to be called to account for EVERYTHING that we’ve done, or failed to do, from the time we were saved until the time of our judgment. So, your Christian blog isn’t going to completely get you off of the hook for your apathy, inaction, or inappropriate behavior. But, if you’re doing the right thing anyway, it just might get you a bigger crown.
We Build Blogs| Discussion: No Comments »
