Andrew Jones blogs at TallSkinnyKiwi. He is one of the pioneers of Christian blogging. For those of you who may not be familiar with Andrew, you may recall his name from his endorsement of Pagan Christianity. I caught up with Andrew for a full-on interview about blogging in the Christian world. His insights are fascinating.

Frank Viola: Andrew, you are one of the pioneers of the Christian blogosphere. Tell us the story of how you first learned about blogging and what motivated you to begin your blog.

Andrew Jones: Around the end of 1997 I started “Andrew’s Tea Salon” on a free Geocities webpage. I used it as an online journal and for each entry, I added the date above it. It was just a way to record my thoughts, link them to a place and time, and make them public. The word “blogging” was not yet used and most web sites were static vanity sites rather than dynamic interactive journals.

A few years later, Blogger.com came out and I saw an automated way of date-stamping my thoughts, as well as sorting them into monthly sections, and I was hooked. That was the birth of Tallskinnykiwi in 2001. Amazingly, it made number 3 in the world in 2003 according to Blogger Forum, even beating the political blogs. It’s not as popular today and I don’t have the time I used to have to blog, especially with all my travels and non-wifi zones that I spend time in. But I still enjoy blogging and sometimes get to teach it at conferences and universities.  Continue Reading…

Media expert Phil Cooke recently put out a remarkable book called One Big Thing: Discovering What You Were Born to Do. Most of the books that fall into my hands are skimmed. However, I read One Big Thing word-for-word. I even marked in it (something I rarely do). I liked the book so much that I brought Phil onto the blog for an interview about the book. Enjoy the interview and order the book. 

For readers who aren’t familiar with the book, what is the premise and the overarching idea?

Phil Cooke: For more than 30 years, I’ve helped churches, ministries, and nonprofit organizations engage the culture more effectively.  In case after case, I discovered the organizations who really get noticed, funded, and valued are organizations who do one big thing extraordinary well.  All the organizations that are average at many things never seem to get noticed.  So a few years ago, I started applying that idea to individual people.  Who are the artists, pastors, writers, filmmakers, or leaders that get their message heard?

It’s people who are known for One Big Thing.  And for the record, your One Big Thing isn’t necessarily about a job.  It’s not so much about discovering your One Big Thing is to be a pastor, salesman, or secretary.  Your One Big Thing is really about the over-arching purpose for your life.  What you’re “wired” to accomplish, and what you were born to do? Continue Reading…

I’d like to hear from those of you who work from home. If you work from home, what do you do exactly? Do you work for someone else or do you have your own business? (This is also a chance to promote your home-based business.)

Tell us about it . . .

My friend Mick Mooney is the author of the new novel called God’s Grammar. I caught up with Mick to interview him on his new book. Here it is:

Summarize the main story in your new novel, God’s Grammar.

Mick Mooney: The main character’s name is Sam, a semi-committed agnostic who wakes from a strange dream where God offered to teach him grammar. When he gets out of bed he is startled to discover God actually in his apartment, ready to start the lesson. While the grammar lesson begins at Sam’s kitchen table, inwardly an epic journey also takes place, a journey out of Sam’s inner Fortress and into the greater realm of his soul. While God seeks to liberate Sam, the General—a dark co-inhabitant of Sam’s inner Fortress—is determined to keep the revelation of God’s unfailing love from finding a permanent home in Sam’s heart. Ultimately, God’s Grammar is an imaginative tale of loss, love and redemption that digs much deeper than just a conversation about grammar; it dares to answer one of life’s biggest questions: Can love last forever?

What provoked you to write the book?

Mick Mooney: I moved to Germany five years ago with my wife. I had just finished three years of Bible college and had expected to work in some kind of full-time ministry capacity; however, at this time I was also going through a major paradigm shift regarding the notion of full-time paid ministry in an institutional setting. I decided not to go down that path and was left with a situation of being in a foreign country with no job prospects. The only job I could get was as an English language teacher, and so began a year long journey of learning my own language’s grammar rules and teaching them. It was a hard process, and I found myself asking God why he had led me into learning grammar when I could be of much better use to the kingdom of God if I was preaching. This led me to think, perhaps God is teaching me more than just grammar in this time, which when I thought about it he most certainly was; and this realization was really the starting point that provoked the concept for my novel God’s Grammar. Continue Reading…

One of the key ways to receive spiritual nourishment is by reading the Scriptures. However, there are times when Bible-reading can become a chore rather than a delight.

During such times, the words seem dry as dust. Your mind wanders. The pages are blank.

If you’re a preacher or teacher of God’s Word, you know the experience of going to the Scriptures to find food for God’s people, only to discover that the well has run dry.

Every minister of the Word has had this disheartening experience. Pastors know it all too well.

What, then, do you do when you open your Bible and all you hear is white noise?

In When the Pages Are Blank: How to Bring the Bible Back to Life, I provide 20 strategies for electrifying your Bible-reading and revitalizing your encounters with God’s Word – strategies that I’ve discovered in my own spiritual journey.

The eBook is only $3.99 USD. It’s very short (30 pages) and written simply. It will not be in print format. If you find the book helpful, leave a comment. Thanks!

Click here to order it on PDF

Click here to order it on Kindle

Click here to order it on Nook

Recently, I caught up with Christian author and speaker Margaret Feinberg. Some of you know Margaret from my book Jesus Manifesto – she was one of the endorsers. For those not familiar with Feinberg, she has released a fascinating new book called Wonderstruck. Here’s my interview with her.

With all the Christian books on the market today, what motivated you to write Wonderstruck?

Margaret Feinberg: My husband and I had just gone through one of the roughest years of our lives—the financial, familial, health, and personal losses were overwhelming. In the aftermath, a prayer emerged, not for more faith or trust or grace, but a prayer for wonder. Essentially I was saying, God reveal yourself, your whole self to me. I want to know you like I’ve never known you before. And God did not disappoint. I wrote Wonderstruck book and 7-session Bible study for anyone who has been knocked down in life and wants to reawaken to the reality of God all around them. Continue Reading…