Timothy's Thoughts

I got back home from the BMAA meeting yesterday at about 9:30 PM. To say the meeting was great doesn't give it justice. If you would like to read my thoughts about the meeting, I have posted them at http://www.fortworthbaptistchurch.org/Articles/Article.asp?ID=318 .

I don’t know if anyone has done a study of how long a blog post should be, but for me, 250 words is a good number to remember and no more than 500. At some point I signed up for the RSS feed for Randy Alcorn’s blog. He often has these 700 word monstrocities. I don’t even bother to scan his text as I scoll through it. I aught to dump the RSS feed, but I keep thinking he’ll say something that interests me. When people talk about this subject, they often say things like, people don’t have the attention span they once had . I don’t believe the evidence bears out that assumption. There are gamers who will spend days, nearly uninterupted, trying to complete all levels of a computer game. Huge attention span! I mean huge! More than once, I have read through more than 100 pages of an online PDF document because I believed it would help me with my job. The problem isn’t that people have shorter attention spans. The problem content and format . Creating...

I 'm still out of pocket and I'm continuing this week's series on blogging. One of the things Michael Hyatt said in his presentation is that openness and transparency builds trust. I want to take that in a different direction than he did. A few weeks ago, I read a blog, made a few comments about some things I didn’t think the blogger had considered when she crafted her blog and moved on. I meant no harm by the words, but the blogger didn’t see it that way and became upset. I hoped to smooth the ruffled feathers, but I didn’t want to add insult to injury by posting another comment to the blog post. I checked her profile. I checked her web site. I couldn’t find a way to contact her anywhere. Many people on the web are afraid of letting people know enough about them to even send an e-mail message saying, “sorry about the misunderstanding.” In the comments of many blogs we see Anonymous comments and profile photos of dogs, inanimate objects and children. ...

A ctually, she didn’t, but that’s beside the point. And actually, I’m spending some time with my parents this week, along with attending an associational meeting in Missouri. One of the things we hope to do is engage the readers of our blog. Some blogs do this better than others. Rachelle Gardner has done well at engaging her readers with her blog, but the idea behind the title comes from a thought I had while watching a video of Michael Hyatt talking about blogging. Don’t get me wrong, Mike is an interesting speaker, but as I watched I kept taking notes because I knew I wouldn’t remember what he said. When he got to the part about engaging readers I thought about the differences between the lecture he was giving and how I teach a Sunday school class. Mike is a better speaker than I will ever be, but I can’t help but wonder how many people walked out of that room and all they remembered was that Mike sent his Google password over Twitter. The problem...

A s you read this, I am in Branson, Missouri, catching up with some hold friends, making new friends and listening to reports of what God has been doing in the BMAA. Surrounding me are hundreds of preachers and church staff workers along with their wives. I also have some work to do while I’m here. But while I’m off enjoying myself, allow me to share my thoughts on attracting people to a blog. One of the reasons authors blog is to connect with readers and even attract more readers. When I began to blog, I had high hopes that I could write posts that would attract people who would enjoy reading my novels. I’ve seen novelist who have significant interaction with their readers, but in almost every case, the readers built the blog rather than the blog attracting the readers. I would love to spend more time telling people when my next book is coming out. Discussing the how closely  For the Love of a Devil  is based the book of Hosea or where my next book sign...

B arring any unexpected events, I’m either on my way or packing to go to the Annual Meeting of the Baptist Missionary Association of America in Branson, Missouri. I’ll have my laptop with me this year, but the meeting schedule will prevent me from spending much time online. For that reason, I am writing this post in advance. I know it’s the practice of some to repost blogs when they are away. That’s fine for them, but I don’t care for it. If people want to find read what I’ve previously written, they’ll use Google. A few years ago, I was traveling with my pastor and his wife. He turned to me from where he sat in the passenger’s seat and said, “I have my sermon prepared for next Sunday. I sometimes prepare weeks in advance. Some preachers don’t like doing that because they want to preach what the Lord lays on their heart for that week. I believe the Lord can lay a sermon on a preacher’s heart weeks in advance just as easily as he can the day before.” On other occasions, he has mentioned...

Excellent! Andy Stanley’s The Principle of the Path is about how the choices we make and our actions, not our intentions, determine where we end. We are all on a path, he says, even if we have chosen an unconventional path. The path we are on will determine where we will end up. For us to reach the best destinations, we must choose the best paths. Andy Stanley has much to say about how to do that. Prior to this, my experience with Andy Stanley was a tape of one of his sermons that I listened to one morning on the hour long trip from home to college. That was several years ago. O, I did meet one of his church members while I was in Alpharetta last year. What I remember from his sermon was his entertaining style, so when I saw that Thomas Nelson was offering his book through their review program, I was certain it would be good. I was not disappointed. Andy Stanley mixes an entertaining writing style with substance. The Principle of the Path is a book that all of us can use. At times, And...