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New Look – Microblogging

This blog has not been working well for me for a few months.  The church and the web business has grown to the point where I don’t have time to write long posts like I did at the beginning.  I’ve since discovered Twitter and have found it to be liberating.  Only having 140 characters to get a thought across is awesome.

I’ve also gone to a shorter post format with this blog.  Instead of fighting it, I’m giving in.  Microblogging is working better for my current lifestyle.  This blog is an important part of what I’m doing personally and with the church so it needs to keep going.

This is the reason for the new layout.  It’s set up to display shorter posts and track my twitter updates automatically.  It’s becoming sort of a hub for me to connect with people in ways that actually work instead of forcing myself into something that worked for a while but no longer does.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing longer posts from time to time.  I’m working on some final thoughts on Lakeland and some other things.  But, by and large, the posts will be more distilled.

Cheers.

Favorite WordPress Plugins

I use WordPress to power this blog. WordPress is an open-source blogging platform, and in my opinion, is the best at what it does. One of the things that makes it great is the community that helps develop and support it. Between the abundance of free themes and creative plugins, there really isn’t much it can’t do.

Every year the WordPress community takes a month to honor the creativity and brilliance of WP plugin authors. In support of the community, I thought I would list for you the plugins I use (and could not/would not live without).

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Ancient Church Discovered in Jordan

Cave under St. GeorgeousA fascinating archeological discovery has been made. They are calling it “the world’s first church”, and it actually may be. According to the BBC News report, a cave was uncovered underneath St. Georgeous (one of the oldest known churches until now). They are dating the site back to AD33-70 and saying it was used as a home and place of worship to over 70 Christians fleeing Jerusalem due to persecution.

Here are some nice images of the site.

According to Dr Abdul Qader Al-Hassan, the director of the Rihab Centre for Archaeological studies, the cave site shows clear evidence of early Christian rituals that predate the church.

Dr Al-Hassan says that steps lead down into the chapel which is approximately 12m long and seven metres wide.

There is a circular area of worship with stone seats separated from living quarters. This circular element, called an apse, is important says Dr Al-Hassan because there is only one other example of a cave with a similar feature, which was also used for Christian worship.
Dr Al-Hassan said: “We found beautiful things. I found the cemetery of this church; we found pottery shards and lamps with the inscription ‘Georgeous’”.

In the cave there is also a tunnel that leads to a cistern which supplied water to the dwellers. An inscription in the floor of the church above refers to the “70 beloved by God and the divine” whom the archaeologist believes were refugees from religious persecution in Jerusalem.

Man, I can’t wait to talk to some of those 70 Christians when I get to heaven.

[tags]St. georgeous cave, archaeology, christianity, jordan[/tags]

I’m a Huge Metal Fan

I’m sorry, but I laughed out loud at this. I fully understand that I may be the only one that did. Clearly that’s not going to stop me.

Not only is it funny, but it illustrates pretty well how two people can think they are communicating when they aren’t at all.

Or… it could have no meaning at all and just be funny. I realize that I’m a pastor so I see sermon illustrations in just about everything. I could get a sermon illustration from a bowl of oatmeal.

office furniture in BulgariaHave a great weekend.

Metal Fan Joke

 

What is RSS?

RSSAbraham Piper at Desiring God posted a nice article on how to get started with RSS subscriptions. I’ve written on this here before, but not this completely. If you aren’t using an RSS reader (or don’t know what that is), go check out the article. Seriously, it will revolutionize the way you approach the web.

 

Of course, I have an ulterior motive… I want you to subscribe to our feed! You can use our standard feed, or get the feed by email. Your choice.

 

What Header Should I Use?

Heather likes the new design I picked for the blog, but she’s not a fan of the header image I used. So, I thought I would put the question to you guys and see what you think.

I’ve put together 4 more (in addition to the header that is in place now) for you to choose from. Vote on your favorite and the winner will get put in!

Click on the images to view the full size version. Vote on your favorite in the poll located at the end of the post. If you have a strong opinion, let us know why in the comments.

Thanks!

Read more…

New Design

Huh? Why the new look?

I’ve upgraded my WordPress install and there are several new features on the back end that I like. My previous design was not able to take advantage of some of these features. All the updates to the sidebar and other areas had to be done manually which was getting old. I don’t feel like recoding a bunch of things (nor do I have the time) to make it work the way I wanted it, so viola! Time for a change…

This design loads a little faster too.

Hope you like it. If you care at all… ;-)