I just wanted to start by saying how much your ministry has impacted my life. I lead a sports ministry at my church, but lately through a prompting from God I have been tasked with doing so much more. I am currently looking into church planting and getting people to align themselves with what the Lord has for them.

Anyway, I wanted to know more about blogging. I tried the wordpress thing and got totally confused. I have a blog on Blogger but have not had any traffic on it. I enjoy your messages so much and thought maybe you or someone on here could help. Sorry so long.

In His Service,
Luke

Thank you to you all for your great thoughts.

I guess it all comes down to knowing your audience and realizing that blogs will be formated completely differently based on your target audience.

Being a creative pastor, I try to mix it up with ideas whether it be tech stuff or worship elements while throwing in the random and fun.

The biggest suggestions for me from this are listing out blog ideas and writing them out ahead of time. That’s huge.

Thanks

I actually have been observing this process of writing ahead of time with your posts. You can just see that there is planning involved.

I’ve been working on doing the same thing and hope to launch my first “series” of calculated blogs in the next week or two.

There’s been a few things itching in me to write about.

I appreciate the planning. It feels less random. I know that I’m going to get more than a one hit wonder out of you guys.

On one hand, I really want have a blog audience who is able to benefit and allow me to benefit from them. On the other hand I want to be who I am and not just another blogging pastor.

I think I could probably gain a larger reading audience if I were to stick with topics of “spirituality” but to me, everything really is spiritual.

I’m very new to this - I really appreciate your blog and your experience. It’s been very helpful in a lot of ways.

Caught you at Catalyst too…fun stuff.

I try to vary content for my audience. Mine started as a way to keep in touch with out-of-town friends, and then in-town friends and people I don’t know started reading. Then I was handed the youth ministry at our church. Now my posts swing from what I’m reading in Judges to what I did last night. “Remember your audience,” would be the tip there, I guess.

Wow, Craig… I wish I could do that! Mine are usually pretty much on the fly… whatever I come up with in the early morning.

I do keep a file of things I find throughout the day. As a matter of fact, that file is pretty big with things I have yet to blog about.

My biggest thing I try to do when blogging is write about things that interest me… hoping that if they interest me, they might interest someone else. (Sometimes they do, sometimes, not so much).

Keep up the great work. Really appreciate you, Craig!

Todd

I am a constant learner and I keep a file of blogging ideas go hand-in-hand for me!

I keep a file of blogging ideas in my blackberry. I always note them as they come to me. I can easily have several ideas a day and I just pick and choose. This process depends upon: my mood, what I’m reading, what’s happening around me… I might post a thought that just came to mind right before I started writing. I am a random thinker so this is very natural.

In the beginning I stayed way ahead with writing; however now I generally set time each night to write (It doesn’t take very long anymore). It’s a great time to download and decompress my thoughts!

Now that I have some great blogging relationships, I am definitely going to use guest bloggers. Since I am so new, I can use a re-run of some prior blogs!

I save Fridays for random bullets “Friday Drive-by� and I don’t blog on Sat. and Sun.

Those are the ways I blog.