Posts filed under 'Blogging'
ALWYN LAU posted some mind-boggling statistics about blogosphere. For your convenience I have listed them here:
Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
Over 57 million Americns read blogs.
1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
120,000 new blogs are created every day .
37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
51% of blog readers shop online .
Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .
August 26th, 2008
I got tagged by Sherman Kuek. Here are ten things/places/events/people I find elegant:
1. ikebana
3. things Apple, like the iPod
4. Arsenal’s attacking football; possibly Man Utd’s football; certainly not Chelsea.
5. the King James Version of the Bible
6. Roger Federer on the court
7. the Lord’s Prayer
8. Mt Kinabalu
9. Warren Buffet’s announced plan to give away 83% of his wealth to the Bill Gates Foundation
10. the Nokia E 71
……and may I add, the Singaporean in T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops! 
July 27th, 2008
I attended the GO FORTH National Missions Conference the last few days at Suntec City. I attended all the morning sessions which I found very insightful and informative. They gave me a better perspective of the landscape of modern missions. The challenge of urban missions, globalization and the need for innovation. The topics were well planned, systematic and covered good ground. I was informed as well as inspired.
I attended the workshop presented by Campus Crusade titled “Generation NeXt: Youths, Media and Missions” (click on pics) which challenged me with using Web 2.0 and other media tools to reach out to this generation of media-savvy, post modern generation of hooked up young people. I call them a new people group though I cannot use the adjective “unreached”. There are no borders and they speak all kinds of languages and hail from different cultures and nations. However, and they have one thing in common: they surf and use and cannot live without the internet. This “internet tribe”, whom I would like to call “webbies” can be reached for Jesus, and we Christians can be “missionaries” to them- stay at home missionaries, unpaid, yet passionate and committed missionaries. This is a new frontier in missions.
Who and where are they?
How can we reach them?
Who is going to reach them?
You are invited to the party!
July 20th, 2008
Oops! I clicked a reset button in an attempt to amend something and my custom header disappeared with the lovely pic of the Annapura range…… and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Never touch reset buttons.
Never.
July 14th, 2008
The ClustrMaps annual archive showed a doubling of visits, an encouragement to me that this blog, blogpastor.net, which began as a simple step of faith, has become an avenue for my spiritual gift to be exercised, and is of some use to both the Christian community as well as the world. Praise God.
When I began blogging, I was a computer illiterate. Didn’t know how to surf, e mail, upload photos, music or videos. In fact, I was very frustrated with computers. Through a small step of obedience the Lord has brought me to a large and spacious world of Web2.0. I have grown in more than one ways. I have learned a lot.
Its all thanks to your visits.
They keep me keeping on!
July 6th, 2008
Some Christian blogs focus on theology, the Christian life, church denominational issues, or other particular focus that would interest other churched people. So you have Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight or Albert Mohler or Adrian Warnock or Real Live Preacher and other such blogs. There is certainly an important role for such focused blogs and such targetted audience.
In my case, without my being intentional, BLOGPASTOR reaches out to the churched and the unchurched. I began blogging as an attempt at reaching out to young people in the church. As I got familiar with the tool, I realized it was reaching even more than just the youths or church people. According to Google Analytics my blog reaches people in all the continents, and it is the Lord’s blessing, but many other websites do the same. This is thanks to the increasingly powerful search engines that scour the internet and blogosphere to categorize and locate all words to form like a gigantic concordance of sorts. So if someone wants to learn about Holy Communion and does a blog search they may get to my blog to read a post I wrote about that subject. Now this is all good if I want only to reach Christians. Few pre-believers will do a search on ‘Holy Communion’. But they would do a search on ‘NUS or NTU better’, and they will see a post I did on this topic. And I seem to get some increased visits after A Level results from people who do a search with that in mind. Now I didn’t deliberately write on that topic with that in mind though there is no shame in that. I was just trying to figure out something for my son and posted the results of my research. And I believe some of those who read that post, and went on to read other posts including my ‘About’ testimony would have read how Jesus changed my life and family. That’s one of the reasons I try to evangelize pastors to blog, like I am doing now, especially if they enjoy writing: it can reach those outside the church.
If you want to reach those outside the church, you just have to write about things in addition to theology or church or spiritual matters! You have to write about a variety of topics and the best are those you have knowledge of and interest in. Then the people who are outside the church will visit and read your blog and perhaps be a little more attracted to Christ and less misconceived about the faith. They may not pray the sinner’s prayer but what is evangelism but bringing the unchurched one step closer to following Christ. For me I write about soccer, my treks and travels, politics, current affairs, interesting local personalities and my family. So if someone who is a pre-believer googles “NTU or NUS business school better” or “Mt Kinabalu” or “Philip Ng” or “Dr Chee Soon Juan” for instance he may get to my blog and read more than just the post on that particular topic. And he hopefully gets to know what the Christian faith is like.
Random Musings, fellow blogger in Johor Baru, writes about Star Trek, Movies, Manga, Medical matters and it attracts all kinds of readers, many of whom do not know the Lord. Hopefully they then read his other stuff about the Lord. That will definitely smash common stereotypes people have about Christians.
Blogging is a tool for influencing the new generation and it gets even better with embedded videos as they convey something of the joy and peace among Christians that words fail to do. I wish I can do a blog in Mandarin because 200 million in China are hooked up and it is rising fast. I am persuaded Web2.0 will one day be more pervasive than newspapers and books. Books and bookstores will not exactly go the way of cassette tapes but in 20 years time, it is likely my children’s children will be carrying laptops instead of heavy bags to school.
Any pastors out there want to start a blog?
April 28th, 2008
So much to blog about - the holy land tour, holy communion and other things on my heart but will take a blogging ’selah’. If you want to read some heavy stuff about this musical notation you see in the Psalms you can read a friend’s post in PERICHORUS. And if you want some lighter stuff, may I introduce a lovely couple working among children and youths in Kathmandu, Nepal. Read PASANGJASMINE. The blogroll on my right are good Asian Christian leaders’ blogs. Enjoy, while I hibernate; my blogging winter has come, and I go to sleep and dream……
…..and by the way you must read this 13 year old students poem. Go HERE.
March 15th, 2008
I had a meeting with Rev David Chee (in red shirt) and Rev Vincent Hoon. We had to cancel our mission trips to Myanmar because of the instability there last December. Pastor Thomas has felt for some time before, that we need to develop another missions field or two. The cancellation have confirmed for me the need to prayerfully explore other places. We arranged to meet with Rev David Chee of New Destiny Fellowship, an Assemblies of God church that meets on Saturdays, who works in co-operation with a pastor in Chiangmai, Thailand. God willing, Thomas and I will go there with him at the end of May for an exploration trip.
Rev Vincent Hoon, an Anglican priest presently seconded to Light of Christ Church Woodlands is a friend I met at a Love Singapore pastors prayer summit years ago. He was the one who activated me into mentoring. We still meet together with Rev Kenny Fam for peer mentoring. Vincent spent several years in Philippines as a church planter, and the blood, sweat and tears of those pioneering years with a very young family bore fruit: three Filipino churches were planted. I spent some time helping Vincent to migrate from xanga.com blogsite to wordpress.com. I hope he will thrive as a blogger in this new environment. Take a look at his blog HERE and drop a comment.
February 16th, 2008
I have added more Asian ministers to my blogroll.
Pic on the left is Timothy P. (P for photogenic), a ministry staff with Bartley Christian Church in Singapore. I think he works with the young adults. He blogs HERE.
Another blogger, a lecturer in theology at STT Satyabhakti is Ekaputra Tupamahu(pic on right), an Indonesian. You may access his theology blog HERE.
If you do know of other Asian or Singaporean pastors who blog regularly do let me know by sending me his link in the comments box or contact box.
January 23rd, 2008
Now I have met another online pastor-friend Rev. Dr. Tony Siew (’Revelation is Real’- see my blogroll) who was in Singapore to give some lectures at Singapore Bible College. He preached in the main service on Sunday. He spoke about the graciousness of God and his text was Zechariah 4: 7. The church was blessed with the anointed message. As we got to know Tony my wife remarked that he is a personification of what he preached: a gentle and gracious person.
He brought along an interesting uncle, a Datuk Dr Alex Ho, a Roman Catholic, who over Whitley Rd prawn noodles, regaled us with entertaining anecdotes about the grace of God upon him as the personal physician to the former and present Johor Sultans and the royal family. He is now an active layman and has designed a program to help Catholics become Bible literate. Interesting character.
Tony Siew did his law and theological degrees and earned his doctorate in New Testament in New Zealand. He is pastor of Likas S.I.B. (Sidang Injil Borneo-450 strong church denomination) in Kota Kinabalu and also district superintendent over 24 churches. He is an ethnic Chinese pastoring the Bahasa Malaysian section of the indigenous churches made up of Kadazan-Dusuns and other tribal peoples of Borneo. To read his blog go HERE.
January 16th, 2008
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