Mike Cope, one of three senior editors emeritus at New Wineskins Magazine presents anecdotal evidence for the deep faith of Hillary Clinton. And while he’s at it, Mike gives sage advice for those who would get rowdy, loud, and excited during politico season. As Mike says,

“when vigorous political discourse turns into bashing of public figures, it perpetuates a great lie: that they are merely the ideologies and symbols attached to them. When a candidate’s ideology is mistaken for his or her personhood, it masks a crucial truth: that each person, no matter their political views, bears God’s image and matters deeply to him.”

Thanks for the be-good reminder Mike! You can read the complete post [here]

By chance or providence I happened to be on vacation when my wife and I visited the Pine Valley Church of Christ in Wilmington, NC. It just so happened that on that same day Mike Cope preached his inaugural sermon at his new church home. Mike couldn’t have been older than 25 years. He had a beautiful young family to support him in this newly accepted position at the Pine Valley Church. I’m sure there were the good times as well as the bad. Mike if you happen to stumble on this correct me where I’m wrong.

Files under Hillary Clinton, How to Live, Mike Cope, Political Correctness, Presidential Canidates, blogging, conventional church, creative, democrate, influence, politics, republican | |

Files under blogging | |

I’ve been an off and on blogger for the past 5 years and I have to admit at one time I was overly concerned with posting at least once a day but I’m learning that…

• Traffic is irrelevant to this blog’s success– What matters most is whether I’m reaching my target audience (which is narrow and focused), not necessarily how many people read my posts. Engaging with the audience I want to have a relationship with is a much more important to me than how frequently I post.
• Daily post doesn’t make readers loyal– As the blogosphere grows and matures (I read somewhere that the blogosphere doubles in size every 6 months), the number of new readers and bloggers will decrease and loyal readers are going to matter more. My perception is if a reader has the expectation of coming back to this blog, or any blog, and finding a new post ever day and then they do not find that post the blogger runs the risk losing of losing reader loyalty. Loyal readers subscribe to a blog via RSS feeds and have new content pushed to them. They will remain loyal because they have subscribed, not because you post frequently.
• Frequent posting creates a blogging landfill – According to Technorati, only 55% of bloggers post after 3 months of existence. The pressure of the first months to write often contributes to people abandoning their blogs.

This round of blogging didn’t begin with the expectation of catching Andrew Jones or Jordon Cooper. I simply want to post my thoughts with the hope of reaching a small audience of missional believers. That’s my target audience. If you want to catch the top bloggers or become a top 50 Technorati blogger, you probably will need to post daily. But for the rest of us, we just need to blog within our limits, knowing our purpose with the sole intent of engaging an audience and creating a small community. Be satisfied with that. According to Technorati, only 11% of all blogs update weekly or more. What will matter more and more is what you write and how you engage, not how often you write.

Files under blogging | |

I could post about the Super Sunday combo birthday party (wife’s BD) we had this evening at our home, but I prefer to muse for a minute on the thousand of blogrolls on the thousands of weblogs across the blogosphere. I wonder how many of us even read the links we list on our blogs. The ones I’ve visited the last few days are full of dead and outdated links. Do we put them on our weblogs because they are ‘real’ places we actually visit or are they really just favors given to help cyber-friends increase their traffic? As I am typing this post I’m looking at my blogroll.

Files under blogging | |

I want to encourage those who visit Abductive Columns to talk! Use the comments section. I feel one of the major weaknesses of blogging is more lurk than speak. Start ranting and raving!

SezWho is a plugin (small piece of software) I’m experimenting with in hopes of connecting individuls within the blog community via comments. So lets turn comments into conversation.

If you have a web-hosted blog, visit SezWho, get a feel for its potential, and then download it.

Files under blogging, comments, conversation | 2 Comments | 2 Comments »

Eugene Cho’s post, “…why i blog” has stimulated much reflection and thought. Why do I blog? Good question. I’m not always sure. On thing is certain—my answer is not composed in the static. It’s a dynamic that is constantly changing. Maybe that’s why I have stopped and started blogging three different times in the last seven years.

Here’s my answer for “why I blog“— today.

I’m a writer. And writers are unique among creative types because writers alone believe that the world really needs to hear what they have to say. Painters, sculptors, poets and other artists don’t suffer this illusion.

Another reason I blog is my desire to participate in creating a world in which nobody owns, everybody can use, and anybody can improve. That’s the long-term goal of everything I write. I want to make the world a better place.

Now, ask me again in a year and I can almost assure you that my reasons will change. Possibly the change will be so demanding that my conscious won’t allow me to post on a blog.

Files under blogging, creative, writer, writing | |

Abductive began ten years ago as GraceAwakening, an online resource that continues to maintain a web presence today. It was one of the early “christian” blogs and over the past decade has survived a name change (today it is Abductive Columns) and two blog platform changes. Today it returns to Wordpress.

Files under blogging | |