Church Requel Blog - Writings of Mark Pierce

Blogging Motivation

From Between Two Worlds. 

The 2008 Bloggle Awards

Did you know about the Bloggle Awards?  I learned yesterday that the Bloggle Awards have both nominations and winners for 2008.  All of the Crossroads' blogs are too young to have been considered, but there is always the possibility for next year! 

The reason I mention this is that the list of Bloggle Award nominees make for a pretty interesting list of great blogs, if you are interested in reading about the church world.  Here is a list of the nominees for the "Best Blog, Pastor" category:

• Velocity by Dave Ferguson;
• Leading Smart by Tim Stevens; 
• Life Church.tv:  Swerve by Craig Groeschel and Bobby Gruenewald - Also the winner! 
• Perry Noble dot com by Perry Noble; 
• Tony Morgan Live by Tony Morgan; 
• Without Wax by Pete Wilson

According to Marty Holman, the founder and judge of the Bloggle Awards, "this [category] was the hardest to judge.  These blogs are amazing!"  I have to agree.  The first five are already in my Google Reader.  I'm planning on adding Without Wax right away.  If you have the time, check out these blog sites.  You'll be glad you did!

Never Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story

My dad and blogging are made for each other.  Dad to me, Walt to most others, is well known for "never letting the truth get in the way of a good story."   He and I are vacationing together down in the Outer Banks this week.  Knowing him to be a master story teller and knowing that he wants to share his long tricycle trip coming up this winter, I asked him if he would like to start a blog this week.  His answer was typical.  "Sure.  Let's do it."  You can read it by going to www.walsinepierce.com.

There are many things I love about my dad.  But one of the best things about him is that at age 77 he is still living life to the full, discovering and trying new things.  Blogging is just the most recent example.  Back at home he has a tadpole style, recumbent tricycle waiting in a box to be unpacked.  He has plans to spend a week with my brother, Todd, to put it together and give it a maiden voyage camping trip.  If everything goes as planned, he will take a tour across the Southwest United States later this winter.

Dad loves to do so many things.  Not only is he a master story teller, but he is also a master pie baker.  People in his church and neighborhood pay premium prices at fund raising events to get a hold of one of Dad's pies.  (I get mine for free!)  Since his retirement, Dad has hiked the Appalachian Trail, toured Ireland with just a backpack on his back, and sailed down the Ohio River in a sailboat he rebuilt.

I know Dad wants to write his blog to let everyone know how he's doing on his upcoming bike trip.  But I want him to write down his stories so my children's children will forever know how Dad never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  Why don't you stop over to his blog today, and drop him a comment to let him know you were there?

Church Requel Introduces New Blogrolls

After a little over a month of blogging here at Church Requel, I have begun to add a blogroll in the sidebar.  For those unaquainted with the vernacular of the weblog world, a blogroll are other blogs that the author often reads himself and on occasion may use for his own blog.  A blogroll says, "I like these blogs.  You may want to check them out for yourself."

Up until now, I've included links only to other Crossroads' staff members' blogs.  However, there is a wide world of church bloggers out there.  I know that in the past month I've only scratched the surface.  Today, I'm introducing two new categories of blogrolls.

The first blogroll is for other executive pastors.  This is the role I fill at Crossroads and it is good to read other guys who do the same or similar job at their church that I do for mine.  Two of my favorite are written by Tim Stevens (top left photo) and Tony Morgan (top right photo).  Tim is the author of several books, his latest being Pop Goes The Church."  He also writes the Leading Smart blog. 

Alltop - One Stop Internet Church News

How would you like to have one page on the internet where you can find the best of the best and see in one place the most recent 635 headlines from the top 27 church weblogs?  This is now possible from church.alltop.com. How do they do it you might ask?  According to Alltop:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.

Most of the blogs I've been reading lately are listed there, plus a whole bunch I've not read before.  I'm looking forward to checking out some new websites soon!  Thanks to HolyCowABlog.com for the link.

Jesse Starts New Blog!

Jesse Rider, our Senior High Student Pastor, just started a new blog today.  You can check it out at http://chiefrider.wordpress.com/.  I'm not entirely sure what the "chief" aspect is, but I'm sure for those who continue to follow his blogs, we'll all find out shortly.  His first post is about "The Top 5," in which he says he describes the best 5 things he's enjoyed in the Olympics.  If he ever does a "Top 5" for executive pastors or for blogs - I'd better make the cut!

Jesse's blog now brings the total number of Crossroads staff blogs to six.  Every week the pressure keeps building.  Every week another staffer decides to join in the fun.  Stayed tuned to find out who comes to the blogging party next week!

The Whirlwind of Jon

Ever wanted to look under the hood of a tech guy?  Jonathan Pierce, our technology specialist, sat up last night at 1:00 A.M. and did a mind dump on his blog.  He reflected on everything he worked on this past week.  This list is long!  I was most impressed with his summary at the end where he considered the value of reflection:

the whole point of continuing to type this post is the value of reflection. I was thinking how much I wish I were more organized/productive/task-oriented and less chatterboxy/cluttered/scatter-brained (if you take a look at my office, you'd probably think the same thing)... But after a little bit of thought, I'm really remembering the accomplishments me and the team here at crossroads have finished this week. And it feels good, and I feel that we honored God through the work, and that feels really good.

Check out Jonathan's whirlwind of a post!

Tim Armstrong Joins the Blogging World

My boss and senior pastor, Tim Armstrong, has now joined the blogging craze here at Crossroads Community Church.  Tim and I have been friends since I began attending Crossroads in 1999.  He gave me the opportunity to join the staff on a volunteer basis soon after I joined the church.  In 2004 he invited me to come onto the staff on a part-time basis and then full-time in January 2006.

We have a unique relationship.  We are both "D" (dominant) personalities on the DISC scale.  We have discovered that we can be direct with one another and that each of us are better leaders because of our relationship.  Recently I journaled, "Lord, give me wisdom this morning at Management Team.  May I be Your ballast and Tim Your sail. Give him Your direction and the courage to follow through.  Give me the grace and strength to 'make it so.'"

Tim is just getting going on his blog.  It should be fun to watch how he gets it going.  I've never known him to do anything halfway.  Check out Tim's blog here.

Two New Blogs at Crossroads

One of the things that I have shared with the staff at Crossroads is that I'd like to see them blogging the events of their ministries.  I got this idea from reading the blog of another executive pastor over at Granger.  As I was reading his blog I noticed that several fellow staff members were listed for their blogs in his sidebar.  I clicked through their different blogs and was fascinated that often I could read about the same issues from the multiple perspectives of their various positions, from the senior pastor to the membership guy to the creative guy/gal to the tech guy (and quite a few more).  I thought, 'Why couldn't we do this at Crossroads?'

I found out that (as is typical), Deering Dyer - our small groups pastor - was way out in front of me.  He has already created several blogs.  He has a personal blog, which he uses to write different theological studies and thinking.  He calls this Journeying On.  He's also designed a blog for his small group leaders to read - though anyone can click in - called the 5.42. 

New this week are two blogs from our Director of Magnification, Lori Bidlle and our technology specialist, Jonathan Pierce.  Lori has created LoriBiddle.com, in which she writes about everything happening in the Magnification Department.  And Jonathan Pierce (also my favorite son) has created CrewNeckTech.com, where he waxes about all things tech.  (Don't forget to pull the string at the top of his blog.  Jonathan would be disappointed if you weren't at least a little curious!)

To give you some idea of what I mean by reading about the same event from different perspectives, three of us have blogged about the Magnification Picnic on Sunday.  You can read about it here at Church Requel, or get Lori's perspective, or view through Jonathan's (literal) lens.

So why should we bother to do this?  Won't this take us away from doing our primary jobs?  Couldn't this be a distraction?  Sure, it could be.  But then everything good can be corrupted into something bad.  There are some really great reasons to encourage the staff to blog.  Here are just a few EPIC reasons! Blogging:

• encourages thought and reflection.  Too often we work at such a break neck speed that we don't take the time to debrief and think about what is going on.  Blogging provides the chance to journal and think about and appreciate the ministry.
• provides a window into the life of the church.  Quite literally there is a wall between the ministry side of Crossroads and the office side of Crossroads.  Blogging will give our congregants the chance to "look behind the curtain."
• increases communication.  How often do I need to say that we cannot communicate enough.  No matter how often we've said it before, we just cannot communicate enough.  If I could communicate just one thing through this blog it's this:  we cannot communicate enough!  Point made.
• celebrates God's SHAPE of our lives.  We each bring different Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences to the table of blogging.  As you can tell by this already lengthy post I'm a wordsmith.  But Lori and Jonathan have a different SHAPE than me and, as a result, tell their stories in a different way.  At Crossroads, we celebrate these differences!

I hope two things happen soon.  One, that even more staff members would choose to join in the fun (hint, hint).  And two, that many of our church members would begin reading and commenting about these articles.  I have placed all the staff's blogs into my sidebar.  You can get to their blogs at any time from my blog.