As previously noted, this is my week for presenting at GospelCom’s meetup: “The Internet Ministry Conference.”

I successfully captured audio for today’s presentation: “Relationship Blogging.” So as soon as I can get my audio editor software working, I’ll upload it as an mp3 file, and I will also upload a flash version of the powerpoint file for your enjoyment as well.

I don’t think there was any video of this presentation, so I’ll spare you that!

Stay tuned for details.

Tomorrow I’ll be giving my “Integrity on the Internet” presentation. The presentation has been updated from my earlier 1998 version. Hopefully It’ll go well!

More later. But, meanwhile, for all who were interested in the books I mentioned, see:

• Brian Bailey and Terry Storch’s, The Blogging Church
• Shel Israel and Robert Scoble’s Naked Conversations
• Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book
• For more on my views of blogging, see my appropriately titled “blogging” category!

Okay. I’m in! But only because I’m a sucker for attention. And because, like the “One Book Meme,” this question interests me, and I like it.

By the way, I was tagged by Carl Thomas over at the Revival Blog who, believe it or not, actually got a touch snarky with me in his post. This is a bit like playing touch football, only instead of being touched, or tagged, or merely pushed, you get a wedgie:

Rich — If he completes it, (remember that “imminent” post on Ted Haggard back in November of last year?) it will be in several months and contain thousands of words. Some pro-gay group will surely comment on it and tell how Carlton Pearson is the greatest man since Moses.

:: grin ::

Uh, thanks, Carl. I’ll get on that Ted Haggard post — eventually. And when I do, you’ll be amazed and disappointed simultaneously. Only I can pull off such a feat … and that’s why you read me.

Okay, so here are the rules, according to John Smulo, the originator of the meme:

• Those tagged will share 5 Things They Dig About Jesus.
• Those tagged will tag 5 people.
• Those tagged will leave a link to their meme in the comments section of this post so everyone can keep track of what’s being posted.

With all that out of the way, here goes.

Five Things I Dig About Jesus

• Jesus digs puns
  
  • Elton Trueblood’s The Humor of Christ
  • Earl Palmer’s The Humor Of Jesus and Laughter in Heaven
  • Robert H. Stein’s The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings
  • Henri Cormier’s The Humor of Jesus
  While G.K. Chesterton has noted, in Orthodoxy, that we never see Jesus laughing in the Gospels, much has been written on Jesus’ humor.
  
  Do you realize Jesus himself elevated the “low” art of the pun when he addressed the hypocrisy of Pharisees? In Matthew 23:24, Jesus imagined the Pharisees eating soup and criticized their foolishness, saying, “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
  
  Not a pun, you say? It’s not apparent in the English translation. It’s not apparent even in the Greek text. But when you consider that Jesus likely spoke in Aramaic, you see the essential irony in the pun: the word for gnat is galma. The word for camel is gamla.
  
  Or look at Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter: “[Y]ou are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” The pun is apparent in the Greek where petros is used for Peter and petra is used for Rock, but it’s also apparent when you consider the likely Aramaic term used: kepha is both the proper name and the term for “rock.” (For more, see: The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings by Robert H. Stein.)
  
  Jesus is a merry punster. I like that.
• Jesus digs children
  Honestly, I didn’t have even the first inkling about this aspect of Jesus until I became a Daddy. Before having children of my own, I thought I loved kids but, really, I just liked the idea of kids, and nice well-behaved ones at that.
  
  Now that I’m a Dad I realize that nothing pushes your big, red hot-buttons faster than a little 3-foot tyke who defies a 6-foot, 300-pound daddy without an ounce of fear, and nothing melts a dad’s heart more completely than a little 3-foot tyke cuddling up close with a smile and a giggle. Fatherhood, I think, has taught me more about God than all my courses in Bible school and seminary combined. And now I read passages like Matthew 18:2-6, Matthew 19:13-14, Mark 10:15, and Luke 18:17 in a new light.
  
  It’s not that children are sinless and devoid of sneakiness — as every parent can attest. And I probably don’t fully understand what it means to be like a child in faith. But I do know that my children trust me and love me utterly in a way that I am still struggling to trust and love God. I know I must frustrate him in my rebellion like my own children frustrate me, but I’m so glad that Jesus loves kids, because it’s a promise of my Father’s own love for me.
• Jesus digs stories
  I love the fact that while Jesus does teach pedagogically, almost all of his teaching involves the use of similes, metaphors, and stories. I don’t know why we don’t sit at the feet of the master teacher more often, but somewhere, somehow, we got off-track and started emulating Paul and his indicative/imperative style of teaching and correction. Not that there’s anything wrong with Paul, but whatever happened to balance? The overwhelming majority of Scripture is narrative. It’s story, poetry and parables.
  
  We should teach more like Jesus who not only told a lot of stories, but did a lot of his teaching one-on-one.
• Jesus digs naps
  Hey, anyone who can sleep through a storm like a baby in a cradle on a flimsy boat on a roiling lake while waves break over the bow obviously is either seriously sleep-deprived (which I can identify with) or just takes seriously the afternoon imperative to siesta. (See Mark 4:37-39.) How can this not be cool? Every office worker, every pastor, every field-hand, and every truck driver needs to follow Jesus’ example here: Take a nap!
  
  And there’s nothing wrong with a comfortable nap, at that. Notice, in this passage, that Jesus was sleeping on a cushion. I don’t imagine many fishing-boats in those days had a lot of cushions on-board.
  
  Apparently, the Jesus I know and love came prepared to nap.
• Jesus digs freaks and geeks
  In our antiseptically scrubbed and pathologically clean churches we still look down on folks who hang out with the “bad crowd.” In my own faith-sect, the Assemblies of God, many of our churches have membership bylaws forbidding members from attending places of “ill repute.” That, really, can mean any place another church member thinks is a bad place for you to be. Unfortunately, this can make our faith-walk more about reputation (image) not reality.
  
  When I worked at the A/G headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, my wife and I once invited a couple who worked with us out for a “date.” We caught dinner. After, the night was still young and we enjoyed each others’ company, so Jennifer and I suggested we go shoot some pool.
  
  While the husband was cool with it, his wife declined because she worked in the Human Resources department, and she had to be very careful to uphold the standards of the organization. She knew that the leadership would frown on her spending time in a place of “ill repute” where beer was quaffed, smoke inhaled, and unknown sin carried out in the dark corners of the billiards hall.
  
  But the Jesus I read about had dinner with collections agents. He spoke compassionately with divorcees, prostitutes, and adulteresses. He drank wine. He was accused of gluttony. Jesus hung out with people of ill repute in places of ill repute, and didn’t apologize for it. The men he called to be his disciples were from the working class, and from the reviled class. He hung out with hot-heads and traitors. He loved the meek and the powerless in society.
  
  If Jerusalem had been a high-school, Jesus probably would not have been at the popular kids’ table in the cafeteria. Unless, of course, he was criticizing their tendency to strain their soup for gnats while swallowing camels.

Meme Genealogy

I’m in the eighth generation of this meme. Each of my ancestors tagged five other people. So, at minimum, there are 48 others blogging about Jesus right now, with potentially hundreds more. Explore the following sites above or go directly to Smulo’s first post to see what others have written.

• John Smulo (originator) blogging @ SmuloSpace
• Bryan Riley blogging @ Charis Shalom
• Alan Knox blogging @ The Assembling of the Church
• Joel Brueseke blogging @ Grace Roots
• Vanessa blogging @ NightWatch
• Mark Hadfield blogging @ MadeToPraiseHim
• Carl Thomas blogging @ Revival Blog
• …Me, blogging here.

And now I tag…

• Phil Gerbyshak – The “Make it Great!” Guy
  As our resident Tony the Tiger, Phil’s an eternal optimist and sure to come up with something encouraging and … uh  … grrreat!
• Cynthia Ware – The Digital Sanctuary
  Cynthia’s forever blogging about the intersection of Church and technology. I think she should take a break and just tell us what she thinks about Jesus today. Have at it, Cynthia!
• Jason Clark – Jason Clark
  Jason’s the newest member of the PneumaBlogs list of bloggers, and he seems to be a smart guy. Let’s see what his personal take on Jesus is.
• John Laukkanen – ahavafriend
  Uncle John, as my son refers to him, isn’t really my uncle. But he is John, and unique. I am sure I will be enlightened by this maverick traveller’s perspective.
• Christoph Fischer – my cup of coffee
  Christop is a smart and interesting blogger who seems to have fallen off the posting wagon lately. Perhaps this will prompt a little inspiration?

Have fun!

Your comments are welcome, and invited.

Gospel Communications has teamed up with the Internet Evangelism Coalition and now the two conferences, GospelCon and the Internet Evangelism Conference, have been merged. The conference serves two dual purposes: one is to train GospelCom’s ministry partners how to use technology to do their ministry, whether it’s finding a useable open source CMS, using design to communicate effectively, or writing better post titles. The second purpose is to train believers to do evangelism and ministry more effectively whether it’s learning how to write your personal testimony more effectively, how to share your faith online, or how to use social networking tools wisely.

I’m delighted to be invited to present this year. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a superstar blogger and made a name for myself here at BlogRodent, but that’s not the case. The invitation came about by divine appointment.

As I’ve whined about frequently enough, I’m currently freelancing and doing free-agent consulting stuff. (In other words, I’m unemployed.) So, in the course of talking with potential employers, I contacted GospelCom for an open position they had for an online training developer position. 160+ resumés later, I was invited to be one of four final candidates to come visit the GospelCom headquarters in Muskegon, Michigan, to give a 15-minute presentation in order to demonstrate my “mad training skillz.” (Note the quotes, please. :-) )

If it tells you anything, I wasn’t hired. On the plus side, though, the hiring manager, Brian Melles, said mine was the only presentation of the four that actually got him excited. He was so excited, in fact, that he extended an immediate (though tentative) offer to expand the presentation and to deliver it at this years’ Internet Ministry conference.

Wahoo!

So, now it’s official. I’m on the speakers’ page, and I’ve got two presentation tracks lined up.

I’d tell you more about the content of my main presentation, but I’m still lining up permissions for the content to use. I’ll give a hint, though: I’ll be using a story from Brian Bailey’s excellent book, The Blogging Church, to illustrate my theme.

Registration is open. The conference currently costs $300 to attend for two days, or $450 for the full enchilada (early-bird registration).

Will I see you there?

Here’s my entry on the speakers’ page.

Rich Tatum has been working with Internet and Web technology for over 15 years. While the Web was still young and populated by gophers and telnetters, he founded an Internet users group, served as the first webmaster for the Assemblies of God headquarters, and later served as webmaster, Internet operations manager, and online media managing editor for Christianity Today International. He currently freelances, writes Pentecostal commentary as the BlogRodent, and parents two great kids as either “Daddy” or “Mr. Pretzel-Man” with his lovely bride in an obscure Chicago suburb.

Sessions:

• Influenza Blogging: Become a viral blogger by getting influential and relational
• Integrity on the Internet

I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this in the future.

As most of you who regularly visit know, back in November of 2006 I was laid-off from CTI. It wasn’t anything nefarious or antagonistic — CTI always has been and continues to be very good to me, still tossing occasional freelance work and article assignments my way. (Hopefully because of my skill, not out of mercy. Though mercy is good, too, and welcome!) When my project’s funding ran dry and I was out on the streets (well, more like in my skivvies, lounging around the house, generally making a nuisance of myself) I immediately signed up for a paid account at LinkedIN. I was sold on what it promised for professional networking and job searching opportunities.

Not yet disappointed

LinkedIN has not disappointed me. That isn’t to say it’s actually delivered on its promises. Rather, I’ve found that its usefulness is greater than just for the immediate emergency of landing a job.

No. I haven’t landed a job yet, but here’s what I have done. After filling out my complete work history on LI, I relieved myself of the burden of having to create a four-page resumé, instead I was able to focus on a more high-level “advertisement” of my skills and capabilities, leaving the heavy-lifting of the detailed former-job minutia to LinkedIN. Now, when I want to send a candidate package to somebody, I send them my PDF resumé along with links to my full professional history at LinkedIN, along with some references I’ve picked up along the way.

Every potential employer has told me they were impressed with my resumé — and not a single interview has had to probe the nitty-gritty details of my previous job experience, because it’s all laid out in black and white over at LinkedIN, with plenty of details to back it up.

Transparency and Accountability

What LinkedIN provides me with potential employers is transparency, accountability, and authenticity. Yes, any yahoo can invent a work history. But when you’ve published it online and placed it in a network where a single click of a button can easily find current employees working for that old company who might be willing to verify details, it’s harder to be sneaky and deceitful. Plus, it helps if your personal network of professional contacts includes former employers and managers named in the work history —which is the case with me. So, the normal paranoia and suspicion that can sour a job interview has been delightfully lacking. I think my online information-packet strategy has helped with that, and LinkedIN has been a valuable part of the experience.

Socially acceptable end-runs

Another benefit to using LinkedIN has been the ability to contact employees within a target company to inquire about corporate culture and the work environment. I did this when I went to interview at the McDonald’s corporation, and made a connection with a fellow believer who works there, and we enjoyed several nice email exchanges. Since interviewing at Awana, I’ve added a couple more contacts to my network. One LinkedIN contact actually led to a job offer, which I had to turn down.

And contacting a Vice President at Zondervan through LinkedIN led to a face-to-face job interview last week.

Now, again, I haven’t found a job. So, in once sense, LinkedIN hasn’t helped at all. But I’m not worried. It certainly hasn’t hurt, and while it may be hard to measure its benefit, I do think it’s helped.

Are you lookin’ at me?

Now, finally, LinkedIN has added a new feature (in beta) that helps me actually see how hard my profile is working (or not working) for me. While I can’t get traffic or stats info from my profile’s views and hits, I can finally see how much activity my profile’s seen over the last couple of weeks, and I can even get a sense of who’s looking at me.

Enter the “Who’s viewed my profile?” feature, recently announced on the LinkedIN blog, “Guess who’s viewed your profile?“

Now I can finally get an idea of what visibility my profile has for people who may be looking for new hires. Here’s what my profile views panel looked like tonight:

Some of these folks, like Awana and MagnetStreet, I definitely know who they are. Some of the others are clearly recruiters trolling for job candidates and Rolodex entries. But I wish I knew who was looking at my profile from the media production, broadcast industry, and religious institutions. Unfortunately, to protect visitor’s privacy, I cannot.

Maybe LinkedIN will allow users to change their privacy settings so they can optionally leave footprints behind, as well.

Close

Well, that’s enough about LinkedIN. Give it a whirl. For what it’s worth, I’m also trying out a combination system that promises to offer some of LinkedIN’s functionality, it’s a mash-up of FaceBook and job-search boards called Jobster. Something else worth trying out.

If you’re interested, check out my Jobster profile, or my FaceBook profile. And feel free to link with me on any of the social networks I belong to (ProfileFly).

Regards,

Okay, I’ll fess up. I am a shameless self-promoter. Yes, I blog for the writing and for you, my Gentle Readers, but it’s also nice to get feedback and see real-world data that makes the feedback … um … exciting.

So, some time back I nominated my own site, yes this site right here, in the “Religion” category at the Blogger’s Choice Awards (I waited till now to mention it because Alexa, which generates the thumbnails for the contest, kept pulling in a screenshot for my site that was showing a brain-dead URL.) I am sure this self-nomination is a mark of my own immaturity. And I’m okay with that — while also recognizing there’s probably something there worth analyzing … someday.

Do I think I have a lollipop’s chance in kindergarten of actually winning? No. But it’d be fun to see how many of you pop on over there to vote. And then nominate yourselves. Get yourself in the list, come back and comment here, and I’ll vote for you, too!

Other GodBloggers I know are far better than I am. They’re more experienced, better-educated, better-read, and generally better looking. Probably nicer-smelling, too, with actual hair.

I think bloggers like the winningly witty Julie R. Neidlinger, the irascibly theological Dan Edelen, the diabolically enthusiastic Phil Gerbyshak (though not a Religion blogger per-se), the omnisciently observant Cynthia Ware, the atomically sharp Peter Smythe, the pastorally pensive Mark Lauterbach, the scintillatingly lucid Rob Wilkerson, and the pseudonymously erudite Oengus Moonbones are all far better religion bloggers one and all. (Sorry if I didn’t name you, I had to end the purple prose madness somewhere!)

But, hey, a blogger can dream, right? (”They like me! They really like me!”)

So, feel free to vote!

• Automattic
• FeedBurner
• Google Analytics
• QuantCast
• Others…?

If you’re like me, you want to know whether anyone’s eating the meat you grind out from the butcher shop of ideas called your blog. Sure, there’s some measure of pride and ego involved: as your stats move ever upward your sense of confidence inflates proportionately. So does your sense of importance and pride. We all want at least a little touch of fame.

Problem is, unless you get a lot of comments on your blog, it’s difficult to know how many subscribers you have reading your feed, or which posts are getting the most attention, or whether your visitors are first-timers who never return, or old die hards who just can’t get enough of your tasty cuts. Yes, traffic analysis is more than just pretty charts, it’s a window into the effectiveness and impact of your writing — and promotion.

Good news: There are a number of free metrics, stats, and performance tracking packages to help you see out what’s going on with your weblog (or website). Just beware, though, mining your blog trackers for insights can get addictive and it often has very little return value for all the effort expended. However, if you’re looking to improve your blogging tactics, you need data. And for that, I highly recommend the following:

Automattic Stats for self-hosted WordPress
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Andy Skelton has just released this brand new plugin for WordPress sites, and it looks very, very promising (see also his “Day One” report, and Carthik Sharma’s review). As of today, if you are a WordPress blogger, you can piggyback on the WordPress.com blogging community’s very own metric system and, like Google Analytics, you don’t pay a dime, and there’s no server overhead to slow your site down.

According to the plugin’s documentation:

There are hundreds of plugins and services which can provide statistics about your visitors. However I found that even though something like Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface.

And it’s a very nice interface, indeed. Check it out, and enjoy!

FeedBurner
http://www.feedburner.com/

I think every blogger should use FeedBurner for delivering their feed because:

• You get a cross-browser, cross-feed-reader way to provide one-click subscription options.
• FB adds value to your feed items and posts with widgets that allow users to email the entry, find related content elsewhere, and even rate your posts.
• FB just plain cleans up your feed so that practically any reader on the planet can handle your feed.
• Plus, if you change your feed URL or your blogging platform, users don’t have to resubscribe. You just point your FeedBurner feed to the new URL.

That’s all good for your readers, but there’s more: For you, the blog owner, you finally get real, useful, stats about how many subscribers you have to your feed, what they’re paying attention to, and what the trends are in your subscribers’ activity. And that’s all good. And it’s free! If you pay for the pro version, you get even more data, more stats, and more options about the URL you deliver your feed from.

Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

There really isn’t a more comprehensive stats analysis package available for free anywhere else. If you’re a statsaholic and you need to know the relative performance of every page on your site, if you want to know what’s the top entry or exit page, if you need to track your advertising goals (it integrates with Google AdSense, naturally), or if you want to know more about the “paths” users take through your site. Oh, you can also see the “bounce rates” for individual pages, which tells you which “entrance” pages are also the “exit page” for visitors. If a visitor clicks through your site to another page, it’s not a bounce. But if a visitor lands on a page and then exits, it counts as a bounce. I haven’t seen this metric anywhere else, and it can tell you whether a particular landing page is converting visitors to readers, or not. Very helpful. For infoholics, Google Analytics is your drug of choice.

The only problem, however, is that there is maybe too much information. So if you use Google Analytics and have a WordPress blog, I also recommend Joe tan’s excellent “Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports plugin,” which provides a simple high-level overview of the most important metrics from Google Analytics. It plugs in to your WordPress blog and adds a “Reports” link to your Dashboard for a quick snapshot of the trends for daily visits, daily page views, average page views per visit, popular content, and more. Plus, if you use Feedburner, it will give you a quick subscriber report for your burned feed as well.

The best part about these two options is that neither adds any processing or database overhead to your WordPress site. Too many other WordPress stats plugins explode your database. This doesn’t because you’re not using your database, you’re using Google’s. Want to bet Google’s going to have nice, fast servers that don’t bog down every half hour?

QuantCast Internet Ratings
http://quantcast.com/

Some people like the Alexa stats system, and I check Alexa out from time-to time. But Alexa stats are really unreliable metrics since it only pulls in data from registered toolbar users, and its stats are extrapolated (i.e.: it’s a guess) from that small, self-selected demographic of users.

So, lately, I’ve been using QuantCast, which provides some interesting demographic details for a website. For example, according to QuantCast, here are my site’s demographics summary:

Tatumweb.com has 6,150 monthly unique visitors, 4,054 (66%) reside in the U.S. The site caters to a more educated/highly educated, primarily male audience.

The demographics information is interesting. It remains to be seen, for me, whether it’s truly useful or not, but if I were going to sell ad-space on my blog to another ministry, this would be useful information to include in a proposal.

Others…?

There are other free metrics systems I use (see my “stats junk” link at the bottom of the page), such as SiteMeter and StatCounter. I like SiteMeter quite a bit, but others have complained about it, and sometimes the counter does load slowly. So, SiteMeter may be going through growing pains. StatCounter is a good viable alternative offering a basic free account and a more detailed paid account.

I also use Technorati, The Truth Laid Bear, BlogTopSites, ChristianTop1000, and IceRocket’s BlogTracker.

Another tracker I’ve been using lately was created by my friend and fellow PneumaBlogger, John Abela. It’s The Top 100 Christian Blog Websites. However, it’s currently only tracking four blogs, and John’s not sure how many bloggers he really wants to add to his tracker, since that could hog server resources. Feel free to contact John if you’re interested, but you might want to wait a while, in case he gets deluged with requests due to this mention.

Finally, I use a WordPress plugin to create a Google-compliant sitemap for every post in this blog. This plugin notifies Google every time I update the site, and that kicks off a Googlebot session to come spider BlogRodent and add new pages to the vasty Google Index. This plugin is the Google Sitemap Generator provided by Arne Brachhold and it’s been very good to me.

A bunch of useful measurements are provided by Google via the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, which provides an eyeful of reports. Some similar reports might be available through your host’s cPanel, but it’s convenient to have it here at Google too. Reports like what pages are generating HTTP errors, which pages return a “not found” error, which pages are timing-out, and which URLs are simply unreachable. This is all good, because it points out what’s broken and should be fixed (when you have the time and aren’t jonesing on traffic data). Plus, these are reports external to your own site’s weblogs, which is a useful third-party verification of problems your site may not be catching.

But there’s more. Google nicely provides a Links page showing you every page it’s indexed from your site with a number in the right-hand column tabulating all the pages outside of your site which link to it. Click on the hyperlinked number and you get to see who’s linking to what page. Nice.

Google lets you download a spreadsheet of all the pages that are linking to every page in your site. Using this, I did a little spreadsheet magic, deleted all the inbound links from my other blogs and from my feed, and quickly found the top ten most frequently linked posts on BlogRodent — apart from the PneumaBlogs page (see sidebar at right).

That kind of data is very useful, and not found anywhere else that I know of.

Comments? Additions? Your favorites?

You might disagree with my picks here. And you might quibble that a number of these tools are WordPress-specific. Well, feel free to add your kudos, criticisms or dissent via the comment form. All takers welcome!

A blogger with a “why” beats one with only a “how”

Blogging can be a waste of a leader’s time if he doesn’t know what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. (Especially why.)

I would never suggest a leader start blogging (or podcasting) unless they’ve already been reading some choice blogs and are starting to get some idea of what value a blog can bring to a ministry or to one’s life. Rushing into blogging without first experiencing it is like convincing someone to preach who’s never heard a sermon in their life. Sure, it might be comical or even refreshing — once.

A few blogging bennies…

For some, blogging can be a kind of spiritual discipline, helping hone thoughts and to dig past the sometimes surface thoughts of hurried Saturday-night sermon prep. It provides a database of sermon themes related to your deeper concerns. It aids writing — requiring clarity and concision. It keeps you in touch with other influential people, and exposes you to criticism and commentary, sometimes kudos. Leaders need all of that.

Too few leaders have opportunities for strangers or even friends to comment and speak into their lives or provide feedback. Blogs with comments enabled are a great way to help provide that. It brings the leader out of the ivory tower. Blogging can be truly incarnational. Leaders need this, too, but it’s frightening because they’ve never had it.

I like to think of Paul the Apostle as the original proto-blogger. His missives dealt with current events, addressed failings in the Church, provided solutions, commented on trends and dangerous ideas. He “blogged” from prison, he blogged on the road, he blogged with the help of a peripheral writing device: an amanuensis.

And his words have become a significant part of our thought-life today many, many years later. Talk about the “long tail!”

If you are a leader and you are intentionally not blogging, you are ignoring one of the most influential media currently available to you.

Banking your thoughts

Blogging, in some ways, is like an interest-bearing savings account. As long as your ideas are only spoken, they’re being spent as soon as you generate them — just like spending your entire paycheck the very week you get it. But if you can “bank” some of those thoughts, they’ll go to work for you on your behalf, influencing more than just the handful within earshot. And like money in the bank, your blog-published ideas compound their influence week after week after week.

Do you have what it takes?

On the other hand, maybe not every leader should blog. After all, it does require a specific set of skills that many of our leaders simply don’t have: the ability to write clearly, the ability to engage an audience, the ability to be consistent, to provide something worthwhile and interesting with regularity, the ability to take criticism and respond irenically, the ability to respond to current events in the real-world, the ability to be transparent, and the ability to turn on a computer and use it.

But some of those guys aren’t leading. They just happen to be standing where the crowd’s facing.

If you’re a ministry leader and you’ve intentionally ignored using Internet technology to augment your message and vision, please ask yourself why. You may have very good reasons. And it may not reflect poorly on you at all. For example, I really don’t see Billy Graham picking up the keyboard to blog nowadays, and he’s not diminished one whit by not blogging. And maybe guys like Dallas Willard, Tim Stafford, and Jack Hayford don’t need to blog: publishing houses are already happily killing trees to extend their reach through the printed page. (But I’d sign up for their blogs so fast my keyboard would melt!)

But it’s easier than falling off a pulpit

But if you’re checking out of the “blogging craze” because it’s the domain of teens and Gen-Xers, or overwhelmingly nerdy, or seemingly too difficult to master, I invite you to give it another thought. Sign up for an account at WordPress.com and start flailing away. Really, it isn’t hard, and you can start doing it in about five minutes.

Ride the long tail and prosper!

If you’re part of the one-percenters who comment here from time-to-time you might be happy to know that I have enabled a feature to edit comments after you’ve posted them, and you don’t even have to leave the page! (Thanks to Ronald Huereca.)

Come on, leave a comment and give it a whirl! You know you want to.

I’ve set the tool to allow you to edit your comments for 90 minutes after you’ve submitted it. I have no idea what the system will do if you’ve never commented before and your missive winds up in the moderation pool. But it would be useful to find out. (Hint.)

After thinking about it and hacking around with some online tools, I finally have an easy way for me to quickly determine the Technorati Ranking of every blogger on my PneumaBlogs list. (The Technorati ranking is determined by the number of links to a site by other bloggers within the last few months. So it’s sort of like a “vote” by other bloggers.) Upon seeing the results I was surprised at some of the lesser-known bloggers making it to the top of the heap.

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I hereby present you with the top 20 bloggers as ranked by Technorati. These rankings are current as of today (Monday, April 10), and will change over time. I’ll add the rankings to my PneumaBlogs list and update them maybe once a month or so. We’ll see. Meanwhile, those of you who are “unranked”, you might consider getting yourself added into Technorati and claiming your blog. It’s up to you, though. It doesn’t make you a better blogger whether you’re ranked or not. It’s just one way of organizing the list.

Anyhow, check these bloggers out. Bookmark ‘em, Danno, and add them to your feed reader. And be sure to stop by their blog and leave a comment on your favorite post entry. These men and women have worked hard, crafting excellent thought-pieces and digging up really cool resources for you to enjoy. They deserve your praise!

Rich

#1) Barbara Sanders

Tidbits and Treasures COGblogger, grandmother to five, holding forth with gusto. Barbara’s range is quite surprising, she covers everything from other bloggers, books, politics, faith, and more, with a few fun posts thrown in for good measure, like her Friday Thirteen entries. A surprising and pleasant entry at the top of the heap![Technorati Rank: 1,821]

#2) Rose-Marie Slosek

The Pen of the Wayfarer Relatively new blogger out of New England with poetry and photography interspersed with viral posts. From the site: ‘Ponderings on the matchless journey of following Christ.’ What’s stunning here is that in August of 2006, Rose-Marie contacted me shortly after she began blogging, seeking advice on how to draw attention to her blog. Less than a year later, she has the number-two slot on my list! Some day we’ll have to get Rose-Marie to explain how she rose so quickly in Technorati. Amazing.[Technorati Rank: 2,482]

#3) Adrian Warnock

Adrian’s Blog Home of the Evangelical Aggregator. From his site: ‘British Christian Blogger, Psychiatrist, Preacher, Husband and Dad.’ Adrian has one of the most highly visited and widely quoted blogs on the Web. He’s well worth checking out, especially if you’re curious about what a Reformed blogger looks like![Technorati Rank: 5,989]

#4) Shawn Anthony

Lo-Fi Tribe Brethren in Christ blogger: ‘a sort of virtual notebook, in which I scribble random and pithy thoughts regarding Jesus the Christ, Christianity and culture’[Technorati Rank: 8,223]

#5) Brad Hightower

21st Century Reformation Charismatic reformed blogger: ‘Dedicated to the task of making disciples and building a morally beautiful community.’ Brad’s a very thoughtful poster with a slew of great bloggers in his linklist.[Technorati Rank: 12,314]

#6) Dan Edelen

Cerulean Sanctum Pentecostal freelance writer. From his site: ‘Looking for the 1st century Church in 21st century America.’ Dan’s another excellent blogger with not nearly enough traffic or attention going his way. Not only that, he’s a great all-round guy, even though he does live out in the sticks. If you’ve never heard of a Pentecostal fiction-writing farmer, you should check him out![Technorati Rank: 12,854]

#7) Bruce Harpel

sprucegoose Philosopher, builder, and now theologian, blogging ‘prophetic musings about life and current events from the Univ. of Minnesota.’ Bruce is a reformed charismatic blogger with far too many degrees.[Technorati Rank: 21,693]

#8) Peter Smythe

The Real Faith Lawyer and Pentecostal blogger heading into ministry, educated at Rhema Bible School, ORU, and Texas Tech School of Law. Peter is not the kind of guy you want to be at the pointy-end of an argument with, he’s way too smart. And how does he find the time to write so much?[Technorati Rank: 24,912]

#9) Dave Bish

The Blue Fish Project Anglican Charismatic blogger from the UK thinking out loud with his blog (articles, and poetry)[Technorati Rank: 27,640]

#10) Diane Roberts

Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet Blogging from a Pentecostal point of view with a touch of the Reformation, Diane says her blog’s central purpose ‘is to examine and discuss current trends in the evangelical church and especially the Charismatic/Pentecostal wing.’[Technorati Rank: 29,220]

#11) Alexander M. Jordan

Jordan’s View Applying gospel truth to all of life (cultural commentary by an evangelical, charismatic, thinking christian). Jordan also tries to ‘give back’ by collecting and providing great links to Christian resources.[Technorati Rank: 32,330]

#12) Mark Lauterbach

GospelDrivenLife Mark describes himself as a reformed continuationist and is a pastor in the Sovereign Grace Ministries movement: Making the most of the cross and empty tomb.[Technorati Rank: 34,231]

#13) Paul Schafer

Reforming my Mind MP3s From the blog: ‘Pursuing both the Reformed and Charismatic Traditions of Christianity.’ But that won’t tell you much because, really, Paul is a sermon hound. If you’re ever at a loss for what to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon, stop by here and find a few MP3 files to download. You won’t be disappointed.[Technorati Rank: 39,501]

#14) Mark Byron

Pseudonymous Personal weblog of a self-described Bapticostal: ‘Commentary on politics, economics, theology, sports and anything else that pulls my chatty-ring.’[Technorati Rank: 39,939]

#15) Carl Thomas

Revival Blog Carl’s gone through a couple evolutions as a blogger. But lately, he’s fine-tuned his focus to revival. Wherever God’s at, that’s where Carl wants to be. Barring that, he blogs on it![Technorati Rank: 43,265]

#16) Phil Steiger

Every Thought Captive Personal pastoral blog: ‘A set of reflections on the contemporary church, culture, Christian philosophy and doctrine.’[Technorati Rank: 44,844]

#17) Wayne Newcomb

Equippers Network With a varied resume as a former pastor, Bible college prof and dean, and suicide prevention center director, Wayne wants to help you fulfill your call.[Technorati Rank: 54,654]

#18) Rob Wilkerson

Miscellanies on the Gospel From the site: ‘Galley-rower for Jesus Christ. Husband of almost 12 years. Father to four children (three boys and a girl). Telecommunications salesman. Reformed, charismatic, and evangelical.’ Rob’s on top of whatever’s going on in the Pentecostal/charismatic web. Watch his site for excellent summaries of disparate arguments.[Technorati Rank: 56,274]

#19) Julie R. Neidlinger

Lone Prairie Blog Personal weblog of an artist, painter, and writer — once listed in the top 400 of blogs in the N.Z. Laid Bear ecosystem. Julie’s a great blogger and a great writer. If her art is as interesting as her writing, I’m sure she’d be worth hiring the next time you need a brochure redesigned or just want something to hang on the church foyer wall. Meanwhile, stop by her blog and enjoy her funny, sometimes edgy, and always interesting point of view.[Technorati Rank: 57,090]

#20) Peggie Bohanon

Peg’s Place: Fun and Faith for Your Soul! Maybe not ‘viral,’ but somehow contagious: ‘a lite version of the popular Peggie’s Place on the Web.’ Peg’s an old friend of mine from back in the day (when I was at Springfield, MO) and I’m continually amazed at how this gentle lady went from being totally intimidated by the Web, to eventually rising to become the editor of one of the largest Christian newsletters around (Internet for Christians). Peg’s no longer editing IFC, but she’s still blogging, and still putzing around with her website. For a good chuckle or two, stop by and say Hi! Tell her I sent you. She’ll get a kick out of that. No, really. She will.[Technorati Rank: 59,819]