Two quick questions for readers to help me forge an important upcoming post:
1. What is the difference between knowing Jesus and knowing about Jesus?
2. How do the distinctions between those two show themselves in practical, everyday Christian experience?
Comments are open. Thanks for your input.
Anyone familiar with my writings on both the business world and the necessity of Christian community knows I have some strong opinions. I’ve been writing for years that we Christians, as much as we talk about community, see our family units as little islands, that while floating in the same Christian sea as other islands, never truly touch. Couple that view with my view on business and you have today’s post, the introduction of a solution to some of that disconnectedness.
I’ve added a page to Cerulean Sanctum. You can see it up top. It’s called Employ the Body!
Employ the Body! is my attempt to help Christian freelancers (like yours truly), the self-employed, or those who own small businesses, leverage the power of the Web to help generate business. It’s also my way of increasing the Google Page Rank for those who would otherwise wind up buried in a sea of Google results should someone type in graphic designer or mechanic.
I’m offering this page as a free opportunity for you to link your business’s Web site on a blog with a large readership. No strings. No cost. No hidden gotchas. To get listed, you need to meet the following requirements:
You are a freelancer, self-employed, or the owner of a small business.
You are a born-again Christian.
You are a commenter on Cerulean Sanctum or have emailed me outside of blogging. In other words, I need to recognize your name. (The exception to the rule concerns spouses. If you are a regular commenter or emailer but your spouse isn’t, he/she still has a connection through you, so his/her business can be listed here. Spouses must also be born-again to qualify.)
Any business is welcome so long as it is legitimate. I will add additional business classifications to the page as necessary. (I do reserve the right to reject a listing that I deem inappropriate or contrary to the nature of the conversation here at Cerulean Sanctum.)
To be listed, I need your company logo (125 px in height), the name of your company, your name and title, the URL to your Web site, and, if you have one, a LinkedIn profile page link.
Those are the very simple rules.
I do have a request, though. It’s not mandatory, but it makes the whole idea work:
If you wish to be listed here, and you have a blog or Web site, I would gratefully request that you either link to the Employ the Body! page or reproduce the page on your own site in its entirety.
I say that because many small, Christian businesses can’t generate enough links to get a decent Page Rank in Google. In other words, the Internet noise drowns out a legitimate signal. That’s where the backlinking makes a big difference. With more and more people using the Web to locate companies, the difference between success and failure for a small Christian business can be a few dozen clicks. Seriously.
Employ the Body! has the opportunity to help other believers. If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know the improtance of community in tough times. If we can’t help each other, how then can we say that we are the light of the world through Christ living in us?
For those of you reading who aren’t freelancers, self-employed, or small business owners, you can still help your brothers and sisters in Christ who are by linking to the Employ the Body! page on your own blogs or by using the services of the companies listed there. (Understand, though, that I can’t vouch for the services rendered by other parties listed on that page. As with anything, wisdom is called for when dealing with any business, whether it calls itself Christian or not. In other words, your mileage may vary.)
Lastly, many people have asked how they can support me. Some have donated to Cerulean Sanctum, and that’s a huge blessing to my family. I realize, though, that not everyone has the means to do so. That’s perfectlyt understandable. You can help in another way. If you have a blog or Web site, please consider linking to the Employ the Body! page and to my freelance writing and editing business, Ethereal Pen Productions. It would mean a lot to me and to those listed on Employ the Body!
And if you ever need a writer or editor who can make documents sizzle, I’m right here.
Thanks, as always, for supporting the writing at Cerulean Sanctum. Now you have a free way to support other brothers and sisters in Christ, too.
Blessings,
Dan Edelen
When you’ve been a consistent voice in the blogosphere for a few years, people start to notice you. It means a lot to me that Cerulean Sanctum has been a blessing to others. I get emails from readers that bless me, too, especially those that tell how much the writings here have been a benefit in other people’s lives.
Unfortunately, that same Web presence can spawn its own interpersonal trials and misunderstandings. That brings me to four relational issues I wish to discuss: post link acknowledgments, book reviews, charity mentions, and LinkedIn.
Early in my blogging life, I made it a mission that I would thank every blogger who linked to one of my posts and mentioned Cerulean Sanctum on their blog. It was important to me that I acknowledge other bloggers who referenced my writings as a way of showing my gratitude and to make the blogosphere a less cold and unfriendly place.
Sadly, as more and more people link to posts here, I have been unable to keep up with this duty. In fact, if I started today and tried to make up for the backlog of just the last month or two, I would spend all day every day for the rest of my life trying to catch up.
So if I don’t post a thankful comment on your blog for your link, it’s not that I’m not grateful; I really am. Economies of scale have just made it an impossible task.
So I say here, Thank you to everyone who links to posts at Cerulean Sanctum.
I am also grateful that anyone would see fit to ask me to review books that they have written. That major publishers write me and ask me to read galleys is not only a shock, but one of those “I’m not worthy” kind of events.
As a professional writer, I am ultrasympathetic to the plight of authors attempting to garner marketing publicity for their books. My heart goes out to you.
However, the day has so many hours. Because I need to make a living, and I am the sole breadwinner for my family, I am willing to review books but only for a fee.
Yes, for the rare book that is dead-on-target to issues I discuss here at Cerulean Sanctum, I am willing to reconsider. But if you have a book on dating for Christian seniors or some other not-discussed-on-this-blog subject, I can only review it for a fee.
I am sure your book is deserving. The problems are on my end: limited time and the need to feed my family. If I am reviewing a stack of books all day long gratis, then I’m falling down in my most important responsibilities.
Recently, I’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of charities wishing me to acknowledge their organization on Cerulean Sanctum. I did this once and now face a flood of requests. That’s normally how these things go.
To those that folks who have approached me about their charity, I want to say that I pray that God richly blesses you. But I have decided I need to stick with a decision my wife and I made many years ago. We only support those charities that are run by people we know personally, people that we regularly meet face-to-face. In this way, the accountability remains high. It also means that we can dedicate our limited resources to the people who are doing the work in those charities because they are friends and neighbors in “real” life.
This will be perhaps the most contentious issue of the four here.
I like LinkedIn and use it. It is my only genuine social networking outlet on the Web (besides Cerulean Sanctum), and I believe it to be a decent way for me to keep my business presence alive on the Internet.
But LinkedIn is only as valuable as the strength of its relationships. Its primary purpose, as I see it, is to allow others to recommend my work and for me to do the same for them. For that reason, it demands that I know the people well that I accept as connections. I have to have some history with my connections.
Do I accept connections from people I have never met face-to-face? Yes. However, those people have two things going for them:
Nothing is harder for me to do than decline invitations to link up on LinkedIn. For every person I decline, it’s like a little death.
If you have offered to link up and I’ve not accepted, I want to say this: It is not because I don’t like you or am being a snob. It’s solely for the two reasons above.
So, if I appear standoffish, it has nothing to do with you, your book, your charity, or your blog, and everything to do with my own limitations.
I genuinely care about the people who read Cerulean Sanctum. I’ve prayed for many, if not most, of you. Forgive me if I fail you in other regards.