And now I am back to it. With a renewed dedication and purpose. When I first began 4 years ago Monday I blogged as catharsis and with a focus on things that truly interested me.

In time I began to attract readers and comments and became somewhat intoxicated by that. I liked have threads that were 100+ comments and 600+ visitors a day.

But in the process I lost what I was doing this for. And now I am back to a handful of readers and a desire to focus strictly on what interests me. Some will be deep. Most will be light. It will be heavy on the things that I am reading, watching, listening to and studying.

For those of you still here, thanks for sticking around.

But the sheer thought of doing everything required to upgrade makes my head spin. And it’s long past time to change the look of my blog but wordpress is labor intensive. At least for me.

Any thoughts from those with their own domains as to which way to go?

The one thing I keep going back to is this: thank you.

For those of you who make up this blog community I want you to know how much I appreciate you.

It’s amazing that I can feel such a sense of community with so many people I’ve never even met.

But I value you as if I’d known you all of my life. This week has been such a roller-coaster of emotions and I’ve so appreciated your presence to make me laugh and rejoice at a loving and ever-present God.

Again, thank you.

I’ve elected to move it over to a new host but I am not sure when that will occur. It will take 24-72 hours to transfer the blog over to the new host but I do not know if that will affect the access to this site when that happens.

If so, and you can’t access my blog, I haven’t pulled the plug and stopped blogging. I’m way too needy for affirmation to do that.

On another note, let me re-iterate that I do not moderate comments. However, I have set up one piece of moderation: first-time commenters. If you have never commented before, it will be hung up until I give the OK. From that point you should be able to comment freely.

I’ve done a lot of work to help curtail the influx of spam and have reduced the amount I receive from about 2000 per day to 1-2. At least for now.

–You can also see that I added a new feature where you can subscribe to comments. This will inform you when there are follow-ups to your comments to aid discussion.

–Soulforce is at Baylor. But Baylor ain’t talking. The VP of Student Life has stated that they are “committed to treating the riders with Christian grace and love” but that they “would not grant their requests for university-approved dialogue.” More as it unfolds.

–Stan Heath. In or out? I personally think it might be time to part ways.

–I’ve blogged a bit recently about whether or not there is room at the church table for those with differing views. I have a follow-up question for you before I proceed with a series I want to do: what doctrines or beliefs do you currently hold that you feel either need to be re-examined or you hold without having done much study on? In other words, is there any aspect of our faith and belief system that you have just always assumed to be true? My view of hell has fallen in that category.

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Our study this week is in the book of Philemon. By now, most of us know the story of Paul’s call to mercy and grace for the runaway slave, Onesimus.
But what jumped out at me this week was Paul’s greeting to Philemon. Paul greets him by extolling his faith and love. He even goes so far to say that “the hearts of the saints have been refreshed” because of the love of Philemon.

But wait, he’s a slave-holder. Now, I don’t know about you but owning a slave is fairly high up on my moral reprehensibility chart. It’s up there with murder and blue-tooth in my book.
But Paul doesn’t define him as a slave-owner. Instead he views Philemon with all of his faults as his “beloved fellow worker.”
How often do we define people based upon their worst moments or greatest sins? How often is the way we look at people determined by their weakness or shortcomings.
But that is not the way of Christ. And Paul gets that.
So should we.

I began doing this two years ago today. When I began I had no clue what I was doing and didn’t know anybody else (besides another preacher in my town) who was blogging. But I decided to give it a shot and now here I am.

When I began I figured it would be a way for members of my congregation to get to know me a little bit better. There would be no politics or controversial stuff. Just uplifting devotional type pieces and other things I found interesting. But that got boring.

Instead I determined to be a place where people could discuss sensitive issues in a loving and civil way. We Christians need to learn to agree to disagree, even on issues that are important to us. I hope this is a place where you feel you can do that.

I am amazed, stunned and humbled by how this blog has grown.
In the first year I posted 199 times with 741 comments. My hit totals was just over 30,000
In my second year I posted 278 times with 4,030 comments. I’ve had just over 104,000 hits in the last year. My highest hit total for a single day has been 888. I now average about 450–500 hits per day.

I think two series contributed to the growth:
–How Did I Get Here–A 10 part look at my journey from a lackey for the GOP whose politics determined his faith to where I am today.
–Thoughts on Non-Violence–A 16 part (and growing) study on how I came to a non-violent position based upon my study of Scripture and early church history. Part three in this series still holds my highest comment mark of 190.

Please don’t think that I’m blowing my own horn, here. I’m just simply amazed that people would make my ramblings a part of their day. My congregation has to sit and listen to me each week. You don’t. So the fact that you are here means a lot to me. This blog is my therapy and outlet. And I highly value this community.

One favor in celebration of my blogiversary: tell me about you. I have many people who regularly comment but there are many of you who read who often don’t weigh in. How about some introductions and information about you? Lurkers and commenters alike:

Name:
Location:
Age:
Profession:
Something awesome about you:
Why do you come here?
Do you have a favorite post?
Favorite Saturday cartoon?
Do You Blog? [insert link or URI]

Again, thank you so much for reading. Here’s to another year.

(HT: GKB for these questions)

1. “Heresies” that deserve a new look.
2. The Academy Awards
3. Top 10 Lists including: my top 10 heroes, Canadian artists, greatest controversial Christian songs, hymns I can do without hearing ever again, words I love to say repeatedly, fads that I hope come back, greatest sports teams, most likely disagreements to crop up on this blog, greatest living theologians and top celebrities I would vote for.
4. 2008 Presidential Race including an in depth analysis of both major political parties
5. The Inescapable Love of God
6. Nonviolence (no way I’m letting this go. I’m getting more ammunition daily.
7. The greatness that is 80s music.
8. Books
9. My “curmudgeonly acerbic” altar ego will make intermittent appearances holding forth on his beefs of the day.
10. You tell me: what should I blog about in the next 12 months? I already got a great suggestion about Canadian musical artists. (A preview of that list: Dead Trolls In A Baggie)

You may have noticed that I’m tinkering with my right sidebar. I had not updated my links in months and I’ve pretty much migrated to bloglines anyway.
In the upper left hand corner you can see a link to my public bloglines account. You will probably find your blog listed there. I’ve removed dead links and blogs that haven’t updated in a while.
If you want to be listed on my main page under “friends and familys” just say the word.

I will be adding some period sidebar links to articles on the web that I find interesting.

I will also be utilizing a different “recent comments” feature. You will be able to follow several conversations happening at the same time.

Also you can now subscribe to the rss feature for my comments. Much easier that coming back frequently.

Bloglines, people. Use bloglines.