Well I am a number of weeks into this blog and I am quite pleased with it so far. I know that sounds terribly self-serving but if I wasn’t pleased with it I should probably just stop.
I don’t know how many folks are making use of it but I do know that there have been a number of users, visits and pages viewed, see chart:
| Unique Users | Visits | Pages | |
| November | 51 | 183 | 13566 |
| December | 101 | 438 | 5007 |
| January | 85 | 287 | 1724 |
| February (so far) | 77 | 213 | 1073 |
Now I know that a large number of these users, visits, etc. are bots that are trolling for who knows what on the internet but I am also fairly certain that there are actual human beings who are making use of this blog.
I am very grateful for the comments that have been made, both on the blog and to me directly, and I am always looking for ways to make this better.
I have also been thinking of expanding the scope of the blog beyond a place to store sermons for various people to listen to later, or again. I think this might be a place to think “aloud” about what is happening with church, lectionary texts, spirituality, almost anything.
In the spirit of thinking aloud I realize that one of the best ways to think about spirituality and such is to talk aloud to other people about what is going on inside your head. It is amazing how much can suddenly make more sense if you are “forced” to speak it out loud to another person. Talking out loud to yourself is fine but you won’t find very many people who are able to provide second party feedback to themselves, I know that I can’t. I hope no one finds this horrifying but I have some of my most significant moments of interpretive breakthrough when preaching. My self esteem hastens to add that I do not go into the pulpit with no interpretation already don but rather it is in the act of opening Scripture to a receptive group of listeners that sharpens my interpretation. Every so often it will also serve a catalyzing or coalescing function where the act of speaking about a text or concept brings a number of disparate thoughts, possibilities and such together in a new way. It is always exciting when this happens but it tends to be exhausting at the same time.
Well this might be just enough to prime the pump for further discussion. Don’t think that you are limited to responding to this particular post if you want to bring anything up, just put in a comment we’ll go with it.
Blessings,
Barry
I think you should most definitely go for this. You have good thoughts and interesting, meaningful insights into scripture as well as God working among us.
I vote YES to the expansion.
hi there i got you e-mail from doug fox he go’s to st marks and he has told me that you merry people me and his nis tammy olson are looking for some one too merry us i will give you our phone number in moosejaw its 692-0697 if you could give us a call when ever you can that would be great thank you