Where I’ve Been

I’m primarily blogging these days over at the Thinklings, in case any of my three readers were wondering.

I may return here from time to time, or switch my activity from Thinklings to here as the mood takes me. But I’ve found I’m very bad at trying to keep two blogs up at once.

God bless,

Bill

I’m back

I think I’m going to start posting here in this humble little space again. I guess the next few days will tell.

Also, I upgraded to a pre-release of Bloo version 1.20 (version 1.11). It represents a pretty significant change, structurally, in Bloo, since Bloo now supports community sub-blogs. More on that later. This space always has served as a great guinea pig site for these releases anyway.

God loves you Blogosphere, and so do I.

Moving on

At least for now, I am posting exclusively over at The Thinklings. It’s a splendid site and you should check it out. 🙂

I may get back to posting here on Out of the Bloo at a later date.

See you on the other side, blogosphere.

Too good not to blogroll it

Poking my head back in . . . is this blog still here?

Missed the old place . . .

But I wanted to announce the adding to the blogroll of a fantastic site called Stuff Christians Like. It’s hilarious.

For example:

#61. Being Relevant

If you ever want to really insult a Christian, say the following:

“I don’t think you’re relevant.”

That is our kryptonite. The idea of irrelevance keeps us up at night. Seriously, if someone doesn’t find us to be relevant than we’re probably going to need to fire the worship leader or at the bare minimum get him a pair of white Pumas. Irrelevance is simply unacceptable.

The weird thing though is that in some ways, Jesus was the perfect example of what it means to be “irrelevant.” Think about it. His message was the exact opposite of what was going on in the world. People were expecting a strong, powerful, forceful savior and instead got a baby. The powers that be were drunk on the law and he preached against their hypocrisy. He shunned the people that were relevant and hung out with the irrelevant, the tax collectors, hookers and sinners. Now granted you could argue that to a world hungry for truth, the truth of Christ was very relevant, but I’m just saying it’s an interesting thought exercise.

Heh. More to sample:

#47. Rooting for secret Christians on American Idol.

#43. Metrosexual Worship Leaders.

#26. Songs that sound Christian but aren’t.

#24. Church names that sound like clothing stores.

They are all funny, and many will smack you in the face with the truth while you’re laughing.

[Hat tip: Jared]

Changes over at Thinklings

If you get a chance, go check out the changes on Thinklings, which is the group blog I contribute to.

It’s also the first blog I ever wrote for. Hard to believe we’ve been going at this for nearly five years.

It’s based on Bloo too (and is, as is this space also, running a pre-release of version 1.00). It’s been through three blogging packages since I first revved it up; it started on the venerable old B2, then went to WordPress, and finally to Bloo.

My Thinklings brothers are some of the best friends a guy could ask for.

“It’s really refreshing . . .”

In the comments thread of the iMonk post I referenced in my previous post, a commenter wrote this:

“Thanks, Michael, this is good work. It’s really refreshing to read something this positive on a Christian blog.”

I can well understand where this commenter is coming from, which is one reason I’m on a very refreshing blog-reading hiatus. Other than blogs by family members, I currently only read what Jared’s writing on Gospel-Driven Church, and what Michael’s writing on the Internet Monk. These are two of the very best out there.

I can understand where the commenter’s coming from, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t depressed when I read that comment.

I’m looking forward to the day when “Christian blog” and “positive” aren’t seen as an oxymoron.

We’re not there yet.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Breathing the blog-free air!

I’ve been breathing the blog-free air for about a week and a half now. It’s not a complete blog-abstinence – I’ve continued monitoring spying on interrogating reading my kids’ blogs, blogs of other family members, and two other blogs that edify me. But I’m no longer drinking from the daily firehose of the blogosphere.

All it took was me reading one last snarky, straw-mannish, ungracious comment on another blog to get me asking the question I should have asked a long time ago: “Why do I do this? What earthly good is the blogosphere, anyway?”

I realized there was no good reason for me to immerse myself in the blogosphere. I’ve been heavily into blogs for over four years now, and I’m not sure that the net effect has been good. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some tremendous blogs out there – there are. I will continue reading a very few of them, but I’m hoping I’ll be a lot more choosy. And hopefully I’ll stick with this.

You might think about taking a break from the blogosphere too. Try it, you might like it!

You don’t need to read blogs.

(Um, except for this one. Of course 🙂

A little Bloogroll maintenance

Tonight I cleared out some of the blogs on my Bloogroll that have either not updated in a long time (a year or so) or that are just not there anymore.

If your blog isn’t in my bloogroll anymore and you think it should be, let me know.