The Widget is Broken

At the top of the left-hand sidebar is a list of recent posts at the Unity Baptist church website. I don’t know when it happened but I noticed this morning this list is longer than usual. That wasn’t a change I was aware of making but when I went into the control panel nothing had actually changed. I changed the number of items to display to 4 and clicked update. I changed the number to 3 and clicked update. It has been set to 3 since 2015 when the church website launched but nothing I do changes what is displayed in the sidebar. Funny that.

Happy Monday No. 500

The Happy Monday truck doesn’t look like it’s aged a day. You wouldn’t age either if your image was digitally manipulated and then just reposted on occasion for the next several years. Fail Blog used to “send in the Fail boat” so I thought maybe Happy Monday could be delivered by box truck.

The Jesus-shaped Project

In iMonk Radio Podcast #96 Michael talks about shutting down the Internet Monk website and starting a new project, Jesus Shaped Spirituality. So let’s address the Internet Monk website first. He was warning people at the time that if where was anything they wanted to keep forever they needed to download it and save it. His plan was to heavily redact much of the material he had written and posted between the end of 2000 and the spring of 2008. He did delete some older posts but never to the extent he discussed early on. Internet Monk continued for another decade after Michael passed and there are 20 years worth of posts archived today at iMonk.blog

Steve Brown

For the past several months we’ve been going through the Internet Monk Radio archives and re-sharing those episodes. Each time Michael Spencer mentions another blog or podcast I try to find that and see if it still exists. Many times they do not. I often find websites that have not been updated in years. When he shares a resource that is still operating I try to point those out and include a link in my post.

iMonk Radio Update

iMonk Radio Podcast #128 is up and running. Here is a link.

Just a Few Reminders

The Happy Monday posts began during the summer of 2012. The original format was based on the idea that after a weekend of going out for family and social gatherings, sporting events and church activities people might need a little encouragement and to catch up on news or happenings. The first two or three weekly posts featured a metal count from the summer Olympic games. While the goal was to help readers start their week off right, sometimes the posts leaned a little heavy on the news. One friend in real life told me that when he read the post he didn’t see much to be happy about. Over a few months the format morphed into the a regular template we follow pretty closely: an opening bit, a welcome line or sometimes just the post number, an Old Testament verse, New Testament verse, two inspiring quotations usually featuring at least one Christian author or personality, usually a Coffee with Jesus comic strip to transition from the serious into the silly stuff, then up to four memes, cartoons or cute aminals to put smiles on faces. Mondays are tough, we do what we can.

Who is Van Til?

Van Til most often appears as the author of Happy Monday. He was introduced in 2014 as the editor of The Master’s Table. HIs bio suggests he is a golden retriever, possibly a blond lab, with a Master’s degree in English. I may or may not have mentioned that Van Til is a figment of my imagination. The reason I bring it up now is that we have started re-posting episodes of the Internet Monk Radio podcast. Sooner or later you may hear Michael Spencer reference Van Til. The idea that Van Til works in my employ is a tribute to my late mentor who referenced a dog named Van Til that served as engineer of his radio program. Before he was a figment of my imagination he was a figment of his imagination.

Would You Rather Listen to the Bible Study?

Earlier today I started a Bible study on Hebrews. Here is a link if you need one. Would anyone be interested in listening to that Bible study? I’ve been working on this since last night and have edited this post several times in the process. Click the play button on the embedded audio player below to listen to the Bible study. The download button below will not initiate a download but rather link to Google Drive where the file is located. You can click the download icon at the top of that screen ( ) to save the .wav file to your device.

Blogrolls: Your Comments Welcome

In the early days of blogging, anything before 2010, building a healthy blogroll is how bloggers formed communities. I would list blogs on my blogroll that had something to offer my readers/followers. If other blogs were listing you then that meant a wider audience, more exposure, and a good sign that you were doing something right. From a strictly reader point of view, if you enjoyed a particular blog then chances are you would enjoy some of the blogs that blogger enjoyed reading and recommended. Blogrolls, Real Simple Syndication (RSS) and blog aggregators were the tools of the trade back when regular folks dreamed of quitting their jobs and blogging full time.

Presented Commercial Free

For many years I saw this announcement at the bottom of every post on my blog. I didn’t know exactly what visitors saw since I was always logged in on WordPress when I was writing, checking stats or giving a new post the once over. I did suggest to the church that we pay the nominal fee to have ads removed from the church website lest something with a conflicting message appear on the same page as a sermon or church bulletin but never did so for my personal blog.

The Happy Monday posts are often done on Sunday evening, if not earlier, and set to publish at the appointed time. I was away from home some months ago and used my phone to check and see that the post was in fact up on the website. Happy Monday is very image heavy and what I discovered, looking at the post on my mobile browser, was that after every two or three images an ad had been inserted by WordPress. I was creating material with a certain aesthetic and not only was that being disturbed by the advertisements but of course someone else was getting traffic or selling product and I was not making a dime off of the real estate. WordPress, as the host, owns the real estate of course which bloggers use for free but it was my post with a bunch of junk scattered throughout and not just at the bottom below the line.

For what it’s worth, I have paid to have the ads removed from The Master’s Table. I have no plans to offer subscription only content or place ads of my own, but if you the reader ever think about linking content here from your blog or social media sites know that your audience will not be subjected to ads when they get here. Upgrade plans start for as little as $4/month (billed annually) if any WordPress blogger is interested in doing the same.