Here’s Kent Shaffer’s latest ranking of the:  “Top 100 Church Blogs”

Take a look and get some ideas on how you may improve your own blog. I already subscribe to about half of these and find many of them to a great sources for topics, and  improvements.

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Here’s a helpful guide to some common mistakes that I make every once in a while and you probably do to. Written by Brian Clark of Copyblogger: “Five Grammatical Errors that Make You Look Dumb”

He lists five mistakes to avoid when blogging and writing web copy:

1. Your vs. You’re

2. It’s vs. Its

3. There vs. Their

4. Affect vs. Effect

5. The Dangling Participle

Read what he has to say about these common errors. I have broken them all at one time or another. Very helpful!            *Top

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There are over 350 million folks on Facebook and it is still growing exponentially. It has incredible potential as a vehicle for outreach.

Here’s an excellent article from Digital Evangelism Issues on using Facebook in ministry. It addresses various current issues and has links to helpful training:

“Facebook outreach and training”

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I’ve been reading up on podcasting lately since I am exploring an idea along with a friend of mine for starting a new Bible Q & A/apologetics podcasting program.

For a long time I didn’t really know the differences between audio sermons or audio teaching and podcasting. They seemed the same to me since the production tech is similar and both could be downloaded in a MP3 format or into an iPod off of a website.

Lot’s of churches and ministries have ‘audio sermons’ and ‘audio studies’ but the best podcasting programs are really a different animal and more like a regular radio program in format. Good podcasting programs usually include bumper music, an introduction, and a closing with contact info along with the main content.  Also regular podcasting programs have RSS for subscription to future programming and their own site to boot.

The rise of podcasting on the Internet has also brought with it greater expectations for more professional sounding productions. Churches and ministries should consider polishing their audio products and making them more appealing. Actually some churches and ministries already attach some sort of generic intro, some even with music, to their audio files. It shouldn’t really take all that much more time and effort to make church and ministry productions even more professional.

I am suggesting that it is time for representatives of the Creator to be even more creative.               *Top

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Wow! 350 million people now on Facebook.  I had no idea–unbelievable!

Here’s a link to a bunch of different Internet stats collected for the year 2009.

The following I have lifted out as potentially important for evaluation in Internet ministry:

Websites
* 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
* 47 million – Added websites in 2009.

Note—Internet is still on the increase with no signs of slowing down!

Internet users
* 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
* 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
* 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
* 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
* 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
* 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
* 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
* 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
* 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Note– Wow! 18% increase in users in one year! Closing in on 2 billion users from every country in the World? What a huge audience to reach out to with the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ!

Social media
* 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
* 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
* 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
* 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
* 350 million – People on Facebook.
* 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
* 500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Note—126 million blogs and 350 million people on Facebook plus more on the way? —Wow! Facebook is obviously still a high growth site with potential for even greater expansion.

Images
* 4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
* 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
* 30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Note—Photos and images are continuing to explode on the Internet—especially the social sites. Now websites and blogs that don’t have images seem rather out of date.

Videos
* 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
* 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
* 924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
* 182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
* 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
* 39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
* 81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Note—182 videos/mo. watched by the average Internet user? Wow! I am way behind the curve! Note also that 82% view videos online.

Domain names
* 81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
* 12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
* 7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
* 76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
* 187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
* 8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Note—.com is still the most popular followed by the country code.

Web browsers
* 62.7% – Internet Explorer
* 24.6% – Firefox
* 4.6% – Chrome
* 4.5% – Safari
* 2.4% – Opera
* 1.2% – Other

Note—Internet Explorer still wins this battle by default. However there was a time when IE was over 80% and now other browsers are beginning to be a real factor especially Firefox. This is why it’s really important to check out how your website or blog resolves on all of the most popular browsers. I was surprised a couple of years ago how terrible one of my blogs looked on Safari.

Web servers
* 13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
* -22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
* 35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
* 384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
* -72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Note—Nearly half of the web servers in use are currently Apache (46.6%) but this does show some helpful trends to consider and be aware of.

These stats do indicate that the Internet is already a place where ministries need to be and Christian outreaches should be on the increase.  If not then it is time to play catch up.            *Top

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“3 Ministry Podcasting Options with Wordpress”

He looks at and rates the PowerPress and Sermon Browser plugins and then presents a ‘no’ plugin WordPress option. Also deems the PodPress plugin as dated.

Some good info here for WordPress folks wanting to get into podcasting.            *Top 

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Here’s a statistical reference I found on Church Forward blog:

• 76% of Americans drive to work alone.  Only 10% carpool, and 5% use public transportation, while 3% percent walk to work. On average, Americans spend 25 minutes commuting each way.

Statistics can actually a gold mine for planning outreach ministries.

For example- if 76% of Americans drive alone for an average of 50 minutes a day (25 minutes each way). Then 76% of the nation will be seeking something to listen to on the way there and back. Radio has always filled that void along with CDs.

Now iPods and MP3s are made to tie into the auto speaker system. This opens up an opportunity for ministry through podcasting. Churches and Internet ministries could fill that commuting void with sermons, Bible studies, podcasting radio programs and etc.

The market is already there to be tapped into.

Interestingly enough I am already in the process of planning a new podcasting program along with a friend of mine. Stats like this actually help in the planning. We are in the process of determining the program length. Now I am inclined to keep it under 30 minutes.          *Top

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Google email accounts were presumably hacked by the Chinese government in December. Since the victims were primarily Chinese human rights activists this resulted in a strain between Google and the Chinese government.

Now Google is saying that they may quit China over censorship of search results.

For once Google is on our side. China is known to have a wall of censorship in place limiting search results and access to Christian sites around the world.

It is said that nearly 340 million Chinese use the Internet so the implications are huge. The government’s penchant for control is well known and Yahoo along with Google have been criticized in the past for going along with some of the Chinese regulations and requests.            *Top

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One of the major problems that Christians face on the Internet is actually speaking the language of the target audience while avoiding ‘Christianese’ –words and phrases that are primarily used in the Christian community.

I have written on this subject in the past: “The Problem of Speaking Christianese”

Here’s even a better and more complete article on this problem:  “Speaking your audience’s language: How to avoid ‘Christianese’” by Rusty Wright

Rusty Wright even provides a list of commonly used ‘Christianese jargon’ with suggested ‘regular’ words to be used instead.            *Top

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Plus your webcam and mic?