In 2011 I’m going to be starting two new blogs. One on encouraging people in their Christian walks and the other one on fitness.They will not be personal blogs, although I will be writing for them. They are going to be community blogs. I want them to have multiple authors encouraging people in their walks with God and in their physical health.

So I’m looking for bloggers. Bloggers who are passionate about their walks with God and/or who are passionate about their physical fitness.

If you’re interested, please fill out this form and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours with details about what I’d like you to do:

This is another book I probably would have never read if I wasn’t a part of Thomas Nelson’s Books for Bloggers Program. This book is written by Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision.  Let me start off by saying that this should be required reading if you’re breathing! This would make a great book for small group curriculum, to go through with friends, and family. It conveniently has a study guide with questions for each chapter in the back of the book.

This book will open your eyes to so many different issues that need addressed around the globe and really challenge you to something about it. Here were some of my highlights:

• Are you willing to be open to God’s will for your life?
• When we say that we want to be His disciple, yet attach a list of conditions, Jesus refuses to accept our terms. His terms involve unconditional surrender.
• It takes transformed people to transform the world.
• If Christ is Lord, then nothing He asked us to do is optional. his teaching become the operating system of our lives.
• It’s not what you believe that counts; it’s what you believe enough to do.

• What does God expect of you? Everything.
• Our compassion for others seems to be directly correlated to whether people are close to us socially, emotionally, culturally, ethnically, economically, or geographically.
• Don’t fail to do something just because you can’t do everything
• We must not, as Christians, stick our heads in the sand and pretend that the world is doing just fine because we are.
• We must never see poverty or justice as “issues” that need solutions; rather we must see the human beings at the heart of those issues as people who need and deserve our love and respect.
• A church that lives within its four walls is no church at all.
• It would take a little over 1% of income of the American Christians to life the poorest one billion people in the world out of extreme poverty.
• God never asks us to give what we do not have . . . But He cannot use what we will not give.
• We, as Christians can look at our broken world, shrug our shoulders and say, “That’s just the way things are.” Or we can instead embrace a vision of what could be – if we’d pitch in.
  

As I said before this is a must read and it will open your eyes and your heart to start to see the world as God does, and hopefully it will launch you into action to change this world.

Final Grade: A+      Buy it here!

A lot of people ask me about blogging – How do you start one, what should I write, etc… Here are some links that have helped me… I hope they’ll do the same for you:

This is the best article I’ve found that will help you start a blog:

• How to Start a Blog by Michael Hyatt

Three Websites that Consistently write on and help me with blogging:

• Michaelhyatt.com
• Churchcrunch.com
• Seth Godin

As far as tips from me… After a year – I’d say this:

Be Personal while Adding Value – Personally, I enjoy when people consistently blog content and occasionally blog about their personal lives. If it’s all content, I don’t feel like I ever get to know you, and if it’s all personal, I know way too much about you and get bored quickly.

Less is More - This is hard for me and I’m still working on it. The truth is, very few of us will read a blog post that takes longer than a minute to read. Be quick and the to point.

Be consistent - I’m not saying blog everyday, but be consistent enough so that I’ll want to come back and visit your blog consistently.

Be Yourself – I enjoy blogging because it teaches me a lot about me. For a while, I tried blogging like everyone else who was a “popular” blogger. Now, I’m just learning to be me!

Know Your Audience – You need to have a way to measure whether or not what you are putting out there is effective. The best tool I’ve found for that is Google Analytics. It tracks everything from what people are reading, to where they’re from, how they got to your site, how much time they spent on it, how they got there, etc.. It helps you learn about you and the people you’re influencing through your blog.

What about you out there in the blogosphere? What do you think some good blogging tips are?