Expecting Reality

Disclaimer: these are notes of something I am pondering, just thought I would share them...

“Disappointment is the gap between reality and expectation; therefore we must visualize reality and create expectation.”

In the scenario above:Expectation = thought or visualization of end result.Reality = end result.

Disappointment = the gap between the two.

In the realm of God’s salvation everything is in reverse:

Visualize reality = seeing in your mind, heart and sprit that which God has set out to achieve.
Creating expectation = speaking, writing, visualizing and meditating on the truths that achieve that reality.

Example:

Reality: It is Gods willthat all men should be saved. (1 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Peter3:9)

Expectation: It is left tous to communicate the good news of Christ regardless of theresponse.

Contrast: Often our expectation is that if we just have a large enough audience and good enough pitch people will accept Christ, which means they also accept us. This is why so many Pastors identities are wrapped up in attendance, they perceive peoples rejection of the Gospel as their own failure instead of “shaking the dust from their feet”.
Christian reality dictates we preach the good news “in season and out of season”, when it is popular and when it is not regardless of what the people want to hear.

Example:

Reality: It is Gods will that we love others.

Expectation: We must love others regardless of how they respond.

Contrast: Our worldly expectation is that if we love others we will be loved back or receive some sort of blessing or benefit from our generosity. In reality most people who receive our love and generosity will not return any form of the same, leaving us disillusioned when we find ourselves hurt by those we love.

Christian reality is we are commanded to love others regardless f how they respond. Much like the first example, we love regardless of how others respond.

So then we must make reality those things which God’s requires of us:

Love God (like the Father loves us): Seek Him above all other things, live holy and desire heavenly things.

Love Others (like the Son loves us): Have mercy, be hospitable and serve those who are less fortunate.

Make Him known (like the Holy Spirit does for us): Preach, teach and give testimony of God’s incredible goodness.

These three things are our new reality. God wills us to love Him, love others and make Him known to the world.

If we seek after these things first we will never be disappointed. Selfless love requires no exchange in order to be made complete: it flows from God to us, from us to others and eventually from them to God completing the circle.

Because God is love, he never runs out of it, so we mustn’t concern our selves with what we will get out of loving others because God continues to pour out His love on us regardless of how others respond.

Our goal is to “win the prize” or to reach the end off this life and awaken in the presence of the Almighty’s voice pronouncing “job well done, good and faithful servant”.

We have already been compensated for our obedience. Salvation, eternal life in heaven, a relationship with God and an earthly purpose for our existence; what more could we possibly expect from Him?

This is my new reality: that I spend every minute until my death doing that which is required of me, considering all my due as being paid in full.

Search Engine Marketing for Pastors

You have a church website, but no one ever visits it and it has never actually enticed someone to come to your church - rendering it useless and therefore not worthy of updating.

Over 90% of your church website traffic will likely come directly from search engine results. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to optimize your site for search engines. You could have the greatest church website in town, but if no one knows about it your efforts are wasted.

This brief introduction to "Search Engine Optimization" or SEO will allow you to makeover your site and increase your sites traffic. Since applying these principals to our church website we have actually seen many new visitors to our church who found us on the internet. In fact, we do not have a yellow pages ad, but still receive new calls every month entirely from our website.


Know your Keywords:

The first thing you need to do is identify the keywords and phrases that are relevant to your church. A good tool for this can be found on Google, Yahoo or one I have specifically wrote for churches here: Church Keyword Tool.

Research shows that 31% of people enter 2 word phrases into search engines, 25% of all users look for 3 word combinations and only about 19% of them try their luck with only a single word.


Next let's look at the HEAD tags of your site:

Three things you can do to improve your search engine ranking can be done within the HEAD tags, they are: The title tag, the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag.

The Title Tag on every page should contain the key words you want to be found for. It should not be longer than 60 characters, including spaces and should not contain your domain name.

Examples of Good Title Tags:

• Christian Community Church, Nowhere, OR: Contemporary music and Casual Attire.
• First Christian Church, Nowhere, MT: About our Contemporary Service
• Second Community Church, Nowhere, Iowa: Relevant Bible Teaching Notes

Meta Description & Meta Keywords:
These tags help the search engines decide what your site is all about and should contain your keywords and phrases.

The Meta Description is used to describe your web and some search engines use this information to summarize your website in their search listings. This should be a short concise sentence describing your church and include your keywords and phrases. The description should not be more than 100 characters long and should not contain repeating words.

The Meta Keywords should include the keywords and phrases that you are targeting in order of importance. Start with the most important and then proceed to less important but still relevant keywords. Do not include keywords that are not relevant to the theme of your site as this will be looked at as "spam". The keywords shouldn't be longer than 250 characters, should be capitalized and separated by a comma and space (Word, Phrase Here, Another Phrase). You should not use any word, not even within phrases more than 3 times and you should not use words that do not appear in the body of your page.

Back Links:
Perhaps the biggest contributing factor to a successful web site is incoming or "Back Links". Back links are like references, they give your sight credibility. The more your site is linked to from other sites the more search engines will view your site as an authority. The keywords used to link to your site also help determine its authority for that keyword. For instance: if you have 1,000 links to your site that all say "Sioux City Church" you will rank very highly when someone searches for those keyword terms.

Here are a few examples of how to get back links for your site:

• Forums: Public forums where you can place a link in your signature are a great way to get lot's of back links. Be careful to join a forum that is relevant to your ministry and make sure you participate (most forums require a certain number of posts before a signature is displayed.)
  
• Directories: Submitting your link to various directories can really improve your site ranking. Make sure the directory or category are relevant to your ministry. If your denomination or district has a website make sure your church link is somewhere on their site.
  
• Blogs, Personal Sites or Other Business: Try asking your people to place a link on their website declaring they are a member of your church. Offer a small graphic or text link that allows them to share their church with others.
  
• Write Articles: Pastors can write articles for other sites and receive credit in the form of a link to their site.

Content, Content, Content:
The content of your site will provide an abundant amount of traffic if done right. The more original content you have the better chance you will show up in searches that you may never have intended to show up in. This will help more people find your site and reference it on their site adding to your credibility.

Do not use too much content on the front page. Let the content flow throughout the entire site and salt the every page with your keywords and phrases.

NEVER use hidden text or pages filled with gibberish text! These will be considered span and can get your site banned from search engines.

Up-to-date:
Today's web savvy culture HATES a website that is out dated. You need fresh news, fresh content and an updated calendar! I suggest using a content management system such as WordPress, PHP Nuke or WebAPP in order to make updating your content easy and give others the ability to manage sections of the site.

More text, less mess:
Counters, pictures, search boxes, weather reports and other tidbits only clutter your sight and make them less attractive to the surfer and to search engines. Text is king! The more original text you have in your site that appears between the paragraph tags the more you will turn up in searches.

Wrap up:
To sum it all up: update your site regularly with quality text content: keep sermon notes, events, articles and information up-to-date and filled with lots of great text! Make sure your title and meta tags are detailed and get your site link on as many pages as possible.

In my next article I will discuss the use of a Robots.txt file, Site Map, Optimizing Images and how to validate your site for errors.

Expecting Reality

Disclaimer: these are notes of something I am pondering, just thought I would share them…

---

“Disappointment is the gap between reality and expectation; therefore we must visualize reality and create expectation.”

In the scenario above:
Expectation = thought or visualization of end result.
Reality = end result.
Disappointment = the gap between the two.

In the realm of God’s salvation everything is in reverse:

Visualize reality = seeing in your mind, heart and sprit that which God has set out to achieve.

Creating expectation = speaking, writing, visualizing and meditating on the truths that achieve that reality.

Example:

Reality: It is Gods will
that all men should be saved. (1 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Peter
3:9)

Expectation: It is left to
us to communicate the good news of Christ regardless of the
response.

Contrast: Often our expectation is that if we just have a large enough audience and good enough pitch people will accept Christ, which means they also accept us. This is why so many Pastors identities are wrapped up in attendance, they perceive peoples rejection of the Gospel as their own failure instead of “shaking the dust from their feet”.

Christian reality dictates we preach the good news “in season and out of season”, when it is popular and when it is not regardless of what the people want to hear.

Example:

Reality: It is Gods will that we love others.

Expectation: We must love others regardless of how they respond.

Contrast: Our worldly expectation is that if we love others we will be loved back or receive some sort of blessing or benefit from our generosity. In reality most people who receive our love and generosity will not return any form of the same, leaving us disillusioned when we find ourselves hurt by those we love.

Christian reality is we are commanded to love others regardless f how they respond. Much like the first example, we love regardless of how others respond.

So then we must make reality those things which God’s requires of us:

Love God (like the Father loves us): Seek Him above all other things, live holy and desire heavenly things.

Love Others (like the Son loves us): Have mercy, be hospitable and serve those who are less fortunate.

Make Him known (like the Holy Spirit does for us): Preach, teach and give testimony of God’s incredible goodness.

These three things are our new reality. God wills us to love Him, love others and make Him known to the world.

If we seek after these things first we will never be disappointed. Selfless love requires no exchange in order to be made complete: it flows from God to us, from us to others and eventually from them to God completing the circle.

Because God is love, he never runs out of it, so we mustn’t concern our selves with what we will get out of loving others because God continues to pour out His love on us regardless of how others respond.

Our goal is to “win the prize” or to reach the end off this life and awaken in the presence of the Almighty’s voice pronouncing “job well done, good and faithful servant”.

We have already been compensated for our obedience. Salvation, eternal life in heaven, a relationship with God and an earthly purpose for our existence; what more could we possibly expect from Him?

This is my new reality: that I spend every minute until my death doing that which is required of me, considering all my due as being paid in full.

Christian Meditation

Often the word meditation conjures up pictures of one sitting in the lotus position hands out in front of him, thumb to middle finger, chanting "om" to the sounds of eastern bells or didgeridoos.

Since meditation is so closely associated with Eastern religions like Hinduism or Buddhism it is often overlooked by Christians as a pagan practice and written off as taboo. However, meditation not only is a vital part of a stronger Christian faith it is required of us according to God's word.

Eastern and Mystical forms of meditation often seek to experience truth, peace or enlightenment. They seek to experience either God or "the God within" and usually attempt to empty the mind in order to receive truth within.

Biblical meditation, unlike other forms, directs us to dwell or contemplate on reveled truth, which is to think on things that are known to be true. These are things revealed through the Bible, nature, others and even the world that directly express known truths of God (see Philippians 4:8).

For example, in Psalms 1:1-2 the blessed man is one who "meditates (ponders and studies) day and night" on the precepts, instructions, and teachings of God.

It is clear that the Lord wants more than just reading and memorization of the word, His desire is for us to reflect on it and make it a part of our core being. As James writes (1:25) "the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does."

As we meditate on the Lord, His works and His written word (logos) these things become alive with in us, that is, we begin to understand them in a personal way (rhema).

Christian meditation also involves pondering the deeper truths of God which are already revealed in creation. The things of God, His non-moral attributes, are evident in the design of the Universe. The creation bears the marks of the creator. As the book of Romans pronounces: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse".

This is not to say that we should mediate or worship nature, but on how it points to the creator of nature. For instance:

• The earths equatorial diameter of 7,927 miles and mass of nearly 6.588 sextillion tons, the Earth is able to provide the perfect gravitational attraction and optimum atmospheric pressure for living organisms.
  
• The Earth's 93 million-mile-average distance from the allows our planet to have an ideal surface temperature of 58 degrees Fahrenheit and an average ocean-water temperature of 45 degrees. This orbital radius positions our world at the optimum location for life in the entire solar system.
  
• Earth's sidereal day of 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.09 seconds allows for proper, uniform heating and cooling of its spinning as well as the re-circulation of its atmospheric winds and ocean currents in the global hydrologic cycle.

The above bullet points all to demonstrate that the tolerances for life are extremely narrow. The mathematical odds that all of these and other essential conditions happened by random chance are indeed astronomical. The extremely rigid conditions necessary for life to exist and the fact that it actually does and with abundance testifies to intelligent, purposeful design.

"By wisdom the LORD laid the earth's foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place" - Proverbs 3:19

So then, how should a Christian go about meditating?

Start by reading small sections of scripture and then contemplating them. No great rush to form an opinion; let the words of truth infiltrate you, stir around inside a bit and speak to you personally. You may need to read the same passage over and over for a couple days, a week or even a month. It is okay to read what others have written or input from others; however meditation involves you seeking a personal connection with the truth and your life, so take your time and try to fully comprehend the things God has revealed.

You don't have to sit any certain way or do any chanting, but I have found that many great truths become real to me when I have set aside time to be alone with God and my thoughts. Often I spend time in the early morning or late at night just pondering the things of God, it is there, in the stillness and quiet hours that I discover things missed at first glance.

Remember the focus of meditation is not to achieve inner peace or receive enlightenment, but to set our thoughts and internal reflections on the things of God.

Because "out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks", meditation place our focus on God and ensures that the internal self is aligned with His Spirit. This way we can be assured that "the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart are pleasing in His sight".

Christ DNA