Chrismas Tag

Fred McK tagged me up. After alotta serious discorse here’s something fun and goofy:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags: A little of both. I always like tearing open a real wrapped gift.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Faker.

3. When do you put up the tree? Tomorrow hopefully

4. When do you take the tree down? Before my birthday (Jan. 8)

5. Do you like eggnog? Oh yeah!

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

7. Hardest person to buy for? Who’s not hard to buy for?

8. Easiest person to buy for? The Operation Christmas Child kids

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yeah, but it’s pretty small. I’d really like to rock it out with a plastic-light-up lawn style nativity.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Yes, I really should.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? One year my little brother got me the kitsch-tivity.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? It’s a Wonderful Life

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Done and done.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Absolutely. I try to give Jesus every year.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Mrs. Wojahn’s cookies.

16. Lights on the tree? Only if they are fiber-optic.

17. Favorite Christmas song? If God came down on Christmas Day, I know exactly what He’d say. He’d say “Oi to the punks and Oi to the skins and Oi to the world and everybody wins!”

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home.

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? We worship Jesus and not Satan Clause at my house. I can name all of Jesus’s reindeer.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Tree Angles are creepy.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Consumerism

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? red

24. Favorite place for Christmas dinner? At the table.

25. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays? Rick McK says, “The Church’s response has been to critique the culture for not talking about Jesus or saying, ‘Merry Christmas’ so there’s this idea that when I’m running through the mall, trampling over people, to get that last thing, you should tell me, ‘Merry Christmas’ not ‘Happy Holidays’ That’s a very lame place for the Church to draw the line in the sand.”

I have to agree, although I use them both as my family celebrates Hanukkah as well.

Tagged: Brunette Koala

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Flair of the Week: Life Music Ministry

Jon Lloyd is blogging friend from Evansville, IN who is quick with the Photoshop. Lifemusicministry.com tends to update blog headers frequently. The design is always simple and compelling. I like the red star in the most recent header. Here’s some blog flair Jon made from his previous header:

I’ve got this one up on the virtual cork board.

Keep the flair coming.

Flair of the Week: Craig McDole

Craig is a guy I’ve just recently met through facebook. He blogs over at Doorkeeper’s Journal. Craig shot me this outer space flair he made and I thought it was pretty cool:

It’s not “blog flair” per se, but flair made by a blogger is close enough. You can see it on my facebook profile now.

So now you have no excuse – put a radomn picture on a button and I just might post about it. Although I’d recommend you include your URL so others can enjoy your blog too 🙂

Flair of the Week: BetterThanBlank.org

Alex hooked me up with some better than blank flair. It has a TV antenna on it. I can only assume this is Alex’s way of making fun of me because I do not watch TV.

You can see it prominently featured this week on my facebook profile.

I used to never watch TV. Now they put TV on the internet and I’m a total Office/Heroes/Last Comic Standing junkie. It’s Alex’s fault for getting me hooked on the Office.

Do you blog with flair?

Flair of the Week: ConsumingWorship.org

Jeff sent me some flair for his blog Consuming Worship

It has a cool artsy looking guitar.

You can see it prominently featured this week on my facebook profile.

Do have flair for your blog yet?

2 Brents for Sunday Night

Brent # 1 – In Worship

Brent asked today,

“What do you think is valuable about this blog?”

“What would give it more value?”

Here’s my reply:

Brent,

You have a very quirky sense of humor. There’s always something random popping up on your blog. That’s great! Authenticity is key. Whatever you blog about – make it you. You do this now and I value that about your blog.

As for adding more value – I like blogs that link other blogs. I like reading a post and then clicking on a pingback to see what someone else said about that post. Pingbacks are more powerful than comments because they carry the conversation across multiple blogs. I would say write content that is so compelling someone else has to write a whole post and link back to you rather than simply leave a comment. Also writing commentary on your blog about someone else’s post adds value.  Just linking a cool post and saying, “Go check this out” doesn’t add a lot of value, but adding your perspective and commentary on the issue adds value. This post you did linking to Collide Magazine is a good example.

Then again one thing you are great at on your blog is starting discussion. You tend to get many comments on your posts. Since you are good at that, focusing on writing posts that get commented on a lot should probably be a higher priority than writing posts that get linked a lot.

Bottom line: look at what you do best and do more of that.

Brent # 2 – in the Trench

Or I guess I should say out of the trench. Brent Minter from Worship Trench has started his own blog called, “Worshiply.” It’s a pretty new blog so head over and show him some love. (By “show some love” I mean comment on one of his posts – or better yet write your own post about his and link him up.)

Here is a great video Brent made:

The Value of Narrative Tweets

Jordan posted some comments on a previous post that were so thought provoking I needed to respond with an entire new post.

Part of Jordan’s Comment

Let me see, what will people be reading in 100 years.

DA Carson’s works…check.
Edwards…check.
John Piper…check.
oh yes and Billy Chia’s twitters. hahaha

[…]

My Reply

Jordan,
I may not be as famous as Piper – you don’t have to rub it in 🙂

You’ve inadvertently touched on a very important feature of twitter that many people don’t take advantage of: Narrative Tweets.

You see if I ever do get as famous as DA Carson there is a very high likelihood that they will be reading my tweets in 100 years.

Why?

People are fascinated by narrative. They love a story – this is why people read books that are diaries, journals, and autobiographies. My tweets not only connect me with other people – the tell the story of my life. But, not everyone’s tweets do this. You have to be intentional about it.

Non-Narrative Tweets

Some people tweet in a disconnected way – random “what I’m doing now” tweets pop up that aren’t connected to anything else going on. They are informative in the moment, but like you said, the value dies quickly. This is because they think of twitter in terms of the way they most frequently access it: via the ADD inducing stream on their twitter.com/home page.

Enter the Narration

However my tweets (and many others) have value when you go to my twitter page and look at all my tweets together. When I tweet later in the day I try to connect it somehow to something I said earlier. This could be as simple as “practice is starting” and “practice is over” or more complex like my commentary on homeschooling.  The point is that if follow me through out the day (or even just check in once and look at my twitter page) it tells the story.  There’s a narrative value to browsing my twitter feed. In this way the value is ever present – even 100 years from now.

I would love to see what Jesus’ twitter archives would look like. I guarantee if he would have twittered we’d be reading it today. The same goes for Piper, Edwards or Fowler.

In Closing: Thank You

The real point of twitter isn’t what will happen in 100 years – books are better at that hands down. The point is that right now there are 75 people who follow my twitter feed. 75 real people who matter. They care enough to plug into what I put out through twitter. There are even more who follow through my facebook status updates. When I my daughter was sick and I asked for prayer on twitter I got responses back through facebook. That’s meaningful kingdom impact in my book. So thank you for following me on twitter.