Glocal Christianity

Seven years on and still blogging

This blog is seven years old today. Can you believe it? I kicked off my first blog on October 8, 2004 and started this blog on April 30, 2005. How the religious and digital landscape has changed! I wonder where I'll be in another seven years.

Checking out popular Christian blogs

This week I've been checking out various blog ranking sites to see who's new in the zoo this year. In particular I've been looking for new theology blogs, hoping for some stimulating reading and conversations. You may notice I've updated my blogrole a bit. 

In the process I was encouraged to find Glocal Christianity is ranking well with services like BlogRank, at least in some categories. Now, if only I could translate that into more conversations!

Thanks for the "Likes"

Hey, for those of you who are regular readers I'd like to let you know that I've been encouraged by those using the new "like" feature at the bottom of each blog article.

It's not always easy to guage how I'm connecting readers. I know that some of you hesitate to comment unless you know the topic well. I also know that some posts just don't lend themselves to comments full stop. So comments (or lack thereof) are not always the best indicator of how people are engaging with the content - what articles worked, what articles didn't. That's why I'm finding the likes helpful. They flesh out the picture.

The Last Supper of Doctor Who was a great example. No comments, which is often the case with my art posts, but I can see from the likes and the sharing on Facebook that a number of you found this interesting. That's helpful to know as I have more "Last Supper" posts planned over the coming weeks. Thanks.

 

Blog reorganization

You may or may not have noticed, but I am currently in the process of reorganizing the topic categories on Glocal Christianity.

Some time ago I changed my blog description to "Glocal Christianity - following Jesus in a multireligious, multicultural, multimedia world" as I felt this better reflected my writing interests for people browsing this blog for the first time.

Now I've introduced the meta-categories of religion, culture, media and Christianity below the top banner as a way of grouping the many, many categories you see down the sidebar into something a bit more more concise. Hopefully it makes what I'm on about a bit clearer. The religion category is the most complete category at this stage but feel free to browse them all as I work on them.

Blogs I've been reading this week

Just thought I'd share some of what I've been reading this week:

Burning Man: ost-apocalyptic, post-Christian, and somehow a return to an ancient faith and Further Thoughts on Burning Man: the direction of spiritual pursuit in a post-Christian America Today by Phil Wyman

Mono-Ethnic Ministries and Multi-Ethnic Churches by Mark DeYmaz

What Did Jesus Mean by "Judge Not"? Nine out of ten young people say Christians are judgmental, but are they right? by Skye Jethani

Wibiya Toolbar - enhancing your social networking experience

This evening I've added a new Wibiya toolbar to the bottom of this blog to further enhance your social networking experience while you're here.

I'm already stoked by this widget and it's not often I say that about a widget. I’ve enabled a number of applications including:

• Connect - which allows you to update your status on facebook, twitter and other social media platforms simultaneously.
• Search – which allows you to quickly search this blog (or the web)
• Random - which takes you to a random post on this blog
• Recommended - which makes recommendations to you based on facebook likes
• Share - which allows you to share posts and pictures via a variety of means including twitter, facebook and email
• Twitter - which allows you to see me twitter stream as well as tweet links

Test them out and let me know which ones you like best.

New search tool

Have any of you tried searching Glocal Christianity using the search tool yet? You'll find it on the right hand side just under the title, simply labelled "search".

I've been finding it fun to just see what I've written on different topics over the years. For instance, yesterday I typed in "Mormon" and was amazed to see just how many posts by me and comments by you mentioned Mormonism, even though it's not a focus of mine.  

I'd love to hear your feedback on this, from regular readers and new visitors alike. Do you find it helpful? What searches have you found interesting? Knowing what works for you helps me to improve this for everyone.

Ranking in the Top 50 Christianity blogs

Well, it seems Google loves me, at least according to this site.

Glocal Christianity has been ranked:

• 21st in the Top Christianity blogs by the number of pages indexed by Google
• 46th in the Top Christianity blogs by Alexa site rank

Of course, means nothing without you guys. So thanks for the conversations.

Rhythms of the week

Obviously many of you keep the sabbath, at least electronically :-)

Design changes

Been tinkering with my blog design today. Added a footer amongst other things. I'd appreciate your feedback (particularly you newbies, but regulars too) on how helpful (or otherwise) you find the changes. I'm also exploring how I might enable comment alerts for those that want them (and thanks to Jeff for that suggestion).