JakeBouma.com is a half decade old
March 18th, 2010 | 
I know, it’s been a while.1
Today is a special day, though, because it has now been a half decade since the day I purchased the JakeBouma.com domain name for the purpose of blogging. This post from the third birthday has a fun little history (for serious JakeBouma.comophiles only).
But seriously, why the lack of posting?
Aside from the gravitational pull of sites like Twitter and Posterous (mostly Twitter), there’s the fact that I’ve been slowly working on a book proposal.2 That means two things: 1) Much of my free time is spent reading, researching, and writing stuff that has to do with the proposal, and 2) A great portion of the stuff I would blog about — especially around topics like youth ministry, theology, social theory, and philosophy — I feel the need to keep “secret” until I know whether or not it will ever actually materialize in book form.3
So although I haven’t been around this here blog much, I have doing blog-worthy things. Which kind of sucks for you, I guess. Sorry. But the good news is that I just renewed JakeBouma.com for two more years. Which is kind of awesome for you, I guess.
Hey, while I’ve got you — you should check out a few things.
In late January I was a guest on Tim Schmoyer’s Live YM Talk, discussing “The need for theological questioning in youth ministry”. It’s runs about 50 minutes, and you can check it out here.
And earlier this week I was a guest on Andy Root’s online radio show talking about his new book The Promise of Despair (which I have said should be a top priority read if you’re invested in the future of the church). This one’s only 15 minutes long, and you can listen here. I’ve been told that I may receive a $10 Olive Garden gift card if my episode has the most listens, so…
Long story short: I miss you, and I’m told (some of) you miss me. Hang in there.
In closing, here’s a picture of Philip Clayton.
- For the record, the “someone I’ve never met” was Mitch McGinnis. Mitch — If you’re reading this, sorry for blocking you on Twitter. ↩
- And, no, the title isn’t The Speed of Light: Intergalactic Space Travel in Youth Ministry. ↩
- This doesn’t mean I haven’t dropped a few juicy hints here and there. ↩
I’m giving away two copies of “Watch For The Light”
During this season of Advent I have been blessed by a fantastic book titled Watch For The Light: Readings For Advent And Christmas. It contains 45 pithy devotional reflections arranged in daily readings (from Nov. 24 — January 7) from some of Christianity’s all-time best thinkers. Perhaps you recognize some of these names: Henri Nouwen, Meister Eckhart, Dorothy Day, John Howard Yoder, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Annie Dillard, Jürgen Moltmann, Brennan Manning… the list goes on.
Anyway, in the spirit of giving, I would like to give two of these books away. Want to win one? Here’s what you need to do:
That’s it.
A couple of rules: The contest ends at 12:00pm (Central Time) on Thursday, December 17. You may only enter once, and winners will be chosen randomly by means of random.org. And in light of Wess’ recent post, both books will be purchased from Powell’s instead of Amazon.
Happy Advent!
- You may have noticed that there was no Monday brief yesterday — it’s because I’m taking a short holiday (semi-)hiatus from blogging. The posts here will be few and far between this week and next. BUT, look for lots of new content from Ireland beginning very early in the new year. 12/23/2008
2008 Emergent Theological Conversation: Reclaiming Paul
I will be attending the 2008 Emergent Theological Conversation, Reclaiming Paul: The Apostle in the Emerging World, later this month in Kansas City. The event “brings together Pauline scholars and emerging church leaders for a robust theological conversation on Paul and the Church… [and includes] four major presentations by Pauline scholars, responses by emerging church leaders, and a variety of related workshops/breakout sessions.”
I plan on blogging my notes/reflections/recordings while I’m there, and no doubt I’ll be Twittering as well. The purpose of this post is to act as a hub for all those attending who plan on doing the same (blogging, Twittering, etc.).
If you’re going to the conference AND plan on blogging and/or Twittering, leave a comment on this post with your name, blog URL, and Twitter profile URL. I’ll update the bottom of this post as the comments come in.
Twitter users: We’ll use a Hashtag to keep track of the Reclaiming Paul conversation on Twitter. For this to be effective, you need to follow @hashtags on Twitter and include “#evpaul08″ (without the quotes) in any tweet related to the conference. You can follow the Reclaiming Paul conversation via Twemes (as of this writing, Hashtags isn’t working).
Interested in live-blogging a session or two? Let me know in the comments.
Attendees (✠ denotes conference presenter):
Jake Bouma (blog | twitter)
David Capes (blog | twitter) ✠
Tim Ghali (blog | twitter)
Mike Gorman (blog | twitter) ✠
Don Heatley (blog | twitter)
Tony Jones (blog | twitter) ✠
Tim Keel (blog | twitter) ✠
Mike King (blog | twitter) ✠
Daniel Kirk (blog | twitter) ✠
Doug Pagitt (blog | twitter) ✠
Erik Ullestad (blog | twitter)
Vote for JakeBouma.com in the Iowa Web Awards!
Exciting news in these parts: Your very own JakeBouma.com is up for a 2008 Iowa Web Award in the Best Religion Blog category.
It’s a tight race, and I’m up against some stiff competition, so I need your help!
Cast your vote for JakeBouma.com by clicking on this link and then checking the box next to my name and hitting “Vote”! Yes, it’s really that simple, and every vote counts — so what are you waiting for?!
Thanks in advance for your support. If I win, I’ll take you all out for dinner. Figuratively.
Oh, and while you’re there, take a look around the other categories and cast your votes!
- You Might Be A Faith-Blogger If… “Your sermons allow both comments and trackbacks”. Yep, that’s me. Related: Everything I need to know I learned from the emerging church 09/06/2008
- Exciting news today: this humble blog was accepted into the BlogBurst network, which syndicates blog content on several major news sites, meaning posts from JakeBouma.com could be featured on Reuters, USA Today, and (*cough*) Fox News, among others. 06/05/2008
The Blog of the Lord
About the comic, artist Dan Piraro says,
I have no idea if the pope has a blog, but it is always interesting to me how organized religion can embrace modern ideas and technology, while keeping one foot so firmly planted in the dark ages.
Related: Just a sec, God and Bizarro as prophet/critic
Subversive Blogger Awards, round two
It’s time for round two of the Subversive Blogger Awards.
American author Henry Miller (1891-1980) once said, “The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”
Subversive bloggers are unsatisfied with the status quo, whether in church, politics, economics or any other power-laden institution, and they are searching for (and blogging about) what is new (or a “return to”) – even though it may be labeled as sacrilege, dangerous, or subversive.
For round two of the Subversive Blogger Awards, I am tagging the following five blogs/bloggers:
1. Sarcastic Lutheran by Nadia Bolz-Weber (e.g., Why she isn’t that kind of Christian)
2. The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus by Jon Birch (e.g., Hamster Wheel Church)
3. Missio Dei by Jonathan Brink (e.g., Top 50 Possible Reasons Why You’re Not Emergent)
4. Nate Ritter (e.g., Ideas that Change the World via Twitter)
5. novus•lumen by Jeremy Bouma (e.g., The Good of Affluence: A Critique and Evaluation of Capitalism)
The rules of participation are pretty straightforward:
1. If you are tagged, write a post with links to five subversive blogs.
2. Link back to this post on JakeBouma.com so people can easily find the origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the “Subversive Blogger Award” somewhere on your blog (images below) with a link to the post that you wrote.
That’s all there is to it. Keep in mind that this award is meant as an encouragement to bloggers to keep doing what they’re already doing – being subversive (however you interpret it). May we never forget that Jesus (and His message) was the original and ultimate subversive.
Here are the images you can use for your blog, courtesy of Josh Brown and Red Cowboy Designs. All I ask is that you download them and upload them to your own server.
Blog on.
UPDATE: Nate Ritter has graciously designed an additional badge for the award which you can find below. Feel free to use it in addition to or on place of the original badges.
Damn.
When uploading to WordPress 2.5 RC1, I apparently erased all of my themes and plugins, which means I essentially have to start from scratch. It’s my own fault, since I didn’t back up the data beforehand, but damn this sucks.
The irony of this happening a mere hours after the previous post is overwhelming.
UPDATE 03/19/08, 3:17PM:
For those who missed it, for the previous fourteen hours or so my blog looked like this:
I managed to find the folder containing the theme I had been using from it’s original upload back in October. I spent some time changing most of the things I have changed in the past 5 months, and now we’re pretty much back to normal. I still have some things to fix, but at least I can breathe now.
The moral of the story: BACK UP YOUR STUFF.
JakeBouma.com turns 3 years old
On May 1, 2003, I hit “publish” on my first-ever blog post using the pre-Google-owned Blogger. This is what it said:
Who knows what I will post on my newly-created blog, not to mention how often. In fact, there is a fairly good chance that this is the last post I will make. I will probably just forget that I created it. There is also a good chance that I will post diligently… we’ll just have to see. I don’t really know why anyone would want to read this, but it sort of makes me feel special to have my very own blog in which I can post my most intimate secrets and most idiotic ramblings.
Just under two years (and several CMS experiments) later, on March 18, 2005, I purchased the domain JakeBouma.com, uploaded WordPress 1.5, and began taking blogging (somewhat) seriously.
Today this blog celebrates its third birthday. According to the CDC the third year marks the entry into the “Preschool” era, leaving toddler-hood in its wake. Between the ages of three and five, this blog’s “world will begin to open up. [It] will become more independent and begin to focus more on adults and children outside of the family. [It] will want to explore and ask about his surroundings even more.” Shoot, my little website is growing up so fast.
In these three years, this humble blog has racked up 523 posts and 1,079 comments, with an average of 3.5 comments per post (factoring out digressions, which don’t allow comments).
And now for a trip down memory lane. Consider this my proud father moment…
Above: JakeBouma.com 2.0. Version 1.0 didn’t last too long because I deleted the whole thing on accident, so I started again from scratch. I’m actually a little embarrassed of this design, but I’m pretty sure less than 10 people ever saw it.
Above: Version 3.0. I wanted to retain some of the visual aspects of 2.0 while moving to a three-column format. My favorite part about this design was the oft-changing banner at the top (Here’s the banner from the blog’s first birthday. I plan on making a collage of them soon-ish).
And now we’re on the current iteration: 4.0. I plan on sticking with this design for a long time; probably until after the blog graduates from preschool.
Blogging goals for 2008
In the last four months, JakeBouma.com has gained a lot of exposure in the blogosphere. As with any blog, this is partly due to my efforts (blog redesign & contest, frequency of posting, quality of content, etc.), and party due to the readers. In addition, I was honored to be selected as a member blog for The Daily Scribe.
It is my hope that in 2008 JakeBouma.com continues to grow in popularity and readership and that I continue to be faithful to the medium of blogging. Therefore, I am laying out a few goals for 2008 to give me something for which to aim.
If you have your own blog, I encourage you to come up with some of your own goals for 2008. If you’re a reader, what would you like see for JakeBouma.com in 2008? Leave a comment and let me know!
(ht: Daily Blog Tips)
Review: Web Hosting Choice
The following is a sponsored post:
Web Hosting Choice is an “advertisement free guide to choosing the right web host for your personal or business site”.
If you own a self-hosted website or blog of any king — whether it’s big or small — finding the cheapest web hosting service that has all of the options you need is a big priority. That’s where Web Hosting Choice comes in. They have a large database of web hosting services that you can search based upon your website’s particular needs.
Say you’re looking for a website host and you want to pay $5 or less per month with no setup fees, and you need 500mb of storage. You can simply plug all of that information in their search, and they’ll give you a list of web hosting services that match your needs, and they even provide ratings of some of the services. The advanced search page has a bunch of plan details, features, and payment options so you can find exactly what you need without paying for extra junk.
If you’re setting up a self-hosted website for the first time, the quick start guide will walk you through the process, which can be a bit scary at first. Sadly, they make no mention of blogging platforms and their respective installation processes. Their front page says they can help both small websites and large e-commerce websites alike, but it seems like they cater more towards e-commerce and business websites. If they really want to increase their market share, they’ll add information for those looking to set up blogs, which are much easier and user-friendly than messing with FrontPage or Dreamweaver.
So if you’re looking for the right web hosting option for your particular needs, Web Hosting Choice will make the process a little less painful than a Google search.
The Daily Scribe
I am proud to announce that JakeBouma.com has been accepted into The Daily Scribe, which bills itself as a “growing compendium of exceptional Christian expression”. TDS currently aggregates content from 23 different blogs. Most (if not all) of them are far superior to mine, and I am humbled to have been accepted. From the website:
Only the highest quality Christian writing and expression is aggregated on the pages of The Daily Scribe. All of the writers featured are dedicated activists in their respective fields and faiths. Their’s is a passion which is obvious, mature and tuned – well tuned. Each aggregated member represents quality and honesty.
You can learn more about The Daily Scribe on their “About” page.
You’ll also notice the new badge on the right sidebar, just below the subscription section. Fancy, huh?
I encourage you to head over there and check out some of the other blogs; there’s some really good stuff. If you’re interested in becoming a member of TDS, you can submit your blog here.
The Subversive Blogger Awards
Today I would like to officially announce a brand-spanking-new blog meme called the Subversive Blogger Awards.
American author Henry Miller (1891-1980) once said, “The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”
Subversive bloggers are unsatisfied with the status quo, whether in church, politics, economics or any other power-laden institution, and they are searching for (and blogging about) what is new (or a “return to”) – even though it may be labeled as sacrilege, dangerous, or subversive.
To kick off the Subversive Blogger Awards, I am tagging the following five blogs/bloggers:
1. Pomomusings by Adam Walker Cleaveland
2. Mattopia by Matt Cleaver
3. iamjoshbrown by Josh Brown
4. Headphonaught’s Nanolog by Thomas Mathie
5. soupablog by Paul Soupiset
The rules of participation are pretty straightforward:
1. If you are tagged, write a post with links to five subversive blogs
2. Link back to this post on JakeBouma.com so people can easily find the origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the “Subversive Blogger Award” somewhere on your blog (images below) with a link to the post that you wrote
That’s all there is to it. Keep in mind that this award is meant as an encouragement to bloggers to keep doing what they’re already doing – being subversive (however you interpret it). May we never forget that Jesus (and His message) was the original and ultimate subversive.
Here are the images you can use for your blog, courtesy of Josh Brown and Red Cowboy Designs. All I ask is that you download them and upload them to your own server.
Blog on.
No feed reader? No problem! Subscribe by email to receive daily updates featuring the freshest content from JakeBouma.com!
