I am astounded by the incredible diversity and unity of the Church online. Boundaries which seem impenetrable in the real world are crossed daily, friendships are forged and experiences shared and enjoyed which transcend denominational, theological and historical limitations. There are no walls separating us by age, gender, race, nationality, location, position or appearance.
We are one Church, one body of believers, united by Christ and connected through the wonders of the Internet.
Every other week, Bridget Chumbley and I host a Blog Carnival. If you don’t know what that is, then in the simplest terms, we pick a topic and everyone writes a blog post on that topic an posts it on their website the same day. Either Bridget or I (depending on who’s hosting that week) then provide a place where everyone can share a link to their blog post, so that anyone and everyone can find all of the posts and go read them.
The carnival has been going for a couple of months now and I have been astounded by the number of people who have joined in, this week we had 42 entries! That number is especially surprising considering the topic this week was ‘grief’.
Thank you SO much everyone who has taken part so far, you are really appreciated.
One of my main aims in starting the carnival was to help the Church find each other. This blog is about Rediscovering the Church, and I’m discovering that the Church are amazing, if we just shut up for a moment and give them a chance to speak.
I love that people are getting a lot of traffic to their blogs and are receiving lots of comments on their posts. It’s wonderful to see people connecting like that.
We have:
- Catholics
- Non-denominationals
- Orthodox priests
- Baptists
… and any number of other denominations represented in the carnival and yet we can all find ways to intersect and share together through our real experiences with life and God.
The next carnival is over at bridget’s place on December 15th. The topic this time is ‘Church’. We’d love for you to join us in the carnival – and feel free to invite all your friends too!
One thing I have been trying to work out is how do we share the love more evenly? It seems that the first few people to post their carnival entries get a dozen or so comments and loads of visitors and then, by the time you get down to #40, there are only one or maybe two comments on each post. How can we even it out so that everyone is getting visits and comments?
Another question I have been wrestling with is how do we remind people that the carnival is coming. We use Twitter effectively for reminders but people who haven’t given in to the tweeters miss out. What can we do to include people outside of the twitterverse more effectively?
I made a proposed schedule of carnival topics (listed below) and have had some changes suggested (highlighted in red). What do you think? Is this a good schedule? What changes would you like to see?
- November 3rd – Remember
- November 17th – Community
- December 1st – Grief
- December 15th – Church
- December 29th – Book (what’s the best one you read in 2009)
- January 12 –Lust
- January 26 – Love
- February 9 – Joy
- February 23 – Peace
- March 9 – Patience
- March 23 – Kindness
- April 6 – Goodness
- April 20 – Faithfullness
- May 4 – Gentleness
- May 18th – Self-Control
Peter, I feel badly for those people that are posting towards the end too. We'll have to brainstorm on ideas to get them more 'readers' and also how to let people outside of Twitter/Facebook know about the carnivals!
I've really enjoyed hosting them with you… can't wait to see how much they continue to grow!
Yeah, the facebook group helps, but what about the people who don't use EITHER?
Jojo suggested we set up a website dedicated to it.. what do you think?
Mea culpa… I am not quite done reading on grief….
Ooops.
I think joy is a great thing to write about! I expect to be ready to read all about joy in one day!
I wouldn't be so sure… who knows what JOY will bring out from people?
I'm looking forward to writing and reading on the church. Grief was hard, but sometimes writing on the church can be just as hard.
Absolutely!
I’m excited to see what different people say about ‘Church’!
Peter,
I think it really helps when you pointed out on here for the newer Blog Carnival participants, like myself :), not to take it personally. For me, being the new person on the block so to speak, I believe it helps to just get out there and leave comments on others' posts. Regardless of how many read mine or leave comments, I guess you could say I am "brave" about trying to get my feet wet. I was fortunate to have a lot of traffic, even though I was towards the bottom. I have since I first started my blog.
My thoughts are that "grief" is a hard subject for some people to know what to say, especially if you don't know me personally. I feel incredibly blessed with the many new friendships like Bridget that have come from the encouraging comments left over the last year on my blog stating that they are prayerfully following my journey.
It's very important to me that all of the carnival participants feel like they were really part of something and, realistically, when it comes to blogs that means seeing more visitors and traffic!
I'm working on ways of making it better for everyone!
Peter you thanked us now let us thank you for hostong this wonderful carnival it has been great posting. One of the ways we could get the word out is if each of us who post put the schedule on our own blogs maybe in a side bar or even a separate post.
Blessings
Good idea!
Peter, a few ideas:
1. To remind people of the carnival, I think most of us wouldn't mind if you or Bridget would ask for our email addresses. You can create a mailing list through Mad Mimi (free up to 100 emails) and send us emails if you have any announcements. Also, if you are using cPanel, I think there is an option for creating a mailing list there. I have that in my cPanel (I'm using JustHost) but I haven't tried it yet.
2. How about creating a Facebook fan page for the Blog Carnival?
3. I'll send suggestion 3 on your email.
Peter, the schedule looks good.
As for how to even out the readers? For what it's worth, I read far more posts than I have the time to comment on. I wish there were enough hours in the day to spend a good 10 minutes on each blog. but with 42 blogs … that's 7 hours. I feel good if I spend 5 min on each. Sorry that I don't have a solution.
My question is what to do if someone schedules a post ahead of time. Can we "schedule" a link to post on your carnival?
I haven't participated yet, but I plan to!