Life is Ministry: Looking Back at 2008

If you are new to Life is Ministry than I want to welcome you! I began blogging in 2004 on the Swainlife Blog while I lived in Spain as a way of staying in touch with friends and family. Slowly, over time, that blog morphed from a blog about family news and ministry in Spain to more of my thoughts on how best we, as Christians, live lives of ministry in this changing world.

Over the years I have enjoyed this platform as a way of communicating ways that I am personally being challenged in my own journey of faith in Christ. I believe that that ministry is not reserved for an elite few nor is it limited to churchy stuff and because of that this blog looks at a wide range of issues and how they affect Christians in our ministry to others. If you enjoy what you read then I would invite you to subscribe to the RSS Feed (Go here to find out more about that). I was just looking back over the blog for 2008 and wanted to highlight some of my favorite posts from the past year.

Missing the Point- Searching the scriptures and still missing the heart of God.
Food Crime- A connection of food and violence.
Universal Health Care- A good idea? If not, what can we do better than we are doing now?
Pursuing God in a Technological Age and the Secular versus the Sacred- Two powerful Tozer quotes
Practical Ways to Support A Missionary- This will be especially important in 2009 if financial trends continue in the same direction as 2008.
Ministry in Suburbia- Some of the challenges Christians face as well as some ideas for living and ministering in Suburbia.
Is Christ Divided? Rhetorical question by the Apostle Paul. His answer-"No". Reality in today's world? I doubt it.
Human Trafficking- The new lucrative trend in the black market
What is Necessary to be the/a Church? A look at what we have become and questioning if it is what we should be.
Our First Allegiance- Some thoughts on politics
Addicts Make the Best Church Leaders- Hello, my name is sinner!
Faith of a Mustard Seed- A story of faith in inner-city Chicago.
Will the Real JC Please Stand Up?- Molding Jesus into our image (what???)
Low tech Espresso and Making the Perfect Coffee- This is a gift to my friends who love coffee!

2008 Favorite Blogs Roundup

I wanted to share some blogs with you for the holidays in case you find yourself surfing the web and aren't sure where to go. I subscribe to all of these blogs in my reader and hope you enjoy them.

Art and Design
Design Milk Full of beautiful furniture and design ideas
Elite By Design Web design and Photoshop Inspiration
Photojojo This is a great site for photography tips and gadgets
WebUrbanist Urban design, culture, travel, architecture, and alternative art

Random Interests
Problogger An excellent site with tips to improve the quality of your blog
BoingBoing Bizarre news from all over the web
TreeHugger Everything environmental and green
Freakonomics A look at the world through stats and figures
Lifehacker Life tips and downloads
Sharkride Cutting edge technologies
Don't Taze Me Bro Documents of the abuse of power by those in authority

Science and Technology
Both Ted Talks and Pop!Tech have awesome videos of thinkers from our time who are on the bleeding edge of their field of study
WIRED Technology news
Discovery Science news

World News and Insight
Google News The best web based news service available. You can customize it to follow your own specific interests and it collects data from all the world's news aggregates.
Fox News and CNN are good to read side by side to see what is happening in the USA. Fox leans to the American right and CNN to the American left, so reading both you have a better chance of distinguishing the truth.
BBC is one of the best sources of world news
Al Jazeera is world news from a middle-eastern perspective

Ministry
Tall Skinny Kiwi This is one of my favorite Christian blogs.
Beauty and Depravity The is the blog of a Seattle Pastor Eugene Cho, that I just began following.
His church also runs the Quest Cafe and I find his articles very thoughtful.
Mustard Seed Associates this is a blog run by a Christian group living in intentional community
Todd Hiestand is a pastor who has a blog devoted to missional living in suburbia
SmartChristian keeps it's finger on the pulse of Christian news

Just for Fun
ThinkGeek Great gift ideas for the geek in your life (wink, wink)
Woot! Random item that is on sale for one day only
FAIL Blog Pictures and videos of failed moments

Chicago Blogs
Here is a link to some of my Chicago Blogs of Note

Do you have a favorite blog not listed here? Leave the link in the comments and I'll check it out.

Ask Christian Writers

Andrew Jackson is the author of Smart Christian Blog and just started a new resource called Ask Christian Writers. It is a conglomerate of Christian Bloggers who will respond to questions or may have already responded through their blogs. This resource will point you in the right direction if you can't find what you are looking for on a Google search.

Christian Bloggers Network

Yes, I finally bit the bullet and joined facebook. It has been pretty cool to connect with people from all over that I have not been able to maintain contact with. I also joined the Christian Bloggers Network. Check it out for some links to some good blogs.

Cheers,
Matt

Jacob's New Blog

I remember reading some of Jake's first blog before I ever knew him. You see, I knew that he was going to be joining our team and I was interested to get to know him. Just before touching down in Spain he started his second blog and then I got to know him in person.

I don't know if he will ever know the ways that he has challenged me both as a friend and in ministry. During the two years that our families lived life together and worked together in business and ministry, I felt like Jacob was constantly stretching me as he looked around the world and spoke truth to a world of injustice. He can be ruthlessly honest, but if you ever sit down and have a conversation with him you will find the most gentle of souls. Anyway, he just retired his 4 Peregrinos blog and started a new one at www.anoblation.com. I am not sure what new direction he has in mind, but I know that it will be worth the time.

Check it out! Maybe you'll get the pleasure of meeting him one day!

Life-cycle of a Blog Post

Wired Magazine has a pretty cool little map of the life-cycle of a blog post.

Recent Happenings in SdC

Chris Warren just finished a six month stint in Russia and has come to Spain to give us a hand over the next month or so. (Photo: Russian Candy Bar with "Father Frost"that Chris Brought from Russia. )We have been following his time in Russia and in Athens on some of his blogs.

Chris has been teaching me all kinds of wonderful things about the world of blogging. He showed me some cool things like Google's RSS reader which is very user friendly (especially if you already have a gmail account). He also showed me the Google analytics site. It is a site tracker that gives you many beautiful charts and pretty pictures that show who is visiting your pages and where they come from etc. It looks awesome and I plan on leaving sitemeter behind as I have been wooed by google's simplicity, high quality, and breadth of info.

If you are a blogger Tall Skinny Kiwi recently did an excellent post to give some helpful pointers on how to be a better blogger as well as some general blogging wisdom. I also read this collection of ideas on how to be a better writer. I hope that some of them sink in, because I know that I have much to learn in the area of writing.

Photos, Photos, Photos! Yes I have added some new photos from the holidays which you can see here.

Lori's Blog

I just designed this new header for Lori's blog to give it a little face lift. She spent her free time over the Christmas break loading a video of the girls' school play onto you tube for the whole world to see. At least in my debut performance on You Tube I am wearing a beard. Cheers, Matt

Open Source Programs... errr Free Stuff!

This week I was looking on Amazon to cash in some Christmas gift certificates. Lately I have been interested in improving the look of our web site. I was looking for a program that would be easy for someone who does not like HTML code, but that will look professional in the end. I was blown away by the cost of the programs that looked like they would give the best results for example Dreamweaver weighs in at $383. That's great for someone who wants to design webpages for their profession, but what about someone who wants to dabble around in it on the weekend for fun. As I read about the more affordable programs it looked as if they were affordable because they were less user friendly.

Then I remembered a site I stumble upon the other day. Osalt.com is a site chalked full of open source programs that you can download legally for free. They have an equivalent to photoshop called gimpshop. When you look at a program it tells you it's equivalent. If you download it and it's cruddy or you find yourself to busy to learn it you are not out any cash. I just wanted to pass along the word.

Swainlife Button

If you want a free button to link to the Swainlife page to put in your sidebar on your blog or on your webste, drop me an e-mail and I will send you the code.

Welcome to the New Swainlife Blog

I have switched over to Beta Blogger for a variety of reasons, but basically it comes down to the fact that it just offers more possibilities than regular blogger (not to mention it's free). It gives me more power to design my own page and offers cool new things like "labels" where I can sort my posts by topics. I realize that other blogging tools offer some of these things, but blogger is free and because it is part of Google it seems to always be improving.

If you are a Christian leader and are interested in blogging here is a great resource on how to set up your own blog. Also, Tall Skinny Kiwi has some great posts which explain blogging and how to be a better blogger. If you are a Christian leader who has not yet considered blogging you might want to. It is a great way to stay connected to those that you minister to and with. It is a way to be both a voice that challenges the status quo around us and allows others to challenge us when we are off base. It gives us a chance to have discussions with those whom we might never cross paths with in everyday life or on topics that are considered taboo in social settings(A friend of mine recently had an online discussion with an atheist through his blog). If my supplication for you to blog is not enough here is a post called "Why Every Pastor Should Blog".

If you have any questions or need any help getting started feel free to drop me an e-mail.