SteelerDirtFreak :: 21st Century Missional Redneck Geek   A reformational renaissance redneck who likes football, dirt car racing, and photography tries to figure out what it means to follow after the path of Jesus in this post-Christian world we find ourselves in.

It’s been a bit of a struggle, and I had a spot of nasty server trouble thrown in for a while there, but I think I have the problem fairly well licked for now.

Is everything looking alright in your browser now? Please let me know if anything is even a little wonky.

One thing I had to do was take all the ads away, I’ll be running an ad or two at the bottom of most posts from now on; it seems that I may have been breaking some div boundries with some of them.

Seriously though, right now, my ebay and any affiliate sales I can make are the only income I have coming in. So if you’re looking for a book, music, software, game, whatever, I truly would be grateful if you clicked thru one of my ads.

I don’t want to go into all the big bad about it, but we had another curve ball thrown our way this past week, (which I know some of you picked up on, and your emails have been a great comfort and reassurance) so any little bit that we can get from ad click thru sales has to help.

Obviously I have screwed something up somewhere as the display is terribly broken in every browser except Opera.

And of course, it is broken in vastly different ways in each browser, so that what you see as the problem in Firefox is fine in IE, while IE has it’s own different problems.

At this point, I’m honestly so frustrated that I’m not sure I’m even going to keep on trying to figure it out. I don’t think my blood pressure can take much more of this crap - seriously. I know my current emotional/mental condition can’t take it.

So if you check back next time and you get a 404 error, you’ll know I quit.
And if it is an even bigger mess, you’ll know I didn’t.

Dang, that’s a heck of a title, eh? But we’ve all been there before, haven’t we? The dude is the pulpit is just flat out boring, monotone voice, all around you it looks like a bobblehead convention as heads drop and then quickly snap back upright.

What if that is your regular pastor? What are you supposed to do? In today’s McWorld, all too often the answer is, ‘move on to something else.’

Well, Tod Bolsinger (It Takes A Church), has an excellent post about this. The title alone should get you to go read it. (Hey, you read this post, didn’t ya?) Blessed Art Thou When the Sermon Sucketh

Oh, and as for the answer to the title question, go read Tod’s post! But I’ll tell this, it’s NOT the McWorld answer.

Hey, don’t know if you have heard about this yet or not, but this thing is really taking off.

Apparently it all started with Hugh Hewitt saying:

Rick Warren or some other far seeing pastor with a big facility and conference organizing experience ought to convene a conference on blogging and the Church, and invite all the God bloggers and interested pastors and parachurch workers to meet and confer on the new communication platform. If someone throws that party, I’ll endlessly promote it. But I hope that organizer invites some secular bloggers so that the Godblogcon I isn’t as hopelessly narrow in scope as the Harvard gathering. And don’t hold it where the temps get down to zero.

Then Dr Andrew Jackson of SmartChristian got involved and it has continued to blogroll, so to speak:

POST #2: Andy Jackson writes (January 22, 2005)

Well, I’m on the pastoral staff of an Arizona (Mesa) mega-church with a 2,000 theater seat auditorium with a mega-screen that we could likely use. I will organize it if there is real widespread interest. But Hugh would have to do more than promote it, he would have to be a keynote speaker. I can guarentee him that the temps will not get down to zero. Oh ya, be sure to order Hugh’s book Blog today. Just think, blogging near, from, or in the Grand Canyon.

POST #3: Hugh Hewitt e-mailed me (Andy Jackson) and said “run with it.” However, he also said we should have at least 50 to 100 committed bloggers or we should pull the plug. So, speak up now or forever hold your peace. Get this announcement out on your blogs and let’s see who has an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying.

POST #4: Hugh Hewitt says “he is in.” (read more…)

I am definitely in for this. I think this is an excellent idea, and I want to be in on it, learning new ideas, new ways of doing things, new trends, whatever.

I’ve been sold on blogging for almost 2 years now, and I’ve encouraged several others to also become bloggers. I’ve also endured about a million, “huh, what’s a blog?” responses.

Anyways, it’s no secret that our financial situation is way past pitiful right now. So, I need your help to get to the GodBlogCon. Make use of some of the book and music ads on this site. If you care to donate outright, use the Paypal button to do so. Unless you specifically state otherwise, I’ll use those funds exclusively for this trip.

And if it comes down to it, I’ll hitch hike cross country to get there. (Hey, I did it when I was 16, I ought to be able to do it again, right?) In any case, I’m determined to be there. And to promote it.