Our family blog was pretty much dormant for the fall until we finally added a post a few days ago. Hopefully it will be active again in the months to come as I think I’ve finally found a setup that will work for Sherri to post without having to jump through a bunch of technical hoops. So, comment away on it…that will encourage her to post more.

{technical info}
Sherri has become quite the fan of iPhoto. RapidWeaver is pretty seamless with iPhoto, so I thought that would work well for her, but I found it to be glitchy when publishing the site to the server. In other words…more technical hoops. Then I stumbled on an iPhoto plugin called WordPress Export which let us use the existing WordPress blog on the server. It works pretty slick and I think we finally have a setup that will be pretty seamless for her.
{/technical info}

Anyone else out there having trouble with Bloglines? When I click on some of my feeds, even though it says there are unread items, nothing shows up. I have confirmed by clicking through to the sites in question that there are new posts. I’d hate to see Bloglines become unreliable, because it’s been such a useful tool to me for the last few years.

Some friends and I are putting together a group/study/blog to read through The Great Omission, by Dallas Willard. You can find the blog at TheGreatOmission.com.

This is an open invitation for anyone who would like to join us. We won’t be starting the study until the first full week of August, so there is plenty of time for you to get the book. We will read a few chapters each week, and dialogue about them as we go.

You can either register on the site, or leave a comment below if you’d like to paricipate. Right now, we are heavy on the testosterone, so I’d especially like to have some female voices included.

I was having trouble sleeping last night and I needed something that required little brainpower to do, so I changed my template. I’m now using the fabled k2 theme with a 3 column style mod. K2 has lots of nifty features like ajax commenting, search and more. It’s still the standard colors of the template, but what do you expect…it was the middle of the night.

By the way, you can see the dawn breaking on the horizon at 4am this time of the year in the Pacific NW.

The Short Version: PlanterBlogs.com is now PlanterPlanet.com. PlanterBlogs.com will no longer work, so please update your bookmarks and links on your site in order to help spread the word. (If you are subscribed to the old feed, it’s address has not changed, so you don’t need to change anything.)

The Long Version: Sometime in the last week, PlanterBlogs was hacked, and a fake bank website was uploaded in a subfolder trying to lure people to enter their account info. When the abuse was reported to GoDaddy, they tried to notify me, but the email went to my spam folder. When they didn’t hear back from me, the deactivated the domain in order to stop anyone else from accessing the fake bank site. Now that the fake bank site has been cleared off the server, they are trying to charge me $200 to reactivate the domain. Since I have no interest at all in paying that, and I don’t know how long it will take to resolve this, I went ahead and registered the new domain. (And for the record, GoDaddy did not get my business for the new domain.)

Some have suggested that one of the dangers of the internet is that it causes people to develop fake relationships. I agree that it would be unhealthy for a relationship to exist solely in cyberspace, but I’ve been really pleased with some of the connections I’ve made through blogging. Some of those have led to opportunities to connect with other bloggers in person…Justin Baeder, Aaron Ogle, and Bob Hyatt so far. There have also been others who I feel like I could meet in person and we’d already have a great rapport just from the sharing of thoughts online.

Sherri and I had a day like that today when we were able to connect with Chris and Necole Marlow. I first met Chris through some comments on the TheoHacks site. Turns out they just moved up here. Today, they came to a Pathways gathering, and then joined our family at home for lunch. Chris, Necole, Bailey and Mackenzie — thanks for taking some time to hang with us. It is always good to share time with others on a journey similar to our own.

Since I started blogging a few years ago, I’ve had a number of friends who started, a few who have failed, and a number of others who have expressed interest. One of the common questions they ask is why they should, so here are my thoughts on why, and why not, to blog.

Why Blog?
To stay in touch - One of the best reasons to blog is just to give updates to those who care about you. Let them know what you are up to.
To share your thoughts, ideas, or information - For me, blogging is a way to just hammer out some of the things I am processing through. I don’t necessarily write for the purpose of getting feedback (see below), but it is good to write knowing that someone out there will likely read it. It at least forces me to think a little bit about what I am typing, and comments from others are just an added bonus.
To communicate what is on your heart - This is similar to above, but it is more about communicating finished ideas rather than thinking out loud. A lot of pastors use a blog just to share their heart with their congregation. Blogging is a great tool for this, and I hope to see more and more pastors discovering that.
To promote a product or service - I love being able to keep up to date with what is happening with the next release of Logos, or to hear about how the writing process of Blogging Church is going. I’m glad these and others blogs exist to keep me current on products I am interested in. There is one qualifier about this one…if you are promoting something, it should be evident to the reader.

Why Not Blog?

Just to get comments - This might just be me, but I rarely comment when someone specifically asks for feedback. I don’t like it when someone writes, “Hey, I saw this. What does everyone think?” I’d much rather know what the blogger thinks, and then have the opportunity to respond if they leave the comments open. Of course, we almost always ask for feedback with the Pathways blog, but I’m comfortable with that as it is the purpose of it. I’m still trying to figure out how that differs from what I’m trying to describe here.
To promote yourself - I’m probably as guilty of this as anyone, but something rubs me wrong when I feel like someone’s blog is just about promoting themself. (This is not the same as promoting a product or service as I described above.) There is a fine line between blogging for the purpose of connecting with others. vs blogging for the purpose of drawing attention and respect from others. Perhaps the former is more about sharing, while the latter is more about receiving. I’m not quite sure, I just know that it bothers me when I see it.
To get rich - Yes, there are some people who are making their income off blogging. But if you are starting blogging just for that purpose, it’s probably not going to happen. Blog for the joy of it. If you make even a little income, consider it an added bonus.

Yesterday, Jason Clark blogged about coComment. This is a slick little tool that lets you track the blogs you have commented on. It even lets you show what comments you’ve made elsewhere on other blogs, as you can now see in my sidebar. I think this is a great way to further connect some of the conversations that are happening out there. They state that you need an invitation code to sign up since they are still in beta. I had an invitation in my email almost immediately, so if you get over there quick, they might still be making them available right away.

In the past few days, I’ve tried to post a comment on the blogs of both Bob Hyatt and Jason Clark. Both of these fine gents use TypePad.

Neither blog has let me post a comment. It says that my URL — http://www.somestrangeideas.com — is invalid. It looks valid enough to me. For those who are TypePad users, does TypePad have some kind of spam protection that prohibits certain URLs from being used? Is it possible that someone on TypePad accidentally (I hope!) indicated that one of my comments was spam and now my domain is rejected on all TypePad blogs?

And this is a test from MarsEdit. I think Ecto was a little more appealing for me from first impressions.

I’m playing around with Ecto, a desktop blogging client, and this is a test post. It seems pretty slick, but I’m not sure I understand the benefits of using this over the built-in editor in Wordpress at this point. At least I get a 21 day trial to play around with it…

Zach and I are teaming up to join the world of podcasting. We think that, if nothing else, a pastor and a rockstar (my term…not his ) should make for some interesting discussion. Our podcast is called TheoHacks because we are just a couple of hack theologians.

The first episode is recorded and we hope to have it online within the next 24 hours. Enjoy. The icon below is a direct link to the feed. I’ll post a direct link to iTunes once it is available.

It seems like I am always recommending some of my favorite books to people. Some ask for my opinion, but most do not. I’ve added a page with a listing of my favorite books broken into very general categories. I will maintain a link to the page in the reading section of the righthand column. I hope it can be of benefit to someone.

I spent today at Off The Map’s A Generous Orthodoxy Conference. This evening, I shared a row with the fellers from Radical Congruency, and they were feverisly typing away. Their 15 or so entries today summed up the event pretty well, so go enjoy their labors. I also enjoyed dinner with them — thanks for sharing some time together Justin and Aaron.

BTW Justin. Thanks for hooking me up with my neat new tagging tool.

I’ve enjoyed reading the blogs of others in the past 18 or so months, and I’ve especially enjoyed the diversity of views. Recentaly, I’ve run across a number of personal blogs of others who are involved in church planting that have been great to read. Because I’ve enjoyed them so much, I put together a new website this past week that I’m pretty excited about. It’s called PlanterBlogs.com.

Basically, the site aggregates the blog feeds of others who are involved in church planting into one blog. So, you can visit there, and see posts from ten different blog. I hope we can add more. I’ve purposefully tried to bring in a wide variety of different personalities and church planting styles. I hope this can be something of value for anyone who is involved in church planting or considering it.