I’m so grateful to you for stopping by! I’m also eager to draw you into conversation — especially you who regularly visit from far away places like Finland, Australia, and New Zealand.
I’m still new at blogging, so please let me know your thoughts: What would make this a more inviting interactive community experience?
Feel free to email through the “contact” page in the menu above, or post comments below.
Thanks!
Gary Neal Hansen
Polling questions could be fun (http://www.braveapps.com/minipoll/) or (http://www.blogpoll.com/poll/)
Thanks, Matt! Great idea. I’ll check into it.
Do you know offhand whether these work with wordpress.com (free, not self-hosted) blogs?
Hi Gary! I need to look into it more myself. I’ll keep brainstorming, too.
Church history and theology are such wonderful topics. Honestly, I do not consider myself a scholar and sometimes it flies right over my head. I love to read and be challenged by these topics with practical applications and ways to draw these thoughts into my daily life. I’m enjoying your book, I’ll email a few questions soon 🙂
Thanks so much, Lisa! Glad for the interest and questions to come — and of course thrilled that you like the book.
Church History is always of interest to me. I have often wondered how different practices got started and then become “biblical”. One of those practices being the ornate clothing that the priest started wearing and the head dresses etc. The other thing is there are times when i would like to talk to someone about the things that i get from scripture. You know, how you will read something and then later on read the same thing and you get an entirely different thing out of it. Last week at our Bible study on the book of Jeremiah something jumped out at me that i am still hung up on. It is in the 7th chapter of Jeremiah verse 21 to 23. Where the Lord says, “I never asked you for sacrifice”. It just has blown my mind, i don’t remember ever hearing it that way before and i think it makes a difference on how i think about living my life.
Thanks, Myra, for sharing these ideas! Very interesting possibilities…
You could try giving us a bulletted list of potential series you could do, and we’ll vote on them. Or you could write about one aspect of different Christian movements, and ask us to chime in with how we think that principle could apply in today’s contexts…
Chad, thanks so much! I’m definitely thinking in terms of series, including aspects of community live in various movements. I like the idea of setting out a list of possibilities for input. I’ve certainly seen that work in your blog — and it feels like a good kind of risky thing to try.
Myra’s on to something too. You could do a series titled something like Why Do Christians Do That? Examples: Why Do Christian Priests Wear Collars? Why Do Christians Baptize? Why Do Christians Practice Communion? Get at the larger point of why we do these things and then throw it out to us with a question that helps us engage that larger point. Thinking aloud…
Whether it becomes a particular series or not, this is a good perspective to keep in mind as I write. Thanks!
Gary, I find your posts inspiring and a kick-start to the day. Maybe mixing it up a bit with more true-life stories would be an additional thought. I like Chad’s idea of the series concept, too.
Thanks Cynthia! I am really beginning to see the need to think in terms of stories no matter what topic is up for the day. I think of that as something I learn from fiction writers like yourself.
Hi Gary – I really enjoy your posts! I’ll share with you a few tidbits I’ve noticed about the nature of commenting from my own blog experience.
–Questions that are too general tend to not get responses because they don’t compel people with a specific idea of what to say.
–Questions that are too personal are less likely to get responses because people know their comments are public.
–Questions that are too thought-provoking get fewer responses (unfortunately) because they are just harder to answer (people move through blog posts fast and only respond if questions happen to be extremely relevant to them or are very easy to answer).
–Posts that are applied to every day life tend to get the most responses because people feel they have something to offer.
I have found it really hard to get people commenting myself, but these are some things I’ve learned!
Natasha, very helpful as always! I’ll be returning to this comment of yours as I think of questions to conclude future posts.