:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

While working on the Taking Root series, I noticed that I was far more pleased with the quality of my posts if I gave my ideas more time to develop. As I started my new series on Belonging in the Church, I wanted to find a way to still give those posts time to take shape so the writing could be sharp, economical, and to the point.

The solution I’ve played with and finally settled on is to take Thursdays off. I’ll either share guest posts or some highlights from blogs I’ve been reading. This gives me a little more breathing room and enables me to recommend my favorite blogs. That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time now, and I’m glad that I can finally make it happen.

Check out Ray Hollenbach’s post: Jesus, Friend of Pharisees

Ray writes, “The same man who welcomed Matthew the tax collector was also friends with Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.”

Lore Ferguson has a beautiful post about the tension between worship and fear: Kissing Fear

Lore writes, “Worship. Fear. Be in awe. Draw near…”

Sarah Bessey has an eerily similar story to my own about heartbreak and restoration in the church. The difference is that she writes about it with way more passion and poetry than literal ole’ me. This post will make your day: In Which God Has Restored Church to Me

Sarah Writes: “Six years ago, Brian left full-time vocational ministry and, you who have walked this road with us, you know, it’s been a journey. We were so burnt out, so exhausted, so broken hearted and part of me, a big part of me, never wanted to darken the door of a church again. ”

Kristin Tennant wants you to Learn How to Be Bored Again, and I think she’s right on.

Kristin writes, “I’ve been thinking about time not as currency, but rather as space. ”

I hope you enjoy these posts. I’ll be sharing the Women in Ministry Series guest post tomorrow, and then Monday I’ll pick up where we left off with my Belonging in Church series. Thanks for stopping by!

I can’t remember a moment where I decided I should write. It was something that I had to do. Throughout my life I can look back at different moments where, given the chance, I jumped into writing.

I remember cringing the first time my teacher read a story I’d written to my sixth grade class. No one laughed at the part where the dolphins took over the fishing the boat. Years later I watched an episode of the Simpsons where a bunch of dolphins took over Springfield and thought to myself, “Now that’s how it’s done!”

When I realized that I wouldn’t fit into traditional ministry, I count it God’s grace that I was forced to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve stumbled through day jobs since I graduated from seminary in 2005, sometimes finding niches that used my abilities in very fulfilling ways. However, writing has been the one constant. Back in February 2005, my friend Josh started this blog, and I gradually gave myself to it.

Writing has been a lifeline for me, but I think it has caused a few problems to the extent that if I wrote it, I think I put it into practice. For a Christian, this is dangerous trap. So now I’m trying to only write about what I’ve actually done, not what I think we should do.

I only write about stuff like giving food to the poor or visiting prisoners because I’ve done those things. I’m still way too intimidated to do ministry in the rough neighborhoods around our home. We’ll see.

However, rethinking my blog as a tool to encourage Christians with their daily struggles to live like Jesus has been quite good for me. I still end up writing stuff that’s out in left field from time to time, but having some kind of a mission really helps.

If I’m not aiming to write a post that encourages someone to either draw near to God or serve others in some way, what I’m I trying to do? Am I aiming for lots of hits and comments? Am I trying to sound clever?

I hope the preachy, disgruntled version of myself never comes back. I’m much happier and fulfilled now that I have God’s mission in mind for my writing. I delete a lot of stuff now. I write rough drafts and file them away.

When I write something, I have an opportunity to change someone’s day, hopefully even turn that person’s life in a positive direction. At the very least, I may provide a few seconds of encouragement. I’ve learned that I need to care less and less about being right or clever.

When I write, I have a chance to be part of God’s redeeming work on earth. It’s an honor that I hope I learn to never squander.

Questions for You:

Do you have a particular mission for your writing?

I’d love to know what your personal reasons are for writing.

When I first started blogging back in 2005, I had a great system. I woke up around 6 am, ate breakfast, and then worked on my post from 6:30 to 7:30 am. That left me time to clean up and head off to work. I rarely missed a blog post.

Today I struggle to wrap up my daily blog post by 7:30 am. In fact, it would take a miracle to keep anything resembling that schedule. Looking back on those days, I often wonder what the heck happened.

Twitter and Facebook happened.

As a freelance writer who has to manage his own schedule, it’s easy to just perpetually put everything off, especially with so many fun distractions out there. In 2011 I’m working on a new system that isn’t quite perfect yet.  If I boiled my system down to one word, that word is this: consequences.

If I don’t wake up early to tackle that blog post, then I need to cut something enjoyable from my day. Perhaps I don’t get to work out. Perhaps I lose reading time. Perhaps I have to go to bed extra early to make up for lost time.

Without consequences I’ll be tempted to skip my daily word count, marketing, and freelance goals—many of their benefits are hard to quantify since pay checks come so sporadically for me and marketing benefits are especially hard to measure. I have plenty of plates to keep spinning, but sometimes I’m tempted to spin one or two and put off the others.

If I don’t hit my daily targets, I now have something immediate to lose.

This reminds me of the parable of the three servants who were entrusted with money that their master expected them to use and multiply. Am I using and developing the gifts that God has given me? Or am I sitting on them and tinkering away on a few odd projects and then frittering time away on Facebook? How can I be faithful?

Part of remaining faithful and disciplined with the gifts God has given me involves creating immediate consequences. Without consequences, I think I would just putter along and fail to use all of my gifts and spend my day bugging friends on Facebook and Twitter.

All that to say, the dominance of Stephen Fry on Twitter is safe.

How do you discipline yourself when working?

I signed up for Twitter because I heard it’s a great way to keep track of news and to share information. So far it has delivered. I find helpful links, share my own, and interact with the 60 or so people I follow.

The hardest part to get used to is the 140 character limit for each post, or “tweet” as they call it. I eventually conformed, and have since loaded the Firefox TwitterBar plug in to make it easier to post throughout the day. I also loaded an extension to my Windows Live Writer that automatically sends updates to Twitter about my blog posts. Connecting Twitter to Facebook means I don’t need to post the same thing twice.

As I use TwitterBar, I have actually learned to tweet well below the 140 character limit. Suddenly 140 characters seems luxurious.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if a word limit would help my blogging a bit–force me to condense my thoughts into brief posts instead of rambling down the page. While there always will be a place for long blog posts digging into important topics, Twitter hints that we can say just as much with a lot less.

200 words seems about right.

I’ve been itching to go with a new theme on this site for a few weeks now. After searching through a bunch of themes and finding quite a few nice candidates, I settled on Grid Focus. The design is simple, clean, and focuses on content. I’m not sticking a lot of pictures on my blog, so the print-focused design worked well for me. I’ll be customizing it over the next few days.

The text on my various pages is sorely in need of an overhaul, and I’m also working on getting the sidebar area up to snuff. I think it’s passable for now. The main reason why I left Minyx Lite 2.0, a great theme by the way, was I couldn’t use widgets to move stuff around in the sidebar. I had to drop in my clunky html and leave much of the sidebar content in place lest I wreck the code. The header also wasn’t doing it for me.

At the end of the day, I wanted a sharper, cleaner look, though Minyx did well in the clean compartment. I also needed something that was a bit easier to use for a blog design novice such as myself.

Runners up for IMD theme:

Blubbr: A clean design, but not quite sharp enough.

Visionary: Tempting with its sharp design, but I’m not quite in the magazine category.

Modicus: I have given this theme a lot of thought, but at the end of the day, it’s too minimalist for me. I fear a person without design skills, such as myself, could make this theme into a confusing jumble of text.

It’s kind of nice to be using something that’s open source. It’s like having all of the gratification of something new with none of the expense!