How To Embed Youtube Video in WordPress.com

A couple of posts ago I tried to embed a video with no success. WordPress changed the way you do it and I got it all messed up. They actually made things as simple as possible but without telling us how they changed it, it ended up getting complicated. So now, instead of having to click through a bunch of stuff, here is all you do. Paste the youtube URL into the editor and just don’t make it a link. It will embed it for you from that text. That’s it!

The Problem With a Lot of Ministry Books Today

I just finished one of the most highly recommended books on discipleship written in the last six months. Here is the book in a nutshell – We are supposed to disciple people because God commanded it. We have to take God’s commands seriously. We haven’t done it (that was said at least 50 times in different ways). The mission God has for us is amazing. Let’s go do it. The book concluded with a single chapter on how to do it that turned out to be a list of questions to consider. I can’t say that I walked away from that book with a single new idea regarding discipleship or anything that I would actually do that the book helped me see more clearly. What is so frustrating about that is, I know the author of this book is up to some really great things and it might be helpful to learn from some of that. I don’t think everything he is doing in his context will work in mine but I do think hearing what he is doing would help.

Discipleship is such a hot topic because it has been a gaping hole in the mission and ministry of many churches. We need to hear about discipleship. I am fine with that but at some point action has to be taken and most of the books I have read have a lot of things to say about what is going on and what should be going on but have little to say on what it might actually look like if we did something about it.

Over the last 10-15 years of Christians publishing it seems like the same few topics come up all the time and the same things are said over and over again. It kind of makes me feel like we are running in circles with the need for a few trail blazers to finally pick a direction and go rather than just keep rehashing the same stuff over and over again. Or maybe the trail blazers who are righting the books need to spend less time trying to convince us of what we already know (that God said we must do it but we aren’t) and more time equipping us to create a vision for it in our context and execute ministry in line with that vision. I am so grateful to Mike Breen for doing exactly that in his writing.

Anyone else experience this?

Thanks to these guys for recently following the blog:
Deacon Jason
Gene
Colonel of Corn
Everyday Power Blog
Jason Stover

Some People Who Have Recently “Followed” Kingdom Living

I like to give a shout out to those who follow the blog. Maybe you will find some new must read blogs in this list. Here are some who have followed over the last few weeks:

Ray Sanabria
Allen O’Brien
Joe Warnimmont
Randy Carroll
Daily Aspects
Damyanti
Fraser McDonald
Valeriu Barbu
Brandon Andress
Trudom22
Greg Taylor – definitely check out Greg’s blog
Opinionated man
Cory Sullivan
James Miller
Break Room Stories
Rick Mallery
Trainer Trish
Holly B
CTC90 Guitarist
Ashley Bollinger
Sally Green

New Series in May: Life as a Female Follower of Jesus

I am going to launch a series for the month of May that is aimed at getting more people in tune with some of the outstanding female voices out there. I have asked several ladies for their thoughts on discipleship and I am very much looking forward to posting some of their thoughts in May. If you have a few people in mind you think would be good to weigh in on this series, feel free to send me their names. I already have some really good people lined up but would like to add at least a half dozen more.

Switching from Google Reader to Feedly

So google reader is going away and you may be looking for a good alternative. In the previous google reader post, someone suggested that Feedly is a good replacement. I installed it into chrome and it is excellent. It immediately asked to log into google reader and transferred all my RSS subscriptions straight in! Now I just need to figure out how to add a subscribe via feedly button on my sidebar.

Hearing from the Ladies – Upcoming Series of Guest Posts

I am going to facilitate a series of posts where tune in to the insights some of the ladies in our fellowship have to share with us. I am really looking forward to hearing and learning from them. I have already asked a few people to guest post. Who are some of our ladies you would like to see highlighted in this series?

If You Read This With Google Reader, Time to Change

As of July 1, 2013 Google reader will be no more. If you are reading this blog or any other blog on google reader you may want to go ahead and change to a new RSS reader. Or you can use the email subscription on the right side of this blog to get new posts directly in your email or subscribe via feedburner. If you want a list of alternatives, see Top 9 RSS Feed Readers

Official Google Announcement

Church Relevance Lists the Top 200 Ministry Blogs

Church Relevance has posted their semi-annual list of Top 200 Ministry Blogs. Some of our fellow church of Christ bloggers made the list (let me know if I missed any).

#48 – Richard Beck’s Experimental Theology

#93 – Kingdom Living

#144 – Jim Martin’s A Place for the God Hungry

I am still confused why Jay Guin doesn’t make the list as I am positive he at least gets more page views per day than I do. If you don’t read Jay, Richard and Jim’s blogs you should try them out. Thanks to Kent Shaffer and Fellowship One for all the hard work putting this together.

Thanks to Those of You Who Follow This Blog

Here are some people who followed Kingdom Living in the last few weeks. As a thank you for following, I am posting a link to what you guys do on your blogs. Some of these guys are also blogging about theology, Christianity, etc…have a look.

Tomas Workman
Kyle Thompson
Tim Gunnells
Pastor Wadejc
Aaron Bagwell
One7blog
Arvind Yadav
Brent Taylor
Taylor Oceans
Jim Allen
Jessica Markwood
Jessi Buckingham
Elliot Scott
Celeste
Adam Bellotto

Resources Available Here at Kingdom Living

I am sure quite a few people don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the menus at the top of the blog but there are some really great resources in the dropdown menus.

Free studies and lessons

• Audio uploads – this is a collection of sermons from men I respect who have given me permission to upload their work.
• Bible class archive – a HUGE collection of small group and Bible class materials written by readers of the blog. There are 3000 pages of material that have been downloaded over 60,000 times.
• Small Group Lessons – Almost identical to the Bible class archive. I just can’t let either link go since both get so much traffic.

Ministry tools

• 20s & 30s Ministry – This is an index to the majority of things I have written about 20s & 30s after working with these guys. This list includes everything from who they are to how to reach them to how to change Bible class to be more effective. I have been working with 20 somethings for 10 years and enjoy sharing my “aha” moments.
• Church Steps Outreach Program – This is a simple method for outreach we developed at Northwest over the last few years. We have had success with it and have begun helping other churches catch the vision.
• Marriage & Family – Articles I have written and links to other resources in this area.

Study Tools

• Bible study – Links to all sorts of Biblical resources from original language resources, online concordances, etc…everything you need to do some quality Bible study online.
• Blogroll – a HUGE list of great Christian bloggers that I would encourage you to check out.
• Textual Study Tools – A step beyond the Bible study tools. This page is a big list of resources to aid you in textual criticism, manuscripts, etc.