#10 Know When to Quit

Way back in 2007, I was doing a series on the 10 Commandments of Blogging. For those of you who missed it, here are the first 9 Commandments:

#1 Pick a Platform
#2 Win the Name Game
#3 Find your True Colors
#4 Hit Your Target
#5 Be Consistent
#6 Comment Unto Others
#7 Think Themes
#8 Add On
#9 Track the Facts

Now, nit-picky people may have been upset that I never finished this series. Truth be told, I purposefully held out for a time such as this. The 10th Commandment for bloggers is... Oh wait, I already told you with my title!

There is a time and a place for everything. The time for blogging as we knew it seems to have ended. The place for blog-like practices seems to be facebook (or will it be twitter). If I'm serious about Commandment #9, then it inevitably leads to Commandment #10. When I blogged #9, my blog had just had it's been ever day, week & month. As I type #10, my blog is on the decline (and has been for a while).

2005: 47k hits
2006: 58k hits
2007: 62k hits
2008: 48k hits
2009: 31k hits (estimated)

In other words, my blog peaked in 2007 and is dying fairly drastically. And so, I'm retiring. Not from blogging... Just from caring! In the past I wanted readers. I wanted hits. I felt bad if I didn't post. But lately I don't care, I don't count, and I don't feel bad. The Matthew Never Knew is hardly ever new these days! From now on I'll post when I post (and Katie can do likewise).

Then again, I'm a big fan of Favre.

10...9...8...7...6...5...4....

I just wanted to let you all know that the fog post controversy swept my feet out from under me, but I was just knocked down, not out. My lack of posting has had more to do with extreme business and lack of good internet connection at home, not fear of Matthew criticizing my writing!!!

Yesterday I was busying working on getting our teens registered for Snow Camp at Circle C Ranch. For those of you who don't know what/where Circle C Ranch is (and I'm sure that is most of you) you should visit their website here. If you are involved with leading a youth group and live in the eastern United States, you should think about renting a bus and taking your teens... It is located in Western New York and there are even groups from West Virginia that attend.

Our youth group has been attending snow camp for several years, even when I was a teen member, not one of the leaders. It's always been special to me. The owners of the camp have a true passion for working with teens and have excellent programs... our group is always anxious to attend to have a lot of fun and grow  spiritually together.

On a more personal note, the founder of Circle C, Wes Aarum, is one of the key people the Lord used over the course of a couple years not long ago to help me realize I was holding out on God in a certain area of my life- trusting him with my personal relationships. Because of all that, I was able to become closer friends with Matthew, start dating him, and then get married last year.

So I think get just as excited (if not more) as the teens when it's Snow Camp time. I can't wait to see what God has in store for our group and for me personally!!

~Katie

Monstrosity

Monstrosity: Frightful Forms of Faith

The Zombie Christian
A Zombie Christian is a person who has some of the same habits as a Christian (church attendance, Bible knowledge, etc), but has actually never made a commitment to follow Christ. They are dead men walking.

The Vampire Christian
A Vampire Christian is a person who has asked that the blood save them in their sins, but they have no intention of recognizing Jesus as their Lord. They just want a little blood.

The Werewolf Christian
A Werewolf Christian is a person who is generally committed to Christ, but there is 1 area that they refuse to surrender and/or repent of. They have a secret that they hope no one will discover.

The Head-Hunter Christian
The Head-Hunter Christian is a person that claims to have a deep spiritual relationship to Christ, but has no interest in being connected to Jesus' body. They only want the head, a decapitated Jesus.

TV show Survivor

I too get very frustrated with TV shows that get canceled in the middle. I like there to be an ending!!! I've come up with a solution to what shows get cancelled. I don't have any idea how it would work, but if there was some way to pull it off, I think it would be very interesting.

The title of this post gave me away, I'm sure... The TV shows that are to be cancelled go on a sort of Survivor game, so the public ultimately decides what show gets cancelled. They could have cast members/writers/directors of the shows competing.. or fans.. I don't know. But that way, the people who love a show couldn't complain too much when it was cancelled (there's going to be complaining anyways, for sure) but this way at least we'd get some more entertainment from it.

Or... what if they would at least FINISH a show with some type of wrap up so we're not left hanging. Wouldn't that make sense?? I like the way they are doing some new shows, like the Starter Wife... each season is kind of like a mini movie with a resolution at the end. If they don't do anymore, you don't feel like something is missing. They wrap up the loose ends in a way that you are satisfied if that's it.

(Steps Off Soap Box)

~Katie

Books Left

Bible books I have not taught thru yet...
Deuteronomy
Joshua
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Isaiah
John
2 Corinthians
Ephesians

Why have I avoided these? :)

TV Executives

I have been bewildered, a number of times, by the decisions of network executives. To me, they have a really neat and influential job. They get to decide what shows Americans will pick between when they want to spend an evening watching television. There are basically two parts to such a job: 1) Identifying potential shows and 2) Deciding when to cancel a show.

Now, if the same executives are making both of those decisions, then I'm very confused. Every decision in part 1 is a risk. But the person who makes decision #1, if he/she is good at his/her job, must feel confident that it is a risk that will be rewarded. Why would such a person give up on a show before giving it a chance to succeed? Yet many shows are canceled after a handful of episodes (or just a couple of seasons).

To me it seems obvious that a show would need at least 3 seasons to prove itself. An network executives job is to decide what potentially new show will eventually catch on. To cancel it before it has a legitimate chance to catch on is quite absurd. This makes me think 2 different people have these two jobs, but how stupid is that? You hire one person (or group) to make good selections and then another person (or group) to cancel their selections just because they aren't getting extremely good ratings from the gate (and the ratings system, as a whole, is not as good an indicator of what people are watching as they might imagine).

My rule: Give every show 3 seasons. If after three seasons its getting worse in quality and in the quantity of people watching it, then you're executive(s) made a bad decision to which they should be held accountable. But by no means should a network cancel a show before it's 3rd season. That's either not showing enough confidence in your highly paid employees, or dividing up your employees against one another.

Desperation

A while back I was perusing the pages of facebook. I enjoy reading the 'info' pages where people declare their favorite music, shows, movies, books and quotes. On Elliott's page I read quotes from Ravi Zacharias, Newt Gingrich, Peter Sagal, and C.S. Lewis. I then read a familiar sounding quote and was taken aback when I realized the author was me!

"The problem with our prayer lives is not so much that we only pray when we are desperate, but that we're only desperate when we pray. We're not desperate nearly enough. Our greatest need, then, is a greater sense of need." (Matt Rose)

This week I preached on prayer. But only since then have I re-grasped my own quote. This week has been bigger than me. It's too big. There's too much to handle. I can't handle it. And so I find myself quiet, thoughtful, and prayerful. I pray because I need to pray. How unfortunate that, perhaps, next week or next month I may return to the routine life of feeling sovereign. Do we need such times or should I be seeking a state of constant desperation?

Favre

I don't think there is a more entertaining athlete than Brett Favre.
This is my fog post.

* I have now taught thru 73.3% of the Bible