After a few hours of being over my head in self-hosted wordpress land I activated my new theme. It’s called the Standard Theme.  It’s from the 8bit people that is led by John Saddington who works at North Point ministries in Atlanta.

I admire what these guys are doing with the 8bit network. They’re creating a community of individuals that work in various capacities of ministry.  Check out all their sites, including ChurchCrunch and ChurchCreate for a glimpse into what their doing and perhaps some inspiration.

So far I’m loving how easy the Standard Theme it is to use and tweak. I like the look and I like how customizable it is. I also love the forums, where I can get easy help. If you’re in the market feel free to purchase by clicking on the picture.

So you’ve finally caught the social media bug…or at least want to test the value of it. There are so many social media applications available that the thought of learning them all will burst that bubble quickly. I believe that if you have limited time and capacity the best way you can invest your time is with a blog…if you work hard at it.

Why? Blogging gives a face to your position and ministry, it connects you to like minded staff people and helps you sharpen your thinking as you write and collaborate with people who comment. It doesn’t have to be perfect, I’ve stopped and restarted a blog at least 3 times. The crazy thing is that I have friends all over the U.S. and Canada that I’ve never met in person and only know through my blog. It’s given me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise and has even helped recruit for our new staff team in Portland, Oregon.

How? There are plenty of applications out there to set up a blog with. I recommend if you’re brand new to try WordPress.com. It’s super easy, free to set up and has lot’s of templates to choose from. There’s a slight learning curve, but you can have the basic’s set up in a few minutes and a super tweaked template in a few hours. Other staff like blogspot.com (free), but I’ve gotten a little tired of it. By the way, you can always import posts into another blogging platform so don’t worry about the decision to much.

Best blogging tips:

• Content is king. If you have good content people will keep reading and engage with your blog.
• Make your post shorter than you think. This post is actually probably too long. The average length of visit on my blog is about 1.3 minutes. Shorten up those posts!
• Steady drip of content. Post regularly (whatever that means for you). This will help you gain regular readers.
• Write about what you know best! Find a niche and write. You’d be amazed at what people want to know about. People want to see behind the scenes of you and your ministry. Appropriate authenticity.
• Take you’re blog to the next level.

What’s keeping you from blogging? If you blog, what are you learning as you go?

Photo courtesy of Amypalko

We’re experimenting with using a WordPress blog-style website for the Portland Metro Campus Crusade for Christ ministry. Here’s me giving you a behind the scene’s look at it why it might work for you to. I don’t claim to be a website tech guy by any means, but this will give the lowdown on why we’re using it.