Here’s a short article from a Serbian media company’s website regarding the defacement of a church website.

Thanks to @Serbia for the tip.

Cynthia Ware has a very valuable post today regarding a Facebook Phishing Scam which is effecting pastors.

Gospel Communications International is shutting down its webhosting services. The Gospel.com Alliance includes more than 300 members.

Here’s a story about the decision from the Muskegon Chronicle (Gospel Communications International is based in Muskegon, Michigan).

Let’s pray for the employees and the ministries who will be affected.

For more information, visit www.gowestafrica.org.

Thanks to the Facebook For Pastors Facebook Group for the heads up!

If you look in the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see a new section called “Quick Thoughts.” Let me quickly tell you the main points of how I’m doing this and then strategize for a moment about how something similar might be useful for churches.

I’m a member of a few different social websites (I’ve linked to my profiles in case you’re interested):

• LinkedIn (I use it 3-4 times a week)
• Facebook (I use it every day, usually multiple times)
• Plaxo Pulse (I don’t use it very much - someone invited me, so I signed up)
• Plurk (I just signed up a couple of days ago - I’ve heard good things about it)

Of course, there are many other social networks. I also have a Twitter account (until recently, I hardly ever used it).

Most of these social networks have a way you can update your status frequently throughout a day. Some use this feature, some don’t. The people who use it most effectively are not talking about what they ate for breakfast, but are sharing quick links, thoughts, etc. At the moment, I’m probably a little bit too much on the side of “what I ate for breakfast!”

The problem I’ve had in the past with using these status updates is that if I’m a member of five different services (and could be a member of many, many more), how am I going to update my status on all of them? I could end up doing nothing but updating my status!

Enter ping.fm — it’s a service in beta which allows you to create one status update that then gets pushed out to all of your social networks. Plus, they have a feature which allows me to use GoogleTalk to send their automatic service an update and that update then gets pushed out to all of my networks. Since I do all of my email in gmail now, it’s very convenient for me to just click on the pingdotfm chat partner (as I said, it’s actually an automated service) and write out a quick couple of lines for my status, hit the enter button, and know that all of my social networks will soon (some in a matter of seconds) have my updated status.

The final piece of the puzzle is that Expression Engine (the content management system I use) has a plugin that allows me to display my Twitter status updates in the sidebar — that’s what you’re seeing in the “Quick Thoughts” section (since I was experimenting initially, you’ll see a duplicate entry or two — the duplicate entries should go away in the next few days as I add more updates).

As I was telling a friend about what I had set up, I started thinking about how a church could use this. If the majority of a church’s members had Twitter accounts, their updates could be combined into a “congregational Twitter theme” which would allow everyone to stay on top of what other members were up to. I have a feeling this would provide an enhancement to face-to-face community and bring people in a congregation closer together.

Does anyone know of any churches doing something similar to this? Just curious.

A few days ago, I came across the website of His Hands Media. Here is how they describe themselves:

His Hands Media uses digital technology to present stories that inspire people to invest and participate in God’s important work in the community and around the world. We specialize in video production and website design that extends the reach of Christian organizations and ministries allowing them to raise the funds necessary that will bring aid and hope to people in need, through the message of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I was especially intrigued by a video they have optimized of a trip to Ghana by volunteers from Opportunity International. The video is located here. As the folks from His Hands Media point out, the quality of the video is surprisingly good seeing that it was filmed with the inexpensive Flip Ultra video camera.

What would it be like if our short-term missions teams brought several of these Flip Ultra cameras to capture video of their activities? Depending on the availability of internet access, the teams would be able to quickly upload video of the mission which could then be shared with friends and supporters back home.

I ran across a new blog a few days ago - ChurchTechToday, written by Lauren Hunter, a public relations consultant who “(assists) church technology providers in communicating their desires to help churches do ministry better through internet-related technological advancements, whether it’s through using church management software, online newsletters, or cutting-edge social communities to spread the Gospel.”

Launched in mid-July, Lauren’s blog has touched on internet evangelism, the iPod Bible, the “Death of Print,” and technology for church bookstores.

I would encourage you to visit Lauren’s blog and “give it a whirl!”

If you look in the sidebar under the heading “We Recommend,” you’ll find a link to Turtle Interactive. Turtle Interactive is the design boutique of Tim Bednar.

What can I tell you about Tim? Tim pastored a multi-ethnic, inner city church for nearly 10 years, and so he has a good idea of what makes a church “tick,” so to speak. He’s also a brilliant designer and web developer who develops strategic social websites and applications to facilitate online community. He’s been around the web, and specifically around the portion of the web populated by churches and parachurch ministries, for a long time. That’s why we recommend him so highly.

If you’re a church or ministry in need of a new website, you now have a chance to learn from one of the best!

Tim has recently started a new project called the Ashford WordPress Theme.  This new project was born out of Tim’s recent work with WordPress on Greg Boyd’s new site (worth a look just in itself at www.gregboyd.org). In working with WordPress on this project, Tim realized that “most WordPress themes are not really created for normal people who are responsible for building and maintaining web sites. Most of the time, free WordPress themes offer killer screen shots but are a pain to use.”

The Ashford WordPress Theme is for building simple web sites. Tim’s philosophy is to build a theme which focuses on giving “in place tips on how to build and maintain the site.” He is about to release v0.1.2, and is looking for a few ministries who would be willing to test the Ashford theme and give him feedback on the project. Once this test phase is up and running, Tim will be developing additional subthemes, configurations, page templates and widgets.

To apply to be a test ministry, you can fill out the online application.

I was recently told about a website called TED. Here is what the site says about the organization:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

If you look at the site, you will find speeches by Al Gore, Freeman Dyson, Jane Goodall, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Bono, Bill Clinton, and many other “heavy hitters.” The person who told me about the website was pointing out (rightfully so, I imagine) that the membership of TED probably did not include many believers. So when I visited the site, I was surprised to find that the featured speaker on the front page of the site was none other than Billy Graham.

Here’s what TED has to say about his speech:

Speaking at TED in 1998, Rev. Billy Graham marvels at technology’s power to improve lives and change the world—but says the end of evil, suffering and death will come only after the world accepts Christ. A legendary talk from TED’s archives.

And here is Dr. Graham’s speech:

In May of 2007, James Cooper launched a new website called MinistryPool. James’ original idea (still a good one!) was to build a repository of top quality, easy to remember, domain names for use in ministry and Church marketing projects. The twist is that when one ministry or church is finished using the domain name for its project, the domain goes back into the “pool” so that other ministries or churches can use it.

James sent me an email this morning to let me know that he has expanded the concept of MinistryPool. From James’ “relaunch post”:

ministrypool will now bring together the best of online resources and other stuff for Churches. You’ll find reviews and rating of resources in a wide range of categories that can help your Church or ministry get the best out of the web.

After a brief review, I can say that James has gathered together a great set of resources that will be helpful to any church or ministry looking to improve their digital outreach.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, was recently interviewed by Jefferson Graham of USA Today regarding solid search engine optimization (SEO) principles.

The article, while fairly basic, provides a good start. If churches and ministries just followed these simple principles, I believe they would see some good improvement in their search engine rankings. In the ecommerce world, I like to say that the buying cycle begins at Google (because that’s where people search for your products). The same can increasingly be said in the Christian world - the “searching for a community of believers” cycle begins at Google.

Matt Cutts’ blog is also a valuable resource.

Sally Stuart, a well-known authority on Christian writing (she has compiled the Christian Writers’ Market Guide for the last 23 years), recently posted a letter from Craig von Buseck (Director of Ministries at the Christian Broadcasting Network) about his upcoming book tentatively titled “NetCasters: Harnessing the Internet to Make Fishers of Men.”

Craig is looking for stories of those who have come to Christ through the internet. If you know of such a story, Craig would welcome your input .

Dr. Jay Herndon is the Secretary-Treasurer for the Northern California and Nevada district of our denomination (the Assemblies of God). He is also an old, old friend from elementary school, Little League baseball, junior high, and college!

Jay recently sent an email to a mailing list for the ministers of our district and mentioned an intriguing use of text messaging the denomination is planning on using:

I’ve talked to our District Youth Director about using text response in a slightly different way: When there is an appeal for a call to ministry at Youth Convention and other youth events the kids flood the altars, and there are so many that it is impossible to get their name and address. I’m concerned that we haven’t been able to follow up with these kids. And so I have asked him if we can set up a text number, and ask the kids to text us their name and email. We are not using this to avoid the altar call, but to get the information that we need in a way they are accustomed to give it.

Interesting! What other innovative uses for text messaging are being used by the church today? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments to this article.

I just received an email from Mike Boyink asking me to help get the word out about a new project he’s starting through his Train-ee website.

Before I tell you about the project, though, let me give a quick word of explanation about Train-ee.com.

I’ve been using content management systems from EllisLab for about three and a half years. I first used pMachine and then switched to ExpressionEngine when it was launched. I’ve never been sorry. I now use or have implemented ExpressionEngine on 13 different websites.

Guess where I found out about EllisLab? That’s right — Mike Boyink has been a champion of EllisLab products for over four years, and he was the one who first turned me on to the joys of using EllisLab products.

In January of this year, Mike launched a new site — Train-ee.com — where he shares his wisdom and experience “to help web professionals get up to speed on ExpressionEngine^® as quickly as possible.” Through Train-ee, Mike provides online and in-person training, ebooks, and screencasts, all designed to help you learn the best content management system around in a minimum of time and with a minimum of pain! Mike is considered one of the experts in the ExpressionEngine support forums, and his combination of knowledge, wisdom, internet strategy experience, and extensive experience with ExpressionEngine means there is no one better to help you learn to use this great CMS.

Now, on to Mike’s newest project. One of Mike’s first projects for the Train-ee website was a series on “Building an ExpressionEngine Site - Small Business.” The series was very well-received in the ExpressionEngine community. And now, he will soon begin another “how to Build an ExpressionEngine Site” series, this time building a church website.  At the end of the series when the site is complete it will be auctioned off on eBay, with proceeds going to a TBD charity. You can learn more here:

A New Blog, A New Series

If you have been looking for a content management series for a new church website or to start redevelopment on an old church website, I am confident that this series will prove extremely valuable to you. Mike is the developer of the Manna? church website and is very experienced in working with churches to effectively use their websites. I would strongly encourage you to visit the Train-ee website and start following Mike’s new series!

I was reading this article on Think Christian last week, and was particularly struck by the comments, especially Jason Wells’ reference to 2 John 12. I often talk about the need for face-to-face community and about how internet evangelism still needs the foundation of a physical gathering in a local area. But I had never considered the relevance of 2 John 12 to the discussion (probably because it would largely seem like an obscure verse without much relevance to anything — shame on me for thinking like that!).

Here’s what 2 John 12 says:

Having many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, that your joy may be made full.

The clear implication is that there is something incomplete about communication only through paper and ink — face-to-face communication is necessary for our joy to be made full.

The Greek word which is translated “be made full” in this verse means “to bring something to completion, to finish something already begun.” The verse suggests that face-to-face communication is necessary for believers’ joy to be brought to completion.

If writing letters with paper and ink could not make the believers’ joy full or complete in John’s day, can email make our joy full or complete? Can discussion forums make our joy full or complete? Can online video chat make our joy full or complete? Is there something incomplete about digital communication?

Here’s another blog I came across on Thursday:

ChurchSMO

Here is what the author, Aaron Marshall, writes about himself and his recently-launched blog:

My name is Aaron Marshall, I work for DBS>Interactive, a large web development company in Louisville, Kentucky, as the Director of Sales and Marketing. Being involved in projects from beginning to end gives me copious amounts of opportunity to see web strategies successfully executed. I read between 10-20 RSS feeds a day, regularly finding gold-mines of useful services that could be applied to church and ministry.

I especially like Aaron’s use of videos throughout his articles. It lends a personal touch which is quite engaging.

Here’s a blog that’s been around for awhile but is new to me:

Church Website Help

Mickey Mellen, webmaster at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church, has been writing the blog since September of 2005 (gee, where have I been to only have noticed it yesterday?).

The article entitled Church Websites Around Atlanta Are Pretty Bad caught my eye immediately since I used to work a bit on a website for a church in the Atlanta area (not on Mickey’s list thankfully! ). The article talks about some of the common mistakes churches make and it also brought the issue of proper canonicalization for search engine optimization purposes back into the forefront of my mind (the issue wasn’t entirely new to me, but I had never given it much thought until yesterday when I carefully read what Mickey had to say on the subject). It made me start testing a lot of my sites! Thankfully, most of them add the “www” in automatically, but the website of my last remaining “design client” (as vs. “strategy client") does not pass the test, so I’ll need to work on that a bit.

All in all, it looks like there is a wealth of content to explore on Mickey’s blog and I encourage you to add it to your list of RSS feeds so you can read him on a regular basis.

Churches, ministries, and missionaries should all be aware of solid search engine optimization principles and implement them faithfully on their websites. Here is a great resource to help you do just that:

Mihai’s SEO Cheat Sheet

from Mihai Gheza.

When I started Strategic Digital Outreach in the Fall of 2004, I would never have imagined that we would be involved in publishing a book. But here we are, three-and-a-half years later, and we have recently helped our friend and advisor Dave Dias publish his first book, Irene’s Journey Of Faith.

Readers of this blog may remember an earlier post in which we shared about the disease Irene Dias has contracted.

Here is the description of the book we are using on Amazon and other websites:

The inspiring story of Irene and Dave Dias and their courageous battle against a rare, incurable and terminal disease, Primary Amyloidosis. Although the suffering they face is severe, this is not a story of despair, but of an incredible faith and even more of an incredible God who sustains His followers with lavish grace, extravagant kindness, and unrelenting love. Compiled from selected blog entries at IreneDias.com, this devotional recounts the story of the initial diagnosis of the disease, Irene’s long hospitalization, the eventual stem cell transplant, Irene’s release from the hospital, and Irene and Dave’s ongoing challenges and victories.

If the challenges you face are frightening ....
If your circumstances seem hopeless ....
If your life is falling apart and you don’t know where to turn ....

Irene’s Journey of Faith will encourage you and strengthen your faith in the God who promises to uphold you no matter how difficult and painful your life’s journey may seem.

I would strongly encourage the readers of this blog to visit Irene and Dave’s website, IreneDias.com (this link will take you to a page from which you can either purchase the book or proceed to the blog to read its entries).

Tony Whittaker of the Web Evangelism Guide and Internet Evangelism Day has written a brilliant parable called A Tale of Two Golf Clubs. See if you can figure out what the meaning of the parable is!

By the way, this year’s Internet Evangelism Day is scheduled for April 27. That’s only 78 days away. Have you started to prepare?

The Rock at Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa
http://www.rockisu.com

This church has boldly made their home page an aggregation of their church members’ blogs. They call their aggregation “Planet Rock” — if you click on that item in the navigation menu, you’ll find that they are currently aggregating the blogs of 50 different church members. Refreshing! The sense I get from this is that the church is a group of people rather than an organization.

Beyond aggregating blogs, the site makes good use of a couple of Web 2.0 technologies — MySpace and Flickr.

Another great thing about this site is that it is standards-compliant (valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and valid CSS). Standards compliance is an aspect of website development that is not talked about much among church and ministry designers, but I believe it has vast implications for the spread of the gospel.

Contact: Matt Heerema

Seed Church
Bothell, Washington
http://www.dyingtolive.org

I think this website excels in its writing. The first time I visited it, this is what the home page said:

It is time for you to lose control.

“Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself… alone. But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life, loses it. But anyone who despises his life in this world, will keep it all the way until eternity.”

2000 years ago, Jesus said these words. Then, he embodied them. He was God, yet He lived his short life, not to propel himself to greatness, but to serve others. He gave his life to save ours.

The secret of true living is found in a paradox. If you choose to hold on to the control of your life, to find purpose in yourself and your own interests, your choice guarantees you will lose your life when you die. If you choose to give up control of your life now to God, to find purpose in God and in His interests, your choice guarantees you will keep your life after death.

Seed Church invites you to lose control.

I like that because I feel it appeals to the inner desires of many (if not all) unbelievers — to live for something beyond oneself — and because it does so in a fashion which is very atypical of a church website. Today’s tendency among top-notch designers is to concentrate on graphic appearance (which is important because people make a decision about a website almost immediately), but well-written content is usually an afterthought. Often, a church will just republish something that was originally written for a brochure targeted, it seems, at believers moving into an area or looking for a new church rather than at unbelievers in a local area.

By the way, check out the domain name they chose. Very intriguing!

Contacts: Unknown

The City Church
Seattle, Washington
http://www.thecity.org

I like this site for a number of reasons — 1) the design is excellent (not a surprise given the involvement of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, one of the premier designers on the web today); 2) the navigation system is particularly well-thought-out; 3) the site features a voluminous amount of content; and, 4) it uses my favorite content management system (Expression Engine). The proper use of a content management system can help enhance the flow of information and eliminate bottlenecks in publishing information to the church’s website (which is a huge challenge for most Christian organizations).

Unfortunately, while the site is well-designed, it definitely presents an institution rather than a community of people, which again, is one of my pet peeves about church websites today.

Contacts: Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain and Sean Sperte

Southside Church
Chilliwack, British Columbia
http://www.southsidelife.com

I like this site because it gives a great deal of prominence to the stories of its members. The front page has a dominant feature about the life story of one of its members, and every page on the site has a prominent feature at the top of the right-hand sidebar which points to the story of one of its members. In all, there appear to be 14 stories (I might wish for more, but this is a good start). The stories are also used on LoveChilliwack.com, designed by the same firm (Stir Communications Group) which had a part in developing SouthSideLife.com and also ChilliwackLife.com (which is a community portal with a subtle strategy, I believe, of bringing unbelievers into relationship with local churches).

Contacts: If I’m not mistaken, Stir Communications Group is behind much of the work here (and also behind KamloopsLife.com which is similar to LoveChilliwack.com).

National Community Church
Washington, D.C.
http://www.theaterchurch.com

I like this site because they tend to make good use of Web 2.0 technologies — podcasts, videocasts, blogs, mobile version, etc. I have a love-hate relationship with churches making their sermons available via their websites (because I think it can discourage people from joining the physical gatherings), but Mark Batterson (the pastor of this church) is a great apologist for the effectiveness of podcasting. He routinely stretches my thinking about podcasting and videocasting. Here is an example from his blog — an article in which he compares podcasting to the field preaching of Wesley. I respect Mark so much that when pastors and church leaders ask me about podcasting their sermons, I give them my opinion, but then I invariably tell them to go check out Mark’s articles on podcasting for the other side of the coin.

In some ways, the National Community Church website tends to present the church as an institution rather than people, which is one of my pet peeves The easiest way to see how a church thinks of itself — as an institution or as people — is to take a look at the “About Us” or “Who We Are” menu on their website. Churches that think of themselves as an institution tend to populate their “About Us” menus with items like “Core Values,” “Leadership Team,” “Mission,” “Vision,” “How To Give,” etc. That’s the language of an institution, not of a community, and I believe it turns off unbelievers. On the other hand, National Community Church gives a lot of prominence on their website to their small groups, which I applaud (because it suggests that the church is people).

Overall, I like the National Community Church site because of its modern design and willingness to employ Web 2.0 technologies.

Contacts: David Russell is the church’s digital pastor, and Mark Batterson is the senior pastor.

University Christian Fellowship
Syracuse, New York
http://www.ucf.org

This appears to be a fairly run-of-the-mill church website until you read these two pages:

Questions We Get Asked About Our Church Service, and Our Snappy Answers
UCF Order of Worship

The humor is priceless! The only thing I wish is that they would give those two pages more prominence (if you start from the home page, they are a bit hard to find).

Contact: Unknown

Manna?
Holland, Michigan
http://www.mannais.org

I like this site because it’s really just a community blog. Anyone in the congregation (or outside the congregation) can post to the website. The lack of traditional trappings combined with the simplicity of the site and its group nature make me feel like this church is authentic.

I especially like the Manna FAQ section, in particular the answer to “So who preaches and are there sermon series or points or whatever?” Beautiful. A close second is the answer that mentions snake-handling, although the lack of that time-honored tradition would probably keep me from being a part of Manna? if I lived in Holland, Michigan (Gee, if Mike Boyink can suggest I get a tattoo, I ought to be able to get away with suggesting Mike start handling snakes! How about it Mike?).

All kidding aside, take a look also at this article about the Manna? website which touches on the power of the Manna? website concept.

The Manna? site also uses my favorite content management system, ExpressionEngine.

Contact: Mike Boyink is the designer/developer.

Jacob’s Well
Kansas City, Missouri
http://www.jacobswellchurch.org

This is by far my favorite church website. The “Community” section is brilliant. Through the use of biographies (it appears that most of the people in the congregation have contributed at least a short bio) and photos, it presents people rather than an organization. Through its use of blogs and discussion forums, it presents the authentic voice of the congregation (not just its leaders) to unbelievers in the Kansas City area.

The one thing I don’t like about this site is that these elements which are so strategic to reaching unbelievers are actually in a password-protected area. When the site was first launched, I registered and was given a username and password which is still functional. I have no contact with the church at all, so I assume they allow anyone to register (and probably use that information to police the forums and other places where users can contribute), but I would like to see the information in the Community section presented publicly, without any need for prior registration and login. They could still require registration and login for a user to contribute (or edit previous contributions), but presenting the information publicly would, in effect, open the authenticity of the congregation for everyone to see, whether believer or unbeliever.

Contact: Scott Raymond () is the designer/developer

I was asked yesterday by a reader of this blog for a list of church websites I like. I responded to the email, but thought it would make a good subject for a series of articles, so here goes.

To be honest, because I have some fairly strong opinions on these issues, there are not a lot of church websites I like. But in this series, I’m going to mention a few that I admire, along with the reasons for my admiration and any further information I might have. I may not like everything about these sites (and I’ll tried to point out what I don’t like), but there are aspects which are encouraging to me. Where I list contacts, some are people I know (almost always virtually), but some I have never met.

Feel free to suggest other church websites you like in the comments section, but if we can, let’s try to point to church websites who are effectively using the web in terms of their strategy not just websites that look good (which is not bad in itself, but good-looking websites without an effective online strategy are irrelevant, in my opinion).

Church of the Resurrection
Leawood, Kansas
http://www.cor.org

The main reason I like this site is because it features “normal” people. If you visit the Resurrection Stories section of the site, you’ll find brief testimonies of normal people from within the congregation. One of the strategies I advocate for church websites is to include an extensive set of life stories of believers in the congregation. These are then used to promote the church to various segments of society. While I am not a big fan of religious testimonies on church websites (which the stories on this site resemble to some extent) — largely because the vast majority of unbelievers won’t initially care about religious testimonies — I do applaud the prominence this church gives to the “normal” people in its congregation. In an earlier version of the site, the photos of the people and their stories were prominently featured on the front page, and I would like to see them go back to that, but in general, the fact that they feature people from within the congregation means I don’t get the sense that this is primarily an institution — instead, it’s a group of people.

Contacts: the folks who write the Appian Way blog - Clif Guy, Brian Slezak, Chuck Russell, and Leo Johns.

This is the fifteenth session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we discuss the next part of 1 Peter 3:15 — “always (be) ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you,” emphasizing the need for internet evangelists to have a good knowledge of the truth.

I’m going to take a bit of a hiatus in the video series after this session and try to come back to it early next year.

Here is the fourteenth session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we begin to look at how the internet evangelist can prepare himself or herself for the task to which God has called them.

Here is the thirteenth session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we flesh out some examples of how the principles we’ve been discussing could be relevant to internet evangelism.

This is the twelfth session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we talk about some of the implications of the principles we’ve been discussing, specifically as they relate to internet evangelism.

Here is the eleventh session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

After studying five different passages of Scripture (John 17:20-23, Luke 10:1-9, Acts 2:42-47, 1 Thessalonians 1-2, and 1 John 4:12-14) and finding that each supports our contention that an authentic demonstration of Christian community is the foundation of all effective outreach, we expand on that principle a bit and talk about a concept known as oikos evangelism and about how people typically come to Christ.

Here is the tenth session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we examine another passage which demonstrates the need for Christian community as a foundation for outreach — 1 John 4:12-14.

Here is the ninth session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we look at another passage which demonstrates the need for Christian community as a foundation for outreach — 1 Thessalonians 1-2.

This is the eighth session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we look at Acts 2:42-47, another passage which demonstrates the need for Christian community as a foundation for effective outreach.

This is the seventh session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we look at another passage which demonstrates the need for Christian community as a foundation for effective outreach — Luke 10:1-9.

Here is the sixth session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we examine an important biblical principle of evangelism and begin a section of our series in which we will see how that biblical principle can and should be applied to internet evangelism. John 17:20-23 is the first passage we explore to learn more about this biblical principle.

Here is the fifth session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we address a common fear that can become a barrier to the effective use of the internet by the church. We then share several simple ways in which you can become involved in internet evangelism.

Here are some links to resources referenced in this video presentation:

• Sample Email Signatures
• Places to Submit Your Profile
• Evangelistic Websites
• Resources Section (for the Quotations Screen Saver)
• Ideas for Evangelistic Business Cards from The Web Evangelism Guide

Here is the fourth session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we share several examples of how the church has used technology throughout history and encourage the church today to make similar use of the internet to declare the gospel throughout the world.

Here is the third session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we examine the way in which first century Christian missionaries used the “agora” or the marketplace (the place where people gathered to buy and sell, exchange philosophies and ideas, interact socially, and obtain information) to declare the gospel. We also contend that the internet is the “agora” of today and that the church should be active in that marketplace, strategically using it to further God’s kingdom around the world.

Here is the second session in our multi-part video series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we briefly compare the circumstances which God had orchestrated in the first century to circumstances and events which we believe He is orchestrating today. This pattern presents a question for the church of the 21st century — will we take advantage of the circumstances and events which God is orchestrating to further God’s kingdom?

In the past, I’ve experimented a bit with video blogging on another blog I run (which is fairly dormant to be honest) — ProdigalGod.com. I have long wanted to create a series of videos on internet evangelism, and this post represents my first attempt at completing that project.

This is largely an experiment for me, and I recognize that the videos are not perfect. The video quality itself is better on this site than the quality of the videos on ProdigalGod.com because I used a Sony camcorder to create these videos (while the videos on ProdigalGod.com were created with a simple webcam — at least until I redo them with the camcorder). My “on-camera presence,” however, is just as “clunky” as it is on the ProdigalGod.com videos! And I know that the setup I have in my living room (it’s obvious my wife loves me a lot to put up with pushing the furniture around to make room for the v-screen and pvc pipe stand I’m using!) needs some work - the lighting especially.

Hopefully, these will improve over time. If you have any suggestions for better video blogging, please don’t hesitate to contact me — I would be more than happy to hear any feedback you might have!

I used software called Vlog It! to create the videos, and the videos are in Flash Video format and as such, require that you have the Flash Player installed.

This first session gives a little bit of background on me (primarily because I may upload these to GodTube and/or YouTube in the future so not everyone who sees them will know who I am) and also addresses ways in which God orchestrated circumstances and events in the first century to facilitate the spread of the gospel. I am purposefully keeping the sessions short so that they can be easily digested.

I was looking for a book on Amazon today and noticed several Listmania! lists devoted to the church’s use of technology:

Church and Technology Books, by Tim Fisher
Audio Recording Picks, by Devin B. Hedge
Preaching in a Postmodern Media Culture, by Carsten R. Jensen
Life Online, by D.J. Chuang

If you know of any other Listmania! lists or individual books devoted to the church’s use of technology, feel free to mention them in comments to this post.

Evan Donovan of TechMission.org wrote me a few days ago to tell me about a new site they have launched, ChristianVolunteering.org. Here’s what Evan had to say about the site:

ChristianVolunteering.org is a free directory with over 2,000 volunteer opportunities in ministries serving the “poor.” The site’s partners include the Salvation Army, GospelCom (BibleGateway.com), World Vision, the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions and over 1,000 ministries serving under-resourced communities.  In addition to volunteer opportunities for individuals, you can also search the site for opportunities that might be appropriate for church small groups and for short-term missions trips.  If you just type your postal code, you can get a listing of the volunteer opportunities in your region.

A second site, UrbanMinistry.org, is designed to equip people to serve the “poor.” Here is how the site describes itself:

(A) destination site for the urban ministry and Christian community development community: a website designed to connect individuals and Christian ministries, empowering them to bring social justice in Jesus’ name. On UrbanMinistry.org, you can meet others interested in urban ministry, start a blog, and share resources that have been helpful to you in the Urban Ministry wiki. You can also browse through an extensive library of sermons and lectures, recommended books, MP3 podcasts, justice-related videos, Christian workshops and presentations, and more.

Both of these sites are well worth bookmarking and visiting often. Thanks to Evan for telling me about them!

My friend Bradley Burck just launched a website for his new book — Conquering Nonprofit Chaos.

Bradley is a fundraising and marketing consultant who works with non-profits and Christian ministries to help them craft strategic development and marketing plans. His firm, Burck Communications, also provides design, copywriting and print services as well as training for non-profit boards and staffs.

When you have a chance, check out their new website. There is a lot of content which will prove helpful to churches and ministries.

Here is an interesting article about how Roman Catholic communities are using Facebook, blogs, websites, MySpace, YouTube, podcasts, etc. to attract young people who are potentially interested in becoming priests or nuns.

I found the conclusion to the article particularly interesting:

As always, personal contact — particularly with an admired religious role model at school or church — seems to be the clincher. “The Internet is a helpful resource, but it just doesn’t replace the one-on-one, face-to-face interaction,” Alvarez said.

So along with her Facebook presence, Sister Tracey has started a monthly coffeehouse night with local bands and an open-poetry mike at her community’s bookstore in Sweetwater.

“As great as technology is, there’s still this thirst for human connection,” she said. “It’s not about having the best Web site; it’s about what that Web site can facilitate.”

Here is what appears to be a new blog on internet evangelism (at least the first and only post is about internet evangelism), written by someone named Bob Fox. Does anyone know anything about this blog?

Dan Lee of BlogMinistry has begun “a series of posts dedicated to particular countries looking at their access to the Internet and the persecuted church.” Quite an interesting series.

So far, Dan has posted three articles:

Persecuted Church and the Internet: North Korea
Persecuted Church and the Internet: The Maldives
Persecuted Church and the Internet: India

I haven’t seen anything like this in the Christian blogosphere before - it’s a great series so far, and I look forward to reading additional entries. Thanks Dan!

On November 14, we have a chance to chat directly with J.R. Whitby, President of Gospel Communications, about their vision for media evangelism. The 30-minute phone call will include a discussion of Gospel Communications’ upcoming ministry plans and the chance to ask questions.

J.R. will talk about what God has put on his heart for Gospel Communications: a new direction for our film outreach, the latest news from our internet ministries, innovative new giving tools, and more.

For more information regarding the call, including how to sign up, visit the September 28 issue of the Gospel Communications Communique.

Dean Peters has posted a great list of ways to use a church website to make it more effective. From the introduction to his article:

A problem I find with many church websites is vision, that those responsible for delivering the goods don’t really see their site as much more than an online color brochure. As a result, more often than not, very little staff and/or funds are allocated to the church’s web presence past the server, the domain name and perhaps a content management service.

In no particular order, I’d like to offer 10 real-world examples you can expand your church and/or charity’s impact by expanding your vision past mere ‘brochureware.’

His second point ("Convert Seekers") made me think about an aspect of church websites that I have generally resisted in the past and gave me a good reason to consider changing the way I think about that aspect (I’m purposely not telling you what that aspect is to make you go read the article!).

Here’s a link to the article.

By the way, the article appears on a great new site called digital.leadnet.org, a collaborative blog about technology in the church from Leadership Network.

LiveMocha is a website which is in beta and might prove helpful for missionaries trying to learn a new language.

From their front page:

The social way to learn a language.

Community. Livemocha is the first-of-its-kind online language-learning community.

Lessons. Fun and interactive lessons that move at the right pace for you.

Motivation. Track your progress and reach your goals with Livemocha tools.

The site currently offers courses in German, English, Spanish, French, Hindi, and Chinese.

Thanks to 901am for the heads-up!

As I was checking my email today, I was confused by a few emails that looked like this:

I couldn’t remember ever hearing of a blog or website called BlogInterviewer, but it looked like the type of email you receive when you have subscribed to a blog post’s comments (often after or as a result of adding a comment). With a bit of a bad feeling, I visited the blog in question.

BlogInterviewer is an interesting site. With a tagline of “A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Web’s Best Bloggers,” BlogInterviewer presents interviews with a variety of bloggers. They describe themselves this way on their About Us page:

BlogInterviewer.com is a website devoted to discovering the most interesting bloggers on the Internet and their reasons for sharing their thoughts with the world. You as a user have the opportunity to vote for your favorites and bury the blogs you don’t like.

The post I visited (referenced by the emails I was receiving) is here. You’ll notice that there are currently three comments, but when I visited there were seven. The strange part was that three of those seven comments appeared to have been made by me. Here are the comments that were purportedly from me:

My name in the second and third comment was linked to this blog. Obviously, the person who submitted the comments used my email address (that’s why I started receiving emails about additional comments).  But I didn’t submit any of those three comments.

It disturbs me that someone would be using my name, my blog, and my email address falsely in comments made on another blog. But what concerns me even more is the confrontational and condescending attitude I perceive in the last comment. The attitude reflected in that comment does not reflect my personality (at least I don’t think it does!). And I feel it reflects badly on the Christian faith. I wonder what the motivation of the person submitting the comments was. Was it to put the Christian faith in a bad light or was there some other reason?

I quickly left a comment saying that I was not the author of those comments and asking the blog owner to remove them. I also sent an email to the blog owner bringing the problem to their attention. I was happy to receive an email very soon after from Mike Thomas of BlogInterviewer.com saying he had removed the offending comments. I was especially gratified by the speed with which the issue was addressed by Mike. Kudos and thanks to him!

Now a question for the readers of this blog: has anything like this ever happened to you? How did you respond?

manna?, a church in Holland Michigan, is experiencing a fascinating scenario on the home page of their website. The manna? website is set up differently than most church websites. Here’s a hint of the difference (from the bottom of their home page):

Hey - we don’t hold much on formality at manna?- if you want to contribute something to this weblog there’s no committee to work with. Just register (or log in if you already have) and use the Control Panel to speak your piece.

Did you catch that? Anyone can post a story to the front page of their website.

You might think that’s a recipe for danger, but a person does have to register as a member on the site before they can post, so the church does have some control over what stays on the website (although I believe they moderate after the posts are made rather than before). Although you might think it is dangerous, take a look at this article which was posted to the front page of the site recently (I’m linking to the permanent link of the article because it will eventually fall off the home page as new articles are added). Also take a look at the comments. Fascinating.

A person who has never attended manna? posts to the front page of the site telling them they are planning on attending a service. People from the congregation respond and ask the “newcomers” to introduce themselves. The newcomers are invited to join the congregation for a meal before they ever attend a meeting.

How do you think those people will feel when they show up at their first meeting of the congregation? Will they feel like they already know some of those who are part of the church? Will they feel welcomed?

In my opinion, the potential “danger” is far outweighed by the potential benefit.

What do you think?

Bill Seaver of the MicroExplosion Blog posted recently about a free ebook he wrote called Web Two Point What? A Pastor’s Guide to New Media. It’s being made available via download at the Do More Ministry Blog

Mike is blogging about this conversation at GodBit in his post Fear Behind Namby-Pamby Church Websites. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I firmly believe that Mike is landing on the right side of the discussion.

Dave Dias is a great friend and advisor to Strategic Digital Outreach (you can read more about Dave on our About page). Recently, Dave’s wife Irene was diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening disease known as Amyloidosis. Without treatment, average life expectancy would be 18 months. With treatment, six years. For more information, visit IreneDias.com.

If you have a moment, I know that Irene and Dave would greatly appreciate your prayers.

A couple of months ago, in this article, I mentioned that I had stopped designing and coding websites for churches and ministries in favor of consulting regarding web strategy issues and also in favor of some personal projects.

One of the websites I was thinking of when I mentioned “personal projects” was actually a team effort by some friends of mine and myself. And today, I’m happy and excited to announce the launch of MissionEquip.com, a virtual toolkit of services to assist in preparation for missions trips, both short-term and long-term. The site is divided into four main sections: Prepare, Go, Connect, and Share.

Prepare
This section of the site includes links to various resources which we feel will be helpful to long-term missionaries and short-term mission team members as they prepare to travel overseas. From travel documents to overseas medical insurance to information on vaccines, we’re compiling a growing list of valuable tools to help overseas workers plan ahead for their travel needs.

Go
Through links to a trip planning module, a helpful travel checklist, a printable emergency contact card and more, we are striving to equip the worldwide missions community with the tools they need to travel safely and effectively.

Connect
Once long-term missionaries and short-term mission team members have reached their field of service, how can they keep in touch with their family, friends, church, and supporters? This section of our site aims to provide links to several communications resources which will serve to improve contacts between overseas workers and their support structure back home.

Share
Easily my favorite part of the site (and the section which ignited my passion to help with the project), this area of the site consists of 228 country-specific blogs and 228 country-specific wikis. The idea is that long-term missionaries, short-term mission team members, missions pastors, missions agencies, and those with a heart for missions can all gather in a common place to tell and hear the stories of God’s work among the nations. Our hope is that as missionaries and short-term team members tell their stories and those with a heart for missions hear those stories, an excitement for God’s work will build in all our hearts.

Also, through telling their stories in our Share section, missionaries can broaden their exposure and: a) widen the extent of their personal contacts; b) solicit prayer support; and, c) raise funds (through the automatic inclusion of their online donation link in the footer of all articles they submit).

We also have the ability to aggregate stories from existing missionary blogs (with permission of course!) to broaden an individual missionary’s exposure within the worldwide missions community.

A Request
We would invite you to review the Mission:Equip website and tell us what you think. We are definitely open to suggestions regarding any part of the site. If you notice problems, please don’t hesitate to let us know. If you have suggestions for additional resources, we would love to hear about them. If you have a heart for missions, register as a member and begin participating in this fledgling community of like-minded believers. It’s an exciting day for us, and we would love to have you share in our excitement!

Also, if you like what you see, why not tell your friends?

Internet Evangelism Day, that is.

The third annual Internet Evangelism Day will take place this year on April 29. This is a great opportunity for your church or ministry to highlight the potential for the use of the internet in the completion of the Great Commission. The Internet Evangelism Day website is a vast compilation of resources to help you do just that. I would strongly encourage all churches, ministries, and individuals to visit the site and give consideration to how you can promote the this worldwide annual focus day.

Here is a press release from the Internet Evangelism Day team which will give you more information:

"We’d love to use the Web for outreach, but we don’t know how,” is a frequently heard sentiment. Internet Evangelism Day answers this need, by offering churches and other groups the means to create a web awareness focus spot in their activities on (or near) Sunday, April 29. By using free downloads from the Internet Evangelism Day website — PowerPoint, video clips, music, drama scripts or handouts — churches can demonstrate to their members the huge potential of the Web for evangelism.

The website also carries a wide range of pages explaining how best to build church websites, write blogs, create video clips, and interact in many other ways with the worldwide web community, to share the gospel.

Churches who have used these materials are excited. “People were challenged and inspired! As a result, we will review our church website, add evangelistic signature blocks to emails, and learn how to use bulletin boards and chat rooms for evangelism,” said a church in Australia.

“I want to thank you for the free resources you have provided through your website. This is a huge help for small churches such as ours,” claimed a church leader in California.

One surprising aspect that the IE Day team emphasizes: web evangelism is for anyone, not just the technically gifted. “There are many ways to share your faith online, without any technical background at all,” says IE Day Coordinator Tony Whittaker.

The Internet Evangelism Day website is at InternetEvangelismDay.com.

And you can listen to a 3-minute MP3 audio introduction to IE Day at InternetEvangelismDay.com/audio. 

My friend Scott Aughtmon is the pastor of Pathway Church in Palo Alto, California. At one time in his life, though, he was an internet entrepreneur and marketer. One of his best products was a series of recommendations from a group of well-known internet marketers, all compiled into one e-book.

When Scott first told me about that e-book as we visited at a local Starbucks, he also told me that he had a vision to do something similar, but this time gathering the advice of well-known youth pastors.

It was exciting then, to receive an email from Scott about a month ago telling me that he had released the e-book, entitled How To Build A Lasting Student Ministry. Although I’m not involved in youth ministry myself, I purchased the e-book and have read through it, albeit somewhat quickly.

One of my favorite chapters is by one of my favorite people, Chuckk Gerwig, the Pastor to Senior High Students and their Families at Santa Cruz Bible Church (in fact, Scott and I were trying to remember if I actually introduced Chuckk and Scott to each other virtually).

There are three basic reasons I want to highlight Scott’s e-book on this blog:

1) If you are in youth ministry (or contemplating entering youth ministry), it makes for a good read. You can purchase the e-book here for $12.97 and receive your copy almost instantly.

2) If you are a Christian website owner looking for affiliate products to sell (and if you are, you probably realize that there is a dearth of appropriate affiliate products for Christian websites), Scott is offering a very generous revenue split for those who wish to promote his e-book. I personally am not taking advantage of this offer because I know that the proceeds from the sale of the e-book go to support Scott’s family which ultimately helps the work of church planting in Palo Alto (Pathway is a relatively new work, a little over two years old). Palo Alto is in a strategic part of California near Stanford University and the heart of the venture capital community serving the entire San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, so I believe strongly in the value of what Scott and his family are doing (and by the way, Scott probably wouldn’t tell you this, but the standard of living is not cheap — church planting in this area of the world can be very difficult because of economic considerations, so I believe efforts such as this deserve our support).

3) It’s a very intriguing method of training for ministry. While a common strategy among internet entrepreneurs, e-books and autoresponders are not used much in Christian internet circles.

I’d encourage you to check out the website for Scott’s new e-book and consider purchasing it, both to learn from prominent youth leaders and also to support the work of God in Palo Alto, California.

I’ve known Rich Tatum for several years. I first met him when he was the webmaster for the Assemblies of God National Headquarters and I was participating in an email list for Assemblies of God ministers in Northern California and Nevada. Somewhere along the line (I’m not exactly sure of the timing), I started doing some freelance web design for the Northern California and Nevada District of the Assemblies of God, and that gave us some more common ground to talk about. At some point, he left the Assemblies of God headquarters to start working for Christianity Today. We’re both sometimes participants in an AG mailing list or two. Over the years, we’ve kept in touch directly from time to time, usually talking about web design, working for Christian organizations, some theology, etc. We’ve never met face-to-face, so we’re virtual friends.

Four months ago, Rich was laid off from his job at Christianity Today. Since then, he’s been looking for a full-time gig while also doing some freelance web development. Rich is a gifted communicator, writer, teacher, trainer, and strategist with a great amount of insight into today’s technology. If you’re looking for someone with these skills, I would encourage you to take a look at Rich’s resume as well as his LinkedIn profile. If you’re not currently looking for someone with these skills, why not pass Rich’s information on to those you think might be looking for someone like Rich?

Also, for a fascinating read, take a look at The Sharpe Logs, transcripts of Rich’s IM and email conversations with Kathi Sharpe, an ex-Wiccan now converted to Christ, over a year-long period. A great example of how the internet can be used to influence a person’s initial decision for Christ and to disciple or mentor a newly-converted Christian.

I was wandering around the Gospelcon Blog (the home of Gospel Communications’ annual internet ministry conference) this evening and was pleasantly surprised to see my name and this website mentioned in this article. The folks at Gospelcon were responding to the article just before this one, entitled Flawed Follow-Up or a Flawed Philosophy of Evangelism.

While I was flattered by the mention, I felt that they had misconstrued what I was trying to say, so I left a comment to attempt to clarify my thinking. If you’re interested, why not visit the article and add your thoughts there (or here if you prefer). While you’re over there, the Gospelcon Blog is well worth reading, so why not spend some time perusing their articles?

The following was something I wrote to an internet evangelism mailing list in which I participate, in response to some comments made on the list regarding this article by Dr. Stephanie Bennett.

In many ways, I live in a digital realm. My day job is completely concerned with the web and ways it can be used for business. The overwhelming focus of my ministry is in finding ways to use the internet and other digital means to spread the gospel. I am “in the digital realm” in some form at least 10-12 hours per day Monday through Friday (somewhat less on the weekends), whether that means actually “surfing the web” or spending long hours formulating strategies for the use of digital means to further either God’s purposes or the corporation’s business.

I have spent years on the web, developing virtual relationships with many people. Some I have gone on to meet face-to-face, but many of these relationships remain completely virtual.

And yet, Stephanie’s article rings very true to me. While I might not go quite as far as she seems to (in almost seeming to say that we should abandon the internet for face-to-face relationships only), I do believe strongly that those of us involved in internet evangelism in the West have, in many cases, devalued face-to-face relationships and neglected (or even abandoned) the local aspect of Christian community.

Perhaps my thinking is colored by the couple of years I lived in West Africa earlier in my life (where face-to-face community among the brethren is part of the essence of the Christian life and where the depth of community experienced by believers has reached a level which is generally unknown in the Western church, at least that part of the Western church I can observe), but I do believe we in the West are much too quick to assume that virtual community is just as ideal as face-to-face community.

I do believe in using digital means for kingdom purposes, but I think that whenever possible, the goal of our digital efforts should be to use digital means to facilitate face-to-face relationships between believers and unbelievers and to introduce unbelievers to local Christian community. Those things then can become the foundation of effective outreach.

It is my strong conviction that the unbeliever must be immersed into Christian community prior to conversion in order for the unbeliever to understand that God loves him/her and to understand the purpose of Jesus’ mission on earth (that’s the point, I think, of Jesus’ statements in John 17:21-23). I don’t think that such immersion into Christian community is possible in the worldwide digital realm to the same extent that it is in the local physical realm.

Most internet evangelism efforts seem to focus on local Christian community only as a means for follow-up. Actually, that’s not true only in internet evangelism circles, but in crusade evangelism, television evangelism, etc. I believe that the failure to understand the need for immersion into Christian community prior to conversion causes serious problems with the effectiveness of our follow-up.

In the denomination I’m part of, there were more than 4 million converts in the 1990s, and yet Sunday morning attendance increased less than 240,000 during that time. 94% of new converts can’t be found. They may be in other churches, they may have become part of house churches which are more difficult to quantify, etc. But I suspect that the vast majority simply are not leading what we would think of as a life of discipleship, most likely because they were never converted in the first place (if they don’t know that God loves them and don’t understand Jesus’ mission on earth, things which Jesus suggests are understood through immersion into Christian community prior to conversion, how can they be truly converted?).

Church strategists tend to point to insufficient or flawed follow-up, but I tend to think that our basic philosophy of evangelism is flawed. If our approach was to encourage unbelievers to be immersed into Christian community prior to conversion, we would find that our “follow-up” would be much more effective.

I fear that internet evangelism falls into this trap more than most forms of evangelism. The ease with which we can “share the gospel” online can actually short-circuit the God-ordained process by which unbelievers are brought to faith. If someone comes to a website and reads a gospel message and responds by “praying the sinner’s prayer,” but never truly understood the love of God nor the mission of Jesus (because they had not been immersed into Christian community prior to conversion), do we not run the risk of that person thinking, “Oh I tried the Christian way and it didn’t work for me” (it didn’t work because they were never truly converted)?

Does that mean we shouldn’t use the internet for kingdom purposes? Of course not. But I think our strategy is, in many cases, flawed. Our goal with the internet and other digital means should not be primarily to gain new converts, but to facilitate the introduction of unbelievers into local Christian communities, which are the most effective context for outreach.

I put some time in this weekend to sprucing up this blog a bit. Things were getting a bit stale, and I've been toying with some changes for awhile, so the three-day weekend seemed like a good time to do some housekeeping. Here are some of the changes which I've made:

1. A New Logo. I've long been dissatisfied with the masthead I was using on the site (for those who don't remember, it was simply the words "Strategic Digital Outreach" and the tagline "Telling the old, old story via modern-day wineskins" sitting on top of part of a map of the world. Recently, while looking for some world maps at a stock photography site, I came across some globes that had been transformed into cube shapes. I was fairly enamored of these cubes and thought they would lend themselves to a good logo treatment, so a few days ago, I started playing around and it wasn't long before I came up with the simple logo you now see in the masthead.
2. A New Sidebar Design. The new logo sparked some ideas for a cleaner sidebar, primarily through repeating the cube motif in the various sidebar headings. I also have wanted to bring the feed icon up higher in the sidebar and give it more prominence.
3. LinkedIn. In keeping with a desire to concentrate more on consulting than actual nuts-and-bolts design work (more on that in a moment), I decided to beef up my LinkedIn profile (largely following