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Blogging Ministry -Update

Go to the Main Site for Updates and recent articles about using a blog for ministry.
New articles are posted nearly every week.
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The Blogging Ministry: The Vision and Goal

This was the first post at The Blogging Ministry main site (March 8,2007:

This week saw the first anniversary of my experience with Blogging. I posted about the initial vision for a blogging ministry and about some of my experiences on my home Blog: ANSWERS For The Faith.

In the process of looking at how far I have really come in a year, what I have learned, and what I wish I didn't do; I came to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe some of my experiences might be helpful to others who are just starting out, and maybe also for some who have been around awhile. Believe me when I say that I have done just about everything wrong and yet have survived.

I am more excited today about the possibilities of Blogging as a form of ministry than when I started. I now see an unlimited potential for Blogging as a form and a tool of Ministry. I would like to make it easier for those starting out like I did with little or no knowledge about the internet or blogging.

The plan: We're going to look at different kinds of blogging as a potential tool of ministry. We're going to explore some of the easier blogging tools that are out there. All of this from the perspective of a beginning luddite technophobe such as myself, who didn't know how to right click 12 months ago.

The Goal: To help those who know little or nothing about Blogging get started in a blogging ministry; and provide some basic information and basic tools to make it a whole lot easier.           *Top           **Back to the Main Site- The Blogging Ministry
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Possible Uses of TownHall in A Blogging Ministry

Possible Uses: 

1.  The site is a good spot for a news/cultural apologetic blog with built in traffic:
Could post on the culture wars between secularism and religion

2.  It could also be used by an individual to post on religious issues.

3.  Post a Bible Study

4.  A Bible Study teacher could post his lesson notes on the site making them available to the class.

5..  Church groups could post testimonies or praise reports on a site.  Always a good ministry.

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Getting Started: With Townhall- An Evaluation

Good Reasons to Use Townhall as Your Blogging Host:

1.  Cost: 0, zip, nada

2.  Incredibly easy to set up.  30 minutes tops.

3.  The post editor is excellent -filled with all sorts of useful tools.  Has a spell check, font type and size changer,  Plus the ability to paste Word Docs. and plain text.  Also a setting to clean up or change the format.  Quite impressive.

4.  A built in forum of blogs to explore and bring traffic to your site.  Over  700 blogs  posting  on  'Faith & Family'.

5.  Access to news and current events.

6.  Access to books & Movie reviews.

7.  Access to some major columnists and radio personalities and their blogs.

8.  Good spot for an 'issue' oriented cultural/political apologetic site.

9.  Site Meter can be placed on the site to measure traffic.

10.  The actual posts are easy to produce and look very good.


Some Not So Good Points:

1.   Townhall owns the domain you are publishing on so you are always limited in what you can do with the site.

2. Townhall owns the domain so if you decide to move your blog to another host, you will lose your blog address, links, and most of your traffic. You could copy your articles and move them to another address and republish, but you will lose the comments and links to your posts.  You will need to maintain your old Townhall site in order to direct visitors to your new location and maintain the links to all your old posts.

3. No 'static' pages. Only a small permanent message that can be placed in the 'Bio' space.  Large articles or organizational documents have to be posted or hosted elsewhere and linked to. You can however link to your Townhall blog from your own church or organization website.

4.  Very limited number (8) of different templates available. Sites cannot be customized.  Tools are limited and can not be expanded.

5.  Townhall advertises on the site.  You can't.


Conclusions:   Townhall  is a starting platform that could be used by a variety of different groups, ministries, and churches.  However, those who want to develop a more permanent ministry site with a unique look and a domain that they control, change, promote, and build up will want to look elsewhere.

*Go to the main The Blogging Ministry site
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