Andy Rowell | Church Leadership Conversations

Amazon Associates shut down all accounts in NC at 4 am

Letter of complaint to Amazon.com

Amazon Associates shut down all of their accounts from North Carolina and Hawaii last night at 4 am.  In other words, those of us who have referred people to you for years now get nothing for the thousands of links to Amazon on our websites.  You gave us no options. 

And yes, those links that are embedded in years of programming in our websites will continue to refer people to Amazon. 

Amazon has been great to work with over the years.  Shipping is fast.  The system of ranking products is excellent.  But now you have given the people who recommended you the shaft.

You gave us no options.  You just shut us down because you don't want to pay taxes?  Certainly there is a case for us to take legal action against you for abruptly canceling the program.   

The website you refer us to http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/ has nothing updated since May 19th. 

Sadly, this probably affects content mavens like me who recommend quality products.  This was my only source of income from my website.  A poor doctoral student just got poorer.   

Andy Rowell

Letter of Complaint to North Carolina Legislators:

Find your representatives at: http://www.ncleg.net/GIS/RandR07/Representation.html#byZIP

Dear Senator McKissick and Representative Wilkins,

You are my representative in the State House. 

I'm disappointed that Amazon.com shut down its Amazon Associates accounts in North Carolina at 4 am today.

They write "This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor."  (See email below).

I referred people to Amazon.com on my website because they give great service and have system for reviewing products.  Now three years of putting links to them in my website will be gone.  I can't go back and change the links--it is thousands of links by hand.  

This was a main source of income for me. 

Please look into this.  This affects poor students like me who depend on the internet for a small source of income each month. 

Count me as another unemployed person. 

Andy Rowell

Complaint on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/AndyRowell

All Amazon Associates Program accounts have been shut down in North Carolina. @Amazon So now years of links refer for free? #ncaffiliatetax 41 minutes ago from web

Letter from Amazon at 4 am

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Amazon.com Associates Program <associates-autoresponse@amazon.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 4:12 AM
Subject: Important Notice from the Amazon Associates Program

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date. Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009. In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents. The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/. We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future. Best Regards, The Amazon Associates Team

Message Category: Important Notice from the Amazon Associates Program

© 2009 Amazon.com. All rights reserved. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, 1200 12th Ave. S., Suite 1200, Seattle, WA 98144-2734, USA.

60 Church Leadership Blogs and 140 Other Blogs I Subscribe To

I subscribe to 60 blogs that deal with church leadership issues.   

I use Google Reader to watch blogs. 

I have also listed the other 140 theology, Christian thought, and news blogs I follow. 

In the comments, I put my 14 favorite blogs. 

I did not list the personal blogs of friends and family that I subscribe to.

I mostly skim blogpost titles so I always appreciate when the titles are descriptive of what is in the post like newspaper headlines.

Why I blog, blogging tips, and a technology primer

Here are my responses to an interview with Raymond Hayes of the Foundation for Evangelism about blogging.  I am grateful to be receiving funding for my Th.D. program at Duke through the Foundation.  Notably, the Foundation just announced November 4th that it will support four initiatives with $50,000-100,000 each to “develop leaders with a passion for evangelism who will have a multiplying impact on The United Methodist Church.”  Great stuff.   

Raymond Hayes interviews Andy Rowell about blogging. 

1. When did you first start blogging. As well, have you done any journalistic or diary type writings in the past either in paper format or electronic?

I have been blogging since January 2006 at www.andyrowell.net -- "Church Leadership Conversations: The Thoughts and Resources of Andy Rowell."  I had started a blog in 2004 but I did not have a clear focus and did not tell people about it.  I remember subtitling it something like: "Reflections on Christianity, leadership, movies, sports, politics, and the news."  Meanwhile, I emailed some pastor friends emails entitled: "What Pastors Need to Know About the book The Da Vinci Code" (released in 2003) and "What Pastors Need to Know About the film The Passion of the Christ" (released in Feb 2004).  I was surprised to hear that they forwarded my email messages to others.  This is when I started to realize that this was my niche and passion--"What Pastors Need to Know About . . ."  This has been my blog's focus.  When a pastor emails me a question, then I may post a version of my response.  Or if I find myself in real life having a conversation about a subject, I may post my thoughts. 

2. What do you feel is the reason you like to blog?

I blog because blogging:

(1) improves my writing;

(2) puts me in touch with people outside of my normal circle;

(3) gives me an outlet for insights that I think could help others;

(4) gives me a place to post long thoughtful email messages, papers, and other things I have already written--potentially multiplying their original influence;

(5) helps me articulate my thoughts on different issues;

(6) gives me the opportunity to highlight really great resources others should know about. 

3. Any suggestions for future bloggers?

(1) Read some blogs.  Look through My List of 80 Church Leadership Blogs I am watching.  See my: Why to Try Blogging and How to Start Start a blog at WordPress.com for free. Don't put any distinguishing personal information about yourself on it. Write whatever you want for a couple of months. Note what categories you find yourself writing about--then start another blog about the topic you are most interested in and include your full name and start telling people about it.  It is usually good to have some expertise about the topic you are writing about. 

(2) Don't worry about how many people read your blog but comment on other blogs and sign your comments with your blog address and with the blog's title which clearly states its subject.

(3) Remember that anything you put on the internet is potentially public and permanent so don't write anything you wouldn't want a potential employer or your mother to read.  Be fair to those you critique. 

(4) Really scathing blog posts ripping someone will get you noticed and increase your audience but fairness and wisdom will help you retain an audience.  People like thoughtful, funny, fair people.  People get tired of mean people. 

(5) Anne Lamott in her book on writing, Bird by Bird says that people who attend her writing workshops are always wanting to know on the first day how to get an agent, get a contract, and make big money as a writer.  Lamott is always trying to just get them to write.  I would say the same thing.  What are you already writing already?  Lectures, newsletters, sermons . . . why not collect them on a blog rather than letting them rot away in "My Documents" in your computer?  People will notice you and if you are good, they will subscribe to your blog and notice when you post something new and will be drawn to it. 

(6)  See Tips for Better Blogging by Webmonkey and Mark Batterson's Ten Blog Tips or Abraham Piper's 22 very simple ways for a new blogger to improve or read the book The Blogging Church.

(7) Blogging should not be allowed to keep you from your family, hurt your relationships, hurt your day job, or become an obsession. 

4. What one message of Christ do you feel fits your daily life, and helps you keep writing on a regular basis?

2 Corinthians 6:3-12 TNIV

3 We put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.     11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. 12 We are not withholding our affection from you

Like the Apostle Paul, in my personal life, vocational life and blogging life, I want to be someone who is trying to follow Christ well and to share freely with others what I have found that they might be built up.  

5.  Any of the new technologies that you like the most? (Social tools like Twitter, Facebook or any new hardware like the iPhone, etc, that helps you keep up with your duties or writing?

Here are my comments about 7 technologies:

1. I follow lots of blogs with Google Reader.  See my list of 80 Church Leadership blogs that I would recommend which I keep updated: My List of 80 Church Leadership Blogs I am watching.  Google Reader is an RSS feeder in that it notifies you when there are any new posts from a blogger.  It gives you the titles of the posts--I scan through the titles and read probably 5 in 100.  In the blogosphere, there are some good United Methodist blogs worth watching:    

   Adam Hamilton - Seeing Gray - megachurch UMC pastor in Kansas

   Andrew Thompson - Gen-X Rising, UMC pastor and Th.D. student at Duke

   Ben Witherington - Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary

   Scott Jones - Kansas UMC Bishop Blogs and Columns

   Will Willimon - A Peculiar Prophet - Alabama UMC Bishop

2. I would highly recommend learning to use iTunes.  It is a free software (application / program) that you can use on a PC or a Mac.  With it you can download audio and video like Adam Hamilton's Church of the Resurrection, or the Catalyst Conference podcast.  The free stuff is called "podcasts."  See my best podcasts.  There is tons of great stuff for free to listen to. 

3. I would also recommend people consider switching to Gmail for their email.  You don't even need to give up your other email address.  You can use Gmail (powered by Google) to check it.  Gmail has basically unlimited storage, no ads on the email messages, and is extraordinarily fast and flexible.  I can't understand why people would use any other Webmail interface or worry about storage or about your computer crashing and losing all of your stored email messages.  Just keep them on gmail and search for what you need. 

4. See my:The Best Bible Study Tools on the Web and Biblegateway.com - Why every pastor should demonstrate it to their congregation and Introduction to the online theological world

5. I think the free Mozilla Firefox is a faster browser than Internet Explorer.  I use Firefox. 

6. I think Facebook is great for connecting with old high school, college and seminary friends.  I keep Facebook "friends" to people I remember and have met in person.  Most people however simply say "yes" to anyone who asks to be their friend.  I am not as interested in reading updates from people I don't know and have never met in person, so I do not have them as friends on Facebook.

7. I would not recommend Twitter though I am still experimenting with it.  I think it is a waste of time.  I have reflected on it at Top grades for pastors on Twitter and Reflections on Twitter. 

Introduction to the online theological world

Someone emailed and asked me about the online theological world because she is researching it for her DMin. 

Here is the online theological landscape in my opinion:

1. There are a few collaboration projects. The New Testament Gateway is run by Duke professor Mark Goodacre.  You can also check out Theopedia.  See also TheResurgence for Conservative Reformed Folk and Emergent Village for the emerging church and Anglimergent for emerging church folks who are Anglican.  Here is a Yahoo group for Jurgen Moltmann that Tony Jones alerted me to.  Many organizations that exists in the real world have a way to interact online today.   Christianity Today and Beliefnet especially God's Politics with Sojourners have powerful online presence. 

2. Most of the real discussion is happening on blogs.  Some blogs have multiple authors like Reformation 21 for conservative reformed folk and the Generous Orthodoxy Thinktank which has a lot of evangelical professors.  They sometimes collaborate.  See the recent post about an online Karl Barth theology conference.

3.  Here are a few important individual blogs by professors:

• Richard Mouw - president of Fuller Theological Seminary has a blog
• Scot McKnight - New Testament professor at North Park has a huge blog audience and he writes 4 posts a day or something like that
• Ben Witherington - New Testament professor at Asbury writes a lot
• John Stackhouse - theology professor at Regent College
• Mark Goodacre - professor of New Testament at Duke
• Here is my list of the most important church leadership blogs by leading thinkers and writers: 80 very good Church Leadership Blogs.    
  

4.  Sometimes bloggers get together in real life.  For example, people like Mark Goodacre get together with other bloggers at meetings like the SBL and AAR -major theology conferences. 

5. Some seminaries are now offering free online courses. 

Covenant Theological Seminary's "Covenant Worldwide" - free seminary courses.

Gordon-Conwell's Dimensions of the Faith free online theological education program. Listen to full Church History, Systematic Theology, and Biblical Studies courses.

Many other seminaries are putting MP3's on iTunes so people can listen to audio.  See Chris Tilling's post Theology and NT lectures on iTunes and Nijay Gupta's Excellent Christian Academic Material (Free) on ITUNES-U.

Fuller Theological Seminary puts all of their Syllabi / Course Descriptions online. 

6.  Most seminaries have all of the faculty email addresses on the web on the faculty pages which leads to some interaction with the online world.  Some schools that make available the email addresses of their professors include Duke Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Gordon-Conwell, Luther Theological Seminary, Wheaton College, Tyndale, Bethel, Denver, Aberdeen, and Durham.  On the other hand, Regent College, Asbury Seminary, Westminster Seminary, and Covenant Seminary do not make faculty email addresses available.  I think seminaries should make them available online.    

7.  I have a Facebook account but I have not seen much theological discussion going on there except for some groups to join. See the Out of Ur group for the Christianity Today Leadership Journal Out of Ur blog and another group for Tony Jones's book The New Christians. 

How to put ads on your blog

Update January 26, 2008:
In a month, I have made no money with Commission Junction, about $5 with Google Ads and $10 with Amazon Associates.

Update April 1, 2008:

I made no money with Commission Junction at all so I have removed the ads.  I made about $12 total with Google Ads and $26 with Amazon Associates.  I am removing everything but Amazon Associates.

Over the years I have tried to help people get started blogging.  Probably the number one reason to blog is that you learn a lot about yourself, much like journaling or reading a vocational discernment book like What Color Is Your Parachute?  I started out blogging about theology, current events, sports, and church leadership and later realized that I am most passionate about church leadership. 

Here is my latest experimentation in the blogosphere.  This week I have put up some ads.  I thought I would share with you, my faithful reader, what I have learned.  What I can't tell you is how much I'll make since I just put them up. 

Three reasons to put ads up on your blog or website. 
1.  Almost all publishers and media use ads. Almost every TV program, radio program, magazine and newspaper exist because of ads.  Using ads does not mean that you are compromising your integrity to sell ads.  The other financial options are to solicit donations like a Christian radio station or PBS or exist through subscriptions such as Consumer Reports.  Many bloggers also write books and thus hope that internet traffic will improve their book sales - many of the most well known church leadership blogs do this. 

2.  This is a reasonable way to sustain content production.  Google's revenue is almost exclusively from internet ads.  Did I mention I have a 2 year old and 3 month old and am a full-time doctoral student?  There is money to be made.  I don't click on internet ads.  You don't click on internet ads.  But clearly someone does.  Am I contributing to someone's excess spending by putting ads up on my site?  Does it bother Christianity Today or Christian Century  writers that they have ads?  Aren't ads a way to defray the costs very broadly to help the content provider (writers) make a living?  I'm happy to hear reasonable arguments in the comments against all advertising and marketing.  I'll listen to them with interest.

3.  You can try to market honestly.  People can choose not to click on the ads.  It is wrong to deceptively market something.  It is wrong to market bad things.  But links that take the person where they have chosen to go seem appropriate.  In other words, I think there are people who are interested in blogging with TypePad.  It is an excellent way to go.  I have provided a nice big link on the right side of the page.  If they end up going with TypePad, I get a commission.  That seems pretty straightforward.  I tell you below how you can choose what ads are put on your site which helps you market with more integrity. 

Here is the information behind my ads and how I put them up and what I get paid.

1.  TypePad. I have blogged using TypePad for 2 1/2 years now.  I have the "Plus" level.  It is very reliable and easy to use.  I have to say I love it.  I used to be on the Google-owned Blogger.  One of the problems with Blogger is that you cannot upload Word documents or pdf documents.  More recently some of my friends have chosen WordPress.com which is also free and allows you to upload files.  It is free but you only have 50 MB worth of space which can go quickly.  (For 5 GB of free storage try XDrive.  Omnidrive provides 1 GB.  You could link to files on XDrive or Omnidrive from your Blogger, Wordpress.com and TypePad account).  I required all of my students last year at Taylor University in one course to develop a WordPress.com blog.  See my post:Why to Try Blogging and How to Start and my other posts in my Blogging category about blogging.  Most of the people on My List of the 70 Best Church Leadership Blogs use TypePad.  Like I said, it is very easy to use and I explain below how it easy to integrate ads.   

If you have TypePad and want to put up an ad, go to  TypePad's home page and click on "Join the TypePad Affiliate Program."  That takes you to sign up with Commission Junction  Here is the commission: if people sign up for TypePad from the link: "$30 per subscriber (14 days from initial free trial) and $100 one-time bonus for 10 or more subscribers."

2.  Lenovo ThinkPad.  I also signed up on Commission Junction to advertise ThinkPad notebooks since I have a new T61.  It is a great laptop.  I ordered the specifications that Duke University Computer Store recommended.  Here are the specs I ended up with. 

Download Lenovo T61_specifications.pdf

Here is the commission: "start earning 3% commission on sales of all ThinkPad notebooks, ThinkCentre desktops and options and accessories sold through the program."

3.  Amazon.com. I signed up with Amazon Associates.  Thus, the book links are linked to my Amazon Associates account.  If someone buys something anywhere on Amazon.com after being directed there by one of my links, "You earn a referral rate of 4% on items shipped by Amazon or third-party sellers."   If you have TypePad, once you have a free Amazon Associates account, it is very easy to set up under "Profile."  Then you just do your book list on TypeLists.  The Amazon Associates site also has many other ways to put links on your blog to Amazon. 

4.  Google AdSense.  Sign up at Google AdSense.  Then you can put Google Ads on your site.  The difference here is that you are getting paid for the number of times the ads are viewed and the number of times they are clicked, not on commission.  "The program is free, and combines pay-per-click and pay-per-impression advertising - meaning you get paid for valid clicks on the ads on your site or search results pages as well as impressions on your content pages."  I also put a link to Google AdSense which pays me if some of you sign up for AdSense and end up making money through it.  Also I put a Google search on the left side of the page that allows you to search my site for posts you are interested in.  It also includes some ads that I get credit for if you click on them. 

Google ads are linked automatically to the site so that I have little choice what gets put there.  This is a bit scary.  (I have put my ads to the far bottom right for this reason).  One good thing though is that under Google AdSense, you can go to AdSense Setup and then go to Competitive Ad Filter and screen out ads you do not want shown.  I have done this once already after seeing an ad that I was embarrassed to see. 

Final advice about ads:

1.  Some of this takes a little bit of computer know-how. Basically though, on these sites (Commission Junction, Amazon, Google AdSense), you just click on the ads you want to show on your site, then they produce the html for the ad.  You just copy and paste this into your website and it works automatically.  In TypePad, you just put that html into a "Notes" TypeList.  I did this for all of the ads.

2.  Continue to make it easy for people to find your content.  If it is difficult to read your blog because of your ads, people won't want to come back to your site.  Try not to make it too busy.   The more ads you put in prominent positions, the more hits you will probably get.  But in the end, if people find your site off-putting, they won't come back.   Realize that most people are not as technologically savvy as you are and not as familiar with your site.  They will find your site confusing. 

3.  I think it would be great if more Christian organizations utilized internet advertising so that we could advertise them on our blogs.  For example, I would be happy to find on Google AdSense or Commission Junction organizations I already support like Taylor University, Regent College, Duke Divinity School, and World Vision so that I could promote organizations that I already support and also get a tiny cut.  Wouldn't that be win-win?  I know some would say that I should advertise those things without any compensation but wouldn't it be more fun to work together?  Wouldn't it be cool to have World Vision ads on all of our blogs but also to get a little compensation ourselves?  Or am I wrongheaded about that?  If you disagree, why don't you have advertisements already for World Vision on your site?  :-)

4.  I realize this is new territory for those of you who are pastors and professors and there may be implications for the institutions who employ you.  What will my church think?  Some of you are using your blogs as tools for communication from pastor to congregation (though it seems to me most of the pastor blogs are writing for other pastors).  Should I be making personal money off a church communication tool?  But in reality I think this is a similar situation to making money off books that pastors write.  All of these are issues you should discuss one on one with elders and superiors who are familiar with the medium of blogging and writing books and are able to give you good advice.  I wouldn't bring this up in the middle of an elders meeting without having some good discussion with some people behind the scenes first.  It could get needlessly ugly just because of misunderstanding.  A search online for blogging guidelines or policies for pastors will turn up some useful resources.  They will probably want to talk with you about how much time you are blogging / writing a book / articles  "on church time."  It would not be good to have someone blogging all day and not ministering to their congregation.  This is also related to the issue of outside speaking engagements.  If you are doing tons of youth retreats and getting paid for them and neglecting your youth group, that wouldn't be good.  Then again, some of that outside speaking / writing / blogging is appropriate and good and life-giving I think.  For those of you who are professors, the same rules likely apply though you may have to have in big letters: "this is a personal blog and the opinions don't reflect those of the university though I do want to be respectful and you are welcome to let me know if you are concerned about anything I've written!"  In all these situations, it may be appropriate to share a portion of what you have earned from speaking / blogging / writing (your "moonlighting" money) with your main employer.  These could be dicey issues but I think they are certainly negotiable.  Get outside advice and input from other pastors / professors who write, speak, and blog and they will be able to share with you good advice.   I hope these institutions will generally be glad that their pastors and professors which they don't pay all that well can find ways to make a few extra bucks.  No one is going to get rich doing any of this. 

Other resources:   

 See also Adam Cleaveland's post about putting ads on his POMOMUSINGS blog for the first time this week.  He has a huge readership. 

Leadership Journal's Out of Ur blog is another example to consider.

Secular marketing expert Seth Godin says today that the key to internet traffic is producing good content.  No short cuts.

Why to Try Blogging and How to Start

I am teaching my Christian Educational Ministries "Program and Curriculum Development" students how to blog tomorrow.  (I talked more about the books for this course here). 

They have already had to make comments on two different blogs because that is a good way to familiarize yourself with blogs.  (For inspiration, see my list of the Best 70 Church Leadership Blogs). 

Tomorrow we are meeting in a computer lab and they will all be setting up a blog on WordPress.  I have told them that they can set up a fake ministry blog or a personal blog. 

Here are three reasons I am teaching them to blog. 

1. Churches and ministries need websites and the blog is the easiest way to get a basic website going.  Even for one event they may want to be able to do this.   

2. I want these students to get over their fear of doing web design.  You don't know if you are good at it and like it until you try. 

3. Even if they don't do it the future, they need to be able to work well with designers and they will do that better if they have done it a bit themselves. 

Here are the basic instructions for them.

If you are new to blogging, this sequence of tasks may be a good quick way to try your hand at it.    

The screen photos are on the attached Microsoft Word handout here if you are interested.  Download WordPress_Blogging.doc 

My sample blog which I practiced with tonight is: http://ced352.wordpress.com/

1. Go to http://wordpress.com/
2. Click: Start a blog in seconds »
3. You need to figure out a Username and Email Address and click the legal box and then click gimme a blog. 
4. Then you need to come up with the url for your blog and the name of the blog and whether you want it to appear publicly or not.  The url will not be able to be changed but the blog name can be changed later.
5. Check your email for the confirmation email. 
6. Write a post.  Then click Publish.
7. Upload a post with a photo.   
8. Update your profile.  Change your password to something you will remember. 
9. Presentation.  Pick a new theme.
10. Presentation.  Do a Custom Image Header by uploading a photo.  You can only do this for some themes. 
11. Go to Manage . . . Pages . . . Edit your About page. 
12. Under Manage . . . Pages . . . Create a New Page

It literally took my students less than 10 minutes to get blogging.

Lots of people in the blogosphere are recommending the new book The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey (who has a blog here) and Terry Storch.  That is the best place to begin probably.   

Blogger is getting new features

I just wanted people to know that Blogger is getting new features.  They just announced this yesterday.  See Blogger Buzz: Blogger in Beta.  So if you are thinking about switching from Blogger, don't do it yet.  If you are thinking of starting a new blog, do it with Blogger. 

I switched from Blogger to TypePad for some of the features Blogger will now have!  (See my post here about that).  It seems Blogger will still be free and the version of TypePad I have costs $80 per year.  Blogger is owned by Google which is a pretty solid company to put your bets on.   

If you are interested in learning more about how I blog on TypePad, click the category "Blogging."  I try to keep the conversation mostly about Church Leadership but I do digress to explain a bit about blogging from time to time. 

How to Use Microsoft Word Documents to Write Blog Posts

I was always having problems writing blog posts in Microsoft Word and then pasting them into TypePad as a post.  I learned one thing to try.  Save a copy of your document in Microsoft Word as a "Web Page, Filtered."  This will get rid of a lot of that nasty Microsoft Word formatting that messes everything up.  Then paste it into your blog.

Be careful though that you have another copy of your document because you will lose all of the Microsoft Word formatting except for links.   

Here is Microsoft Office's article entitled About using filtered HTML

You can also try using this tool after you have filtered the HTML: http://www.textism.com/wordcleaner/

Note from later that night:

After reading the comment below, I couldn't resist downloading the Beta version of Office 2007 because you can blog with it.  Beta means it still has errors they are working out.  They say you should backup everything before using it.  It costs $1.50 and is good for free until Feb 1, 2007.  If you do get Office 2007 Beta, when it comes time to install it, click "Customize" and keep your previous version of Office.  This is what I did.  The big news with the new Microsoft Word is that the new documents will not be: .doc but rather .docx so you won't be able to open them in an older version of Word!  Yuck!   

Why and how I got www.andyrowell.net (my own domain name)

From now on I am going to be telling people to go to www.andyrowell.net for my blog rather than www.andyrowell.typepad.com though they will both actually point to the same webpage.  For example, I will have www.andyrowell.net on my email signature. 

Why I got my own domain name:

1. I think the advantage is that I will be able to keep andyrowell.net for as long as I keep paying for it.   I can change blog platforms or website providers and I can take www.andyrowell.net wherever I go.  For example, if I get tired of TypePad, I can just move andyrowell.net to another blog provider. 
2. It is also easy to remember for people: andyrowell.net. 
3. I found a couple of people who are using .net after their name (www.brianmclaren.net or www.laurenwinner.net) so I thought I would do that too.  (www.andyrowell.com was already taken by an investigative journalist who has written a book). 
4. I could have called gotten churchleadershipconversations.com  But that seemed kind of long to me and I thought perhaps my interests might morph over the years. 
5. I also thought this would be valuable experience.  For the next organization I'm involved in, I will know how to get our own website name.
6. Sorry if this seems egotistical to have my own website named after me.  I was driven to this because I had an old blog with a name even I couldn't remember: www.FirstMoveThyself.blogspot.com and there are a lot of other annoying, distracting, obscure, confusing, "cute," "clever," names for blogs out there.  See my list of blogs I check for a sampling.  I don't mind the names but I hate it when I have to look more than 2 seconds for the name of the author once I get to the site.   

How I got andyrowell.net

I bought the domain name andyrowell.net from GoDaddy.com I was sorry to use GoDaddy for my business because of their tasteless SuperBowl ads but TypePad has directions on how to set up a domain with them.  (For you TypePad users see: Domain Mapping with GoDaddy)  I felt like registering a domain was trying something "really technical" so I went with the most popular provider. 

Here is what I paid for at GoDaddy:

12001-1 .NET Domain Name Registration - 1 Year                $8.99 + $.25  = $9.24

7001-1 Private Registration Services - 1 Year                                        = $4.99

=

Total (US Dollars):                                                                             $14.23

This is a $14 experiment I suppose.

Note about too much blogging about blogging:
I admit I have had a number of recent posts about blogging.  It is really annoying when bloggers blog about blogging all the time.  But I'm trying to help people who are new to blogging by sharing the tricks I've learned.  It may save someone some pain and frustration.  Click on my category "Blogging" to the right to get all of my posts where I have talked about the tools I use for blogging.  Thanks for bearing with me.  I'm aware that in general I want to talk about church leadership on this blog.       

How I added a Google Search to My Blog

A couple of days ago I added a Google Search to my blog. 

Here are a couple of helpful links on how to do it:

1. For TypePad users: Adding Google Search to your Weblog 
2. How can I add a Google search box to my Web site?
3. Google Free

I ended up using #2. 

This was one of the biggest things I missed at Blogger.  (At the top of Blogspot.com blogs, you can search that blog which is great). 

How I Keep Up Reading Blogs

If you are  new to reading blogs, I will tell you more about why you might want to use a RSS_aggregator like NewsGator Online (Free version).

[Update: March 2008, I use Google Reader now]. 

Summary of what NewsGator does for me:

In the previous post I placed all the 44 church leadership blogs that I am currently "subscribed to."   You can scroll through them and see what's of interest to you. But there is an easier way.  I check my NewsGator Online (Free version) website each day and it gives me the headlines of all the new posts.  You can save stuff to read later in your "clippings."  After scanning them, I click "read all posts" so that only new ones show up next time.  Newsgator works well.  I recommend it.  It takes a few minutes to get set up but it is worth it once you start using it. 

Story of how I came to use NewsGator:

When I was first blogging, I went through and searched for like-minded blogs.  I looked on other people's blog rolls, etc.  I saved them all in a folder in my favorites.  Then I would browse through them once a month and see if there was anything of interest.  But I would end up re-reading things that I had already read.  And some people would not have posted anything new.  And sometimes the conversation was already over by the time I read the post.  A couple times, authors offered free books to the first people who would email so-and-so.  Well, I always missed that.

That is the great thing about having something like NewsGator.  (I'm happy to have other people recommend their newsreader if they recommend it).  Here is Wikipedia's explanation of what an aggregator is and here is a list of all of them available. 

Basically, with NewsGator, you just go and search for the blogs that you want to subscribe to.  So you put in "Jesus Creed" and Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog appears and you click "Subscribe."  Or you can simply paste in the URL (web address) of the blog and NewsGator finds the feed for it and subscribes you.  You can always unsubscribe.  Then whenever you open your NewsGator webpage, it will tell you the headlines of all the posts since you last checked it.

I recommend picking a few blogs and trying it.   

Note: I had subscribed to a bunch of news sites like CNN, NY Times, Fortune Magazine, etc. but they have too many posts each day so I decided not to subscribe to them.

The List of Church Leadership Blogs I Subscribe To

Below I have put the church leadership blogs that I currently "subscribe to."  I check my NewsGator Online (Free version) website each day and it gives me the headlines of all the new posts.   

If you are new to reading blogs, I will tell you more about why you might want to use a RSS_aggregator like NewsGator in the next post. 

I have not put many blogs on my permanent blogroll on the side of this page (only the firmly established Andrew Jones, Scot McKnight, and Out of Ur) because the blogs vary so much in quality and frequency but I thought I would share all of them here.  Some of the people I know personally, some I don't.  I have put a few quick notes below.      

I would be happy to hear your recommendations on others I/we should check out. 

Aaron Flores - theVoiz
Andrew Jones - TallSkinnyKiwi - emerging church leading blogger in New Zealand I think
Andy Rowell - Church Leadership Conversations - Me!
B.J. Woodworth - what's your wood worth? - I know BJ from Pittsburgh with Senior Capstone Trip.  He is a church planting pastor of an emerging church. 
Ben Witherington - NT Scholar at Asbury. 
Bill Arnold- Poet in Motion; image sound theology
Bill Kinnon - achievable leadership
Bob Robinson - Vanguard Church
Brian McLaren - well known author of a New Kind of Christian and A Generous Orthodoxy and an emerging church movement spokesman
Byron K. Borger - Hearts & Minds BookNotes - I know Byron from Senior Capstone Trip.  He is the owner of a great bookstore.  This is a great blog about books. 
C. Wes Daniels - gathering in light - Ph.D. student at Fuller under Ryan Bolger.  See Ryan's blog below. 
Chris Monroe - Paradoxology
Christianity Today at the Movies: Reviews
Christianity Today Magazine
Church Marketing Sucks - trying to improve church marketing but pointing out that much of it is typically not good.
Dan Kimball - Vintage Faith - author of Emerging Church and Emerging Worship
David Fitch - the great giveaway - author of new book The Great Giveaway
Doug Pagitt’s Blog - Emerging Church movement high profile person and author of Preaching Re-Imagined. 
Ed Cyzewski - inamirrordimly
Ed Young resources - CreativePastors - influential gigachurch pastor from Texas
emergent-us
emergingchurch.info
Gavin Richardson - Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd
Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
J.R. Briggs - brokenstainedglass - friend from Taylor University who is a young adult pastor at a megachurch in the Philadelphia area.  He has also written a book. 
Jim Plueddemann - The Missionary Iconoclast - professor of missions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
John Mark Rutter - Theological Ruminator - new pastor
Kem Meyer on Less Clutter & Noise - she has Granger Community Church connections.  I think she is an employee there. 
Kirk Bartha - from theocity to lovelocity - friend from Regent College who is a prophet, pray-er and preacher. 
Lauren Winner - superb author and infrequent blogger
Leadership Blog: Out of Ur

Leadership journal and resources for church leaders
Mark Waltz | ...because People Matter - author and a pastor at Granger Community Church
Michael Bird and Joel Willitts- Euangelion - New Testament scholar in Scotland and NT scholar at North Park University in Chicago
nextwave News
Rick Warren - wrote a couple of books
Ryan Bolger - TheBolgBlog - professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Emerging Churches
Scot McKnight - Jesus Creed - professor of New Testament at North Park and prolific author
Scott Collins-Jones - SCJToday - I know Scot from Senior Capstone Trip in Philadelphia.  He is a Ph.D. student at Princeton Theological Seminary in theology and a PCUSA pastor in Philadelphia. 
Steve Taylor - e~mergent kiwi - author of Out of Bounds Church and lives in New Zealand
Tim Stevens - LeadingSmart - author and a pastor at Granger Community Church
Tony Jones - Theoblogy - author and Emergent Village coordinator
Tony Morgan | one of the simply strategic guys - author and a pastor at Granger Community Church

Why are pastors getting their heads cut off by photographers?

I was a bit worried because guys with not much hair were getting their heads cut off by photographers. 

For example:

Doug Pagitt, an emerging church leader, author and pastor of Solomon's Porch

Brian McLaren, an emerging church leader and author

Today I was encouraged to see a photo of Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Texas, with his head cut off.  As far as I know, he has great hair.  I guess there must not be a balding censorship conspiracy after all. 

How I created the header for my blog

I once read that bloggers love to write about blogging.  Yikes.  I don't want to do that . . . but I want to save people the headaches I went through teaching myself this stuff! 

The idea for the heading

I imitated the header from Mark Waltz's blog.  Mark was involved in retail before entering pastoring and wrote the book entitled First Impressions: Creating Wow Experiences at Your Church .  This spring I went with some of my students to Mark's First Impressions workshop at Granger Community Church).  I deduce from all of this that he should also be good at creating a good first impression with your website!

I got the picture of the coffee cup from stock.xchng which has quality photos for free. 

How I created the header in XnView:

I basically forged three photos (one of the coffee cup, one a black rectangle, and one of me) into one photo using the free photo editor XnView.  (I don't have PhotoShop but I would like to though if you want to send me the money).  Here is the XnView link to download it from download.com which is the very best, most reputable place to download free software. 

In XnView, I used their tools "Tools . . . Create Panorama" to forge the three photos together.  Then I did Image . . .Convert to Colours . . . 32 Colours (Adaptive) to help blur the colours together so that the black looks seamless.  It also gives a brushed look. 

Then I did "Image . . . Resize" to 8 inches long (or 576 pixels long).

Then I did "Image . . . Add Text" and added a word or phrase at a time.      

Why I redesigned my blog

I added the explanations to the right about how to use this blog after talking with various people who are new to blogging and therefore gave me the honest "the emperor has no clothes" feedback that

a) they thought my old Blogger site looked better and was simpler and less busy and

b) that they had no idea what a blog was for and that all the features are confusing.  What the heck are categories? 

Therefore I tried to make sure there is more "white space" and tried to think "less is more" in designing.  One thing I got rid of was the second picture of me on the same page.  (See below middle snapshot).  My wife thought it was definitely too much and when your wife says that . . .   :-)  She hasn't looked at the new site and I'm not holding my breath.  I think she has read under 5 posts ever.  She is interested in the subject matter.  (She has her MDiv, has pastored, and also teaches Christian ministry at Taylor).  She simply would rather talk to live human beings than read blogs.  Can you believe that?  :-) 

Here are printscreen ("prt sc") snapshots of the the three versions: old, initial typepad, present. 

Viewing My Blog in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer

Internet Browsers:

I still usually use Internet Explorer as my internet browser but most experts say that the (free for download) Mozilla Firefox is much better once you get used to it.  So I'm trying to get used to it.  I don't like how it displays my Taylor webmail (this is predictable because it is "Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access" created by Microsoft which also created Internet Explorer) so I don't think I'll totally switch.  There is also a new Internet Explorer 7 that you can download for free I think that is in "beta" or testing mode. 

Site Redesign:

I redesigned this blog this week.  It looks quite a bit different.  When I tried to open the site with Mozilla Firefox, it still showed the old website.  The reason is that Mozilla Firefox stores the basics of your website in its memory and just reloads the new content. 

For it to show correctly I had to go into Mozilla Firefox and go to Tools . . . Options . . . Privacy . . . Cache . . . Clear Cache Now.  When I reloaded the site then, it worked great.  The new one looks like this: 

 

Categories

I hope you will enjoy the categories to the right in the "cloud."  I have gone back through all my old blog entries and categorized them!  The ones in larger fonts (like Taylor University, Syllabi and Books) are referred to in more posts.  You can click on the category and it will take you to all of the posts that are connected to that category.  Yeah!     

Moving to New Home August 1st

We are moving a block away.  Taylor University is going to tear down the house we are living in now because it needs a new roof and lots of other repairs.  We will still be close to campus (3 blocks) so that will be nice.  Here is a photo of the two bedroom house we will be renting.   The house is a block closer to Ivanhoe's, the wonderful ice cream place, which is dangerous for the waistline. 

Download IvanhoesMenu2006.pdf

Download IvanhoesMenu2007c.pdf

Program and Curriculum Syllabus

I taught Christian Educational Ministries 352: "Program and Curriculum Development" this spring and will teach it again next year.  Here is the syllabus we used.  I'm attaching it as a Microsoft Word document. 

Download syllabus_ced352_revised.doc

I couldn't do this with Blogger on my previous blog. 

Switching to Typepad from Blogger

I did a 30 day trial blog at Typepad tonight. Here is the experimental blogsite:

http://andyrowell.typepad.com/

I'm thinking about moving to TypePad from Blogger because I am sick of having trouble posting photos on Blogger. I'm also sick of not having categories in Blogger.

Most people I know who are serious bloggers are on TypePad though $89.50 (annual) for the middle version of TypePad is a lot considering Blogger is free. I may cancel before August 7.

My first impressions:
1. Blogger still looks better. Though there are a lot of things you can do to customize the appearance of TypePad, the initial styles are not that impressive. Still, there is a lot of room to customize the appearance such as adding a photo to your header. (You can do these things in blogger as well but you have to do in HTML language).
2. TypePad is very easy to use and the features are great. I love being able to post files (audio or PDF, etc.)
3. You can also customize your links, etc. very easily. Again, you can do this in Blogger but it is all with HTML. I'm actually quite blown away by the ease and number of features with TypePad.

Here is an article that summarizes blogging from PC World. Then here they rate the various blog providers.

Here is a formal study of various blog providers from the Online Journalism Review.

Note: July 7 11:00 pm.

My latest idea is to move toward a free account at WordPress.com

I would appreciate your feedback if you have any.

Note July 18, 2006.  I decided to make the switch. 

My blog has moved here to http://andyrowell.typepad.com/

This blog content from my Blogger blog First Move Thyself has been moved over here.

I switched over to TypePad even though you have to pay for it because of the categories, more design options, less hassle posting photos, the ability to post files and audio files, and for their domain hosting.

Blogger is a great place to start for free. I would recommend it.

Update August 15, 2006:

Blogger is going to add features!  See my blog post about that here.  Perhaps Blogger will be the best bet.