The latest from Lanessa

My friend Lanessa has shared more on her situation including a thanks to all who have been praying for her and caring for her. Thought each and everyone of you who have been praying for her would like to know. Portions of her thoughts are below. You can read the complete update on her blog. (oh and yes – her boys are all named after the super heroes you see below :-))

I have been meaning to write this for a few days, going over what I would like to say every night as I go to sleep. This trial in my life the last month has shaken me spiritually too, not just physically. To wake up one day in a hospital room, nurses buzzing around you, IV’s in you and then to have a doctor you don’t know come in to tell you you had brain surgery was mind blowing, then to realize you can’t talk, can’t walk and your head has been shaved was even harder…

To those that couldn’t make my side, your prayers meant just as much. Thank you for believing that Christ could pull me out of the brain swelling and surgery alive. I have been learning to ask specifically to God what I am needing, and your prayers of hope and healing is exactly what I need….

Did you know we have had meals come every other night since this started?
Did you know I had girls I hardly know lend me a changing table and glider for the baby?
Did you know I now have formula and diapers till Clark is a year old?
Did you know women would come and play and do crafts with my children?
Did you know I had babysitters come anytime I needed, for long hours?
Did you know we never had to worry about $ for Jason’s gas and food?
Did you know I had churches all over the US praying for me?
Did you know I had a flower arrangement or gift sent to me every week?
Did you know I had a nurse make a CD of Christian singers she thought I would like?
Did you know I had my OB doc bring me a smoothie I wanted as a surprise?
Did you know my whole Sunday school came to pray over me?

Yes, they wrote an article in the paper about ME, but this trial has been about YOU, the person who cared enough to come, pray, and encourage. Thank you.

Jesus is a friend of mine

If you’ve missed it…

Here’s Sonseed’s video from the early 80’s — Jesus is a Friend of Mine ::

And here’s a cover of the song by the David Crowder Band ::

yesssss! i have a feeling this song may end up on a future podcast.
another HT to Tall Skinny Kiwi for the David Crowder version.

Editing for time

Wikipedia - Art Historian by quartermane

You know, I really hate editing — especially when it relates to someone else’s work.

Each week Thomas and I do our podcast and I always make a point to never shorten or cut the interviews we do with folks. After all, our goal is to share their story with folks and hopefully they’re something the listeners walk away from and talk about with their friends.

Along with the interviews, Thomas and I normally chat about the interviews/stories at the end of the show. I always enjoy the chats and wish time permitted us to really delve into these stories like we might do if we were sitting in a living room together. I think almost all of our podcasts could lead to a discussion that lasts over several hours.

However, due to the space-time-continuum, bandwidth and our listeners available time, I do my best to be sure our podcasts only last an hour in length. Which means that if we do a 30 min interview we have roughly 22-25 minutes to introduce the show and then to discuss the interview at the end (our musical clips take up 5-8 minutes usually). If we do a 45 min interview we end up with maybe 10 minutes to do all that.

Here in lies my frustration. I have trouble picking which part of the discussion might be more beneficial than others. If we really are “Free Range Christians” or “Open Source Christians” I hate the idea that I might be limiting the discussion when I go back and edit our discussions.

There are so many great points that Thomas brings up but I end up having to cut much of our discussion due to the “self-imposed time crunch.”

I also run into similar issues when leading a community group.

Everyone has a story to share. And I love hearing those stories. I love people sharing their stories (hence the podcast). Many people have examples in their life that relate to the discussion — but I also have to consider the time constraints other people in the group may have. That time constraint comes into greater play if its an early morning and people have to head to work — or a week night when folks have to head home so they can get to bed.

So what to do? I dunno. But I do hate editing — and thought you should know.

The Church is…

Here’s another great tidbit from Tall Skinny Kiwi & Phyllis Tickle (who by the way will be at The Great Emergence Conference in Dec.). The quote was featured in Tall Skinny Kiwi’s talk at GodBlogCon and comes from Tickle’s latest book The Great Emergence (need to get me a copy of that!)

…the Church, capital C — in not really a thing so much as it is a network in exactly the same way that the Internet or the World Wide Web, or for that matter gene regularity or metabolic networks are not “things” or “entities.”

I love that! It goes right along with the ideas/thoughts that I have running through my mind right now in preparation for “speaking” at encounter on Oct 12. We’ll see where it all leads me/us.

You might be a faith blogger if…

Catching up on some RSS feeds and had to share this from Tall Skinny Kiwi ::

You might be a faith blogger if…

  • if you sit in the back row of the church because thats where the wifi signal is the strongest
  • if your sermons allow both comments and trackbacks
  • if you tithe through a widget
  • if you think committing the original sin is getting tempted by the latest Apple
  • if you pray that God will allow you to upload your photo to the Lamb’s Book of Life
  • if your prayers are less than 140 characters because thats all Twitter allows
  • if you ever wonder why the domain of Satan doesn’t have its own URL
  • if you think Jesus’ command to Peter to “Feed my sheep” was to allow RSS syndication
  • if you think streams in the desert is a blog from Las Vegas

. . . then you just might be a faith-blogger!

Adding some revenue (hopefully)

Teabass (aka Andrew Nesbitt) (no not Seabass or C-Bass) shared a great little bit of WordPress love/help/code today on his blog.

Of course you’ve probably all realized that there are some ads on both my blog, and Laurie’s blog. You may have ignored them all the time — and that’s OK (well sorta ;-)). We’ve added these ads in hopes to at least cover the cost of our webhosting ($150 a year) and if possible, help pay off some of our debt (see the ongoing battle on the lower right hand column).

Anyways, we’ve attempted to do this as non-intrusive as possible while still making the ads visible enough and attractive enough that you’d want to click on them from time to time. Different ads mean different money — i.e. clicking on a Google ad might give us one-cent or maybe even 17-cents (depending on the advertiser). Clicking on an Amazon ad doesn’t give us anything – but if you purchase something from Amazon after clicking on our ads – we get a percentage of the sale.

So why do you care?

Well if you’re a regular reader, you probably won’t noticed we’ve added Andrew’s new code and thus more advertising to our blog posts. You won’t likely notice, because you probably read all the blog posts within 30 days of their original posting. However, for folks who might find a blog post via Google (say something that I wrote back in January about Justin Farmer) — then they’ll notice a new Google ad on each blog post that’s older than 30 days.

It was super simple to add and while I’d love to give you the code here — you can go right to the source for all the details.

So that’s that. Keep reading (and clicking/buying) and let me know if you’ve found other creative ways to build your revenue stream on your blog or website.