Several years ago, I was digging around for opportunities to be inspired by a topic and to share my writing with other like-minded bloggers when I stumbled on Blog Action Day (http://blogactionday.org). On October 15th of every year (since 2007) bloggers from around the world write about the same topic. Registered bloggers then have their contributions become a part of the massive collection of perspectives on a single issue.

It’s really pretty incredible… so many voices all singing the same song like a giant choir that’s determined to make sure the whole world feels the ripple.

I know that I felt it.

Blog Action Day 2008 was on the topic of poverty. Now that’s a topic that I knew that I wanted to write about!

After all, I’m a Christian, and Christians are supposed to care about poor people and stuff, right?

I’m pretty sure Jesus talked about that kind of stuff, and the more I dig into the Old Testament I see some references back there too. In fact, the Bible talks about poverty all over the place, so I figure I should probably be talking about it more.

I thought of that one verse at the beginning of a sermon where Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor…” Then I looked it up in Matthew 5:3. Oh snap, that’s referring to “the poor in spirit.”

Now I was on a mission. I stare at the screen of the computer that costs as much as some people make in an entire year and rub my eyes because I’m up way too late for me to be completely coherent at work the next day. But I had to get to the bottom of this issue.

Let’s see, there’s that story where Jesus tells about the poor widow and her two coins. (My handy dandy BibleGateway.com helped me find it in Mark 12 by searching for the word “widow”). But Jesus doesn’t say what we should do about poverty. He just talks about what the poor widow gave. Still, I’m on to something. God seems to look after those who have very little.

Hmm… what else? That’s right, Jesus told some rich guy to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, and then follow him (in Mark 10). I knew all about this one. Jesus is saying we shouldn’t be so connected to our self-made, earthly wealth. It’s the rich guy’s bad attitude more than hungry poor people. Right? Regardless, I think I’m getting on the right track. There’s definitely some stuff in the Bible about the poor, and it’s certainly clear that God cares about them, and not so much about the comforts we tend to cling to.

By this time, Blog Action Day was only a few days away. I wouldn’t have time to iron out an entire theology of poverty. That would have to wait. I had enough to know that poverty is important, so now I needed to figure out what Christians should be doing about it.

Except I didn’t know anyone personally who was doing anything about the problem.

I didn’t even know how widespread the problem is. So a little research was in order.

I did a little poking around, mostly by surfing the Internet on poorly designed webpages that seemed to have good information, but looked like they had been created by some kid in the 5th grade trying to earn extra credit. I’m floored by the numbers that I find. Did you know that half of the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 per day? UNICEF reports that 22,000 children die every day due to poverty. I was shocked by the news that one billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their name.

But the problems don’t stop with poor people. The rest of us are getting richer and fatter every day. Yeah, I said fatter. I get angry when I learn that the poorest 20% of the world accounts for 1.5% of total consumption, while the richest 20% accounts for over 76% of total consumption. Then I look around and see obesity becoming a bigger problem every day in the United States, not to mention my own ever-increasing waistline.

Yeah… theological reasons aside, a little bit of Google activity looking for poverty statistics reveals the world’s self-made epidemic.

Now what to do with my new found rage? Who’s fighting poverty? And more importantly, who in the church (if anyone) is fighting poverty? If the church should be leading the charge since God cared so much about it, right?

Of course, I run into some crackpot solutions that’ll never fly. One guy says that all of the world’s wealthiest people should develop a moral conscience and give everything they have too the poor. (Hey, that sounds like what Jesus challenged someone to do, and we know how that turned out). People simply won’t give everything away to the poor, and people who blame the wealthy for the problem never seem to recognize their own wealth. The wealthy people who should be doing taking on the issue of poverty always seem to be just a little wealthier than they are.

But I found people who were doing some interesting work…

For more of this story, you can check out TheUnlikelyMissionary.com or purchase it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and E-junkie.

Also, Blog Action Day this year is on Sunday, October 16th. It coincides with World Food Day, and therefore will focus on the topic of food. If you decide to participate, I’d love to see a link to your post and hear about your experience of writing on this topic. How can an event like this help you find passion and purpose for your faith?

Dan King

Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. school of ministry and missions instructor. social media editor for thehighcalling.org. blogger at bibledude.net. co-founder and media director for the activistfaith.org movement. social media director for help end local poverty.

bibledude.net

The post How Blogging Helped Me Find Passion and Purpose appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

I don’t know if it really hit me right away. But as it started to sink in I realized that the game would never be the same after this.

I was in a remote village in Haiti, and I had just tweeted a few photos of our team meeting the people there. Within minutes of uploading those photos, I got an email from Facebook that someone had just commented on one of those status updates. It was a message for one of the people in the photos to put on some sunscreen because they were looking a little sunburned.

The message was from someone in our church who’s serving as a missionary in Morocco. We were bridging gaps of time and distance that no other mission team from our church had ever crossed before!

On this trip the supporters back home didn’t have to wait for us to return to hear the stories. And they didn’t have to pray blindly mere general blessings for the team. They were able to interact with the events as they unfolded, and were able to pray specific for things that started to unfold right before their eyes!

As I read chapter 7 of @stickyJesus, one statement stands out to me more than all the others:

With today’s technology, you can reach in minutes the physical ground that Paul and other game changers covered in years. Like Paul, each one of us can use God’s Word to teach, warn, motivate, and inject God’s perspective into popular culture.

It’s the realization that the message is the same as it always has been, but the tools that we have available to deliver it are some of the most powerful that our world has ever seen.

Sounds like an opportunity to me.

The book has a great list of how to be a game changer online, and I want to highlight a few of them here….

• “Pray for yourself. Ask God about the best way to share what He is showing you.” There are opportunities around us every moment of every day, we just need His wisdom to help us tell that story.
• “Be honest and transparent.” People connect more with our brokenness and imperfections than they do the false fronts that we often put up to impress them.
• “Build a strong sincere, online rapport with others.” It’s first about relationships, then the message.
• “If you can’t find the words to say yourself, find a wise pastor or writer who is sharing his or her perspective online.” Even as a pastor or writer, sometimes it’s best to let someone else articulate what’s on your heart.
• “Commit to learning new technologies and tools for online communication.” Have you ever tried to build a house without a hammer and a saw? Nuff said…

We’ve come a long way since the time that Paul had to pass letters on rolls of papyrus through the bars of his jail cell. But we have the same task that he had in delivering the message of the Gospel to the world. Now it’s up to us to use the tools that we have at our disposal to make it happen.

As a believer, you come from a long list of game changers. Now it’s your turn. Are you ready to change the game?

1. How are you sharing your personal testimony online?
2. What’s happening around you right now that you use to help you communicate the Message of the Gospel to others online?
3. What’s happening in the world right now that you can respond to using a Biblical perspective that might help encourage and/or empower someone else?

6) Holy Spirit: The Power Source <– @StickyJesus project –> 8) Warning: Danger Zones

Dan King

Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. school of ministry and missions instructor. social media editor for thehighcalling.org. blogger at bibledude.net. co-founder and media director for the activistfaith.org movement. social media director for help end local poverty.

bibledude.net

The post > @stickyJesus 7) Christ followers: the game changers appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

One of my favorite parts of going to the grocery store (aside from sampling anything that I’m allowed to try) is checking out. There’s something about the display of magazines and tabloids that I just have a hard time pulling my attention away from. Those magazine folks must be doing something right if I struggle to tear myself away from the headlines that captivate me!

As we have through other parts of this project, it’s important for us to look at other ‘experts’ in marketing and see what we can learn from them. This time it’s print media that gets put under the microscope.

The cool thing about this one is that I believe that magazines are more similar to blogs than any other offline example that we could be looking at. We both run regular ‘articles’. We both strive to get more subscribers. And in some cases, we may both try to monetize our work based of our [impressive] numbers.

By looking at magazines, we learn some cool things that we can apply to our own blogs:

• Marketing Ideas
• Design Ideas
• Post Ideas
• Monetization Ideas
• Reader Engagement Ideas

While there are certainly many differences between magazines (offline media) and blogs (online media), it won’t take long evaluating a magazine to walk away with long list of things that you’ll want to try right away.

In addition to looking at the print versions of magazines, you may also find it helpful to look at websites for magazines. A good magazine website will take the print version and apply online concepts that may translate into more ideas for your blog. But if you decide to also look at what magazines are doing online, I would recommend having the print version in hand at the same time. This will allow you to see how the print ideas manifest themselves into online formats.

A couple of good Christian magazines (our primary niche) that I would suggest are:

• Christianity Today
• Relevant
• Charisma
• WORLD
• CCM
• Guideposts

Finally, there’s also some wisdom in looking at non-faith based magazines. There’s a lot of great work being done out there that we can glean from, and it would be a shame to not learn from others who are doing great work in media.

Discussion

1. What general lessons have you already learned from observing how magazines do things?
2. What magazines do you think would provide the most value for you as a blogger trying to learn from them?
3. What magazine websites do you think are particularly impressive, and what techniques are you able to identify that might be valuable to you?

The Extra Mile

A few other things you can do to take your blog, other bloggers, and this project even further today…

• Reply & give other bloggers feedback on the little things they do.
• When other bloggers include a link to a new article they’ve posted today, click, read, and comment on it.
• Tweet, share, & bookmark this post.

Dan King is… Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. bible college instructor. blogger at bibledude.net. social media editor for highcallingblogs.com. occasional contributor for the 8-BIT network.

Dan King

Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. school of ministry and missions instructor. social media editor for thehighcalling.org. blogger at bibledude.net. co-founder and media director for the activistfaith.org movement. social media director for help end local poverty.

bibledude.net

The post 31DBBB Day 24: How To Use a Magazine To Improve Your Blog appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

One of the hardest things that I’ve ever done was to blog in a silo. Well… not a literal, physical silo, but a figurative one. That was back in my early blogging days, and I struggled quite a bit with whether what I was doing was making any difference. I frequently got discouraged because I wasn’t sure if anyone cared, or if they were even listening.

What I needed most during that time was someone that could tell me if I was hitting the mark, or if I was off my rocker.

Today’s assignment deals with this very issue. Our task is to find a blog buddy. A blog buddy is someone that you can share ideas with, get feedback from, and work on projects with. Essentially, you have someone to partner with in a way that helps you both to improve your blogs.

Darren Rowse shares this advice to consider (with my commentary) when looking for a blog buddy:

1. Make it mutually beneficial – As with real-life relationships, it’s never about how much you can take. So make sure you think about what you have to offer the other person (in addition to how they can help you).
2. Attempt to find a blogger in a similar niche – This whole blog buddy concept works best when you and your buddy can compliment each other, especially if you decide to do projects with or guest posting for each other.
3. Find other bloggers on your level – Would a first-grader be lost trying to study with a high-schooler? You bet. There’s a reason why our education system groups people based on their learning-levels.
4. Make each other’s blog better – If you put a good deal of effort into building someone else up, you’ll usually find that it comes back to you. Do what you can to bless your blog buddy.

One of the best things that I’ve done as a blogger was to join the HighCallingBlogs.com network, and it is for this very reason. I’ve looked in lots of places to find somewhere that I can connect, and I’ve had limited success. However, it wasn’t until I joined this network that I discovered a whole crew of like-minded bloggers at all different levels that I could connect with. Now I have several great blogging buddies that I get to work with.

The truth is (unless you are genetically predisposed to blogging) that you cannot do this alone. None of us can. In fact, God didn’t create us to do life (and that includes blogging) alone. Find a buddy.

As iron sharpens iron, so one blogger sharpens another.

Discussion

1. Have you struggled with blogging in a silo? If so, how does it make you feel?
2. If you already have a blog buddy, then what are some of the benefits that you’ve discovered in that relationship?
3. Are there places (like HighCallingblogs.com) that you’ve found valuable connections that help you become a better blogger?

The Extra Mile

A few other things you can do to take your blog, other bloggers, and this project even further today…

• Reply & give other bloggers feedback on the little things they do.
• When other bloggers include a link to a new article they’ve posted today, click, read, and comment on it.
• Check previous posts in the series for new comments.
• Tweet, share, & bookmark this post.
• So, please review Stuart Dyckhoff’s blog, ChurchTechy,  and give him some feedback.

[image by A Simple Country Girl, used with permission]

Dan King is… Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. bible college instructor. blogger at bibledude.net. social media editor for highcallingblogs.com. occasional contributor for the 8-BIT network.

Dan King

Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. school of ministry and missions instructor. social media editor for thehighcalling.org. blogger at bibledude.net. co-founder and media director for the activistfaith.org movement. social media director for help end local poverty.

bibledude.net

The post 31DBBB Day 15: Find a Blog Buddy appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

I was sitting at home one evening minding my own business. I had some ‘serious’ work to get done, and it included checking out a few things on Facebook. So I signed in and attended to my business.

Bing.

The Facebook chat opened up with a message from an old friend. I’ve never actually met this dude in person, but I know him and one of his pastors through some work that I’ve done with their church through my blog.

He told me that he was actually hanging out with that pastor at their church office working on a project together.

After the typical formalities of two friends who haven’t talked to each other in a while he asked me a monumental question. I’ll quote him as closely as I can remember…

“Hey Dan, we are here reaching out to people we know through Facebook to find out how we can pray for them, and we’d like to pray for you. How can we pray for you?”

First of all, I was honored to know that someone wanted to pray for me! So I shared with him about an upcoming mission trip to Haiti that I’m working on, and asked that they pray that everything comes together okay for that trip.

I never did inquire as to what their ‘project’ specifically looked like, but knowing how they work I can easily imagine what they were doing. But even if the way I present this is not exactly like their approach, they gave me enough of an idea to formulate what seems to be a very effective way of reaching out to people. And if I were putting together this type of project it would probably look something like this…

1. Get some people together in place where several computers can be connected to the Internet. (Note: Have people bring laptops and netbooks if they have them.)
2. Have everyone log onto their Facebook accounts and initiate chat with each of their friends who are online at that time.
3. Ask each person how you can pray for them (and yes, that includes non-Christian friends).
4. Document on a spreadsheet or other document each of the prayer requests that come in.
5. Gather after a period of time to pray with each other for all of the prayer requests that have been collected.

As I write this, my analysis of this approach to outreach is only anecdotal, but I imagine that it could have some pretty powerful impact. It’s something that encourages believers and shows unbelievers that you are willing to do something in their on their behalf.

In my mind, evangelism largely about showing others the love of Christ in a way that draws them closer to Him. And these kinds of selfless acts are the very ones that people will remember when they are going through something and are not sure where to turn.

Dan King is a dedicated follower of Christ, a loving husband (to my beautiful wife Krista), and a proud father (of my son Samuel). We works as a corporate training manager, and you can find him blogging at bibledude.net.

Dan King

Christ-follower. husband. father. corporate training development guru. school of ministry and missions instructor. social media editor for thehighcalling.org. blogger at bibledude.net. co-founder and media director for the activistfaith.org movement. social media director for help end local poverty.

bibledude.net

The post Internet Evangelism Idea #2: Facebook Prayer Outreach appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.