“The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.”

~ Piet Mondrian

Anyone who is an artist – whether a writer, speaker, musician, painter, photographer, designer, sculptor, etc. – doesn’t view all of their art through the same lens. Artists have favorites.

In that connection, some people have asked which of my books I consider to be my favorite. That is, my best and most important contributions.

Whenever I’ve answered this question, it has surprised many people. In most cases, I discover later that they’ve only read one or two of my books . . . the ones that aren’t on my “best/favorite” list.

Since I keep getting this question, I thought I’d just answer the question here and now. That way, when someone asks it again, I can simply point them to this blog post (‘tis one of the wonderful assets of blogging!).

In addition, I want to ask the same question to those of you who are artists also. Continue Reading…

Perhaps a more accurate title for this post would be, “How I Read Long Blog Posts.”

It’s very simple. Perhaps so simple that maybe taking up bandwidth to address it isn’t worth the effort. However, I somehow feel that this post is going to help a few people. If it does, let me know in the comments, would you? I’d be curious.

For starters, I never read long posts online. While some people “scan” long blog posts, I don’t like doing that. There are two reasons:

(1) I don’t want to miss anything that’s of value in a post. If I scan something online, I’ll undoubtedly miss something. Perhaps a lot.

(2) If I comment on the post, I want to accurately understand what the author wrote before I make a remark. I’ve noticed that some people have missed important points in some of my posts because they scanned them. Their comments made this evident. I don’t want to make the same mistake. Continue Reading…

Here are the posts in order of most views in 2011 (some were written before 2011, but they received major traffic last year so they made the list).

The 100 Best Christian Books Ever Written

Beyond Evangelical: Part I

Billy Graham’s Stunning Prophecy

Rethinking Christian Unity

An Important Insight from President Obama

Twitter vs. Facebook: Reflections, Comparisons, and Ministry Perspective

Epic Jesus

Discipleship, Mission, and Church: A Plea to Learn Our History

Revise Us Again

Legalism, License, Lordship, and Liberty Continue Reading…

25 Tips for Bloggers: Established, New, and Pondering

The tips you will read in this post are responsible for causing this blog to reach the top 10 out of all Christian blogs on the Web.

I started blogging in 2008. Almost a decade before that, some of my friends tried to persuade me to start blogging. But I resisted.

My reason: I didn’t have enough time.

Well, I still don’t have enough time, yet I’ve managed to blog for over three years now. And looking back, I wish I had heeded my friends’ advice and started earlier. My bad.

You see, I love blogging. In fact, I enjoy it more than writing books. It’s far less tedious, takes less time, and affords instant feedback.

I also view it as a major way of influencing people with my message on the deeper Christian life. It’s not quite as powerful a tool of influence as a book or a spoken message, but it’s close.

While I’m still learning the craft, I’ve discovered some valuable tips about the art of blogging that I’d like to share with you. They are . . . Continue Reading…