Growing your tribe

I don't know if he intended this, but Seth Godin's post today is a great description of how our Christian faith has grown.

As we attempt to lead our tribe, it is a great reminder of the example we need to follow.

Twitter time out

I’m in Twitter time out. Evidently, the number of people you follow can’t be much larger than the number of people who follow you. Now, I can't follow others until my followers grow. 

The geeky side of me understands. I probably initiated a few similar rules in my IT life. 

Even so, I keeping thinking of a hot afternoon in eighth grade, standing alone on the black top waiting for the lunch period to end, and thinking, I ‘like’  more people than ‘like’ me. 

Help me out and check out my new header at @lyndieb. 

Everything, Mary DeMuth's new book

Mary DeMuth invited her followers to be a part of the trailer for her new book, Everything.  This is my submission. It is hard for me to identified the exact moment Jesus became everything to me, because every time I think I know everything Jesus is, He whispers but there is more. This moment was my first realization after my conversion. What about you? When did you know Jesus was everything? 

Click Everything to learn more about the book and how you can pre-order it.
Read Mary's invitation here.  I love Mary's writing. You will too.

Today is not a history highlight

This isn’t a highlight of history. Lord, forgive us for the things we have done and the positions we have been put in to do them. Let us always believe there is another way. 

AP Highlight in History: 

On Aug. 9, 1945, the United States exploded a nuclear device over Nagasaki, Japan, instantly killing an estimated 39,000 people. The explosion came three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

How I reached 1000+ Twitter followers

This week my Twitter followers top the 1,000 mark. I’m pumped! In Twitter world, this is a drop in the bucket, but in my world, ‘oh my.’  I still learning, but here is how I got this far. To grow your follower base you need to be intentional in your twitter life, both in ‘tweeting’ and gaining followers. 

1. I set my Twitter policy and goals. I want to connect with as many people as possible sharing the message of Jesus. 

2. I intentionally seek followers. When someone follows me, I check out their Twitter profile and bio. Profile photos are helpful, but if there is no picture, I definitely check their Twitter bio. I may check their website. I follow back unless: the photo, bio or website has sexual overtones, then I block the person. The bio and or the tweets are in a foreign language; I don’t follow the person back. I don’t feel comfortable about the person; I don’t follow or I block them.

3. I send a thank you tweet to the new follower with a message like “have a great mid-week” to show I’m responding and I’m not Lyndie-bot.

4. I follow Twitter’s suggestions. Twitter makes recommendations, which I follow using the same criteria as above. These users are most often in the publishing business.

Following begets followers. 

5. I intentionally Tweet. I’m tweeting at least 5 times a day most days. I use the free plan from Buffer (www.bufferapp.com) to schedule my tweets. They go out at 9 am, noon, 5 PM, and 8 pm. 

6. I started a quotes database for content, collecting over 800 quotes. I use FIle Maker 12 for the data base (www.filemaker.com.) This is pricey software, but a good data base system. You can achieve the same results with Excel or Numbers. I capture date, quote, author, topic, title of book, page number, twitter information field, URL and comments. I collect sentences from anything I read: devotions, online articles and books. After I finished Mary DeMuth’s recent book, Beautiful Battle, I asked her if there was a hashtag to use to tweet from the book. She eagerly sent back the hashtag #beautifulbattle. This is the format of tweet from Mary’s book: ‘quote’ @MaryDeMuth #beautifulbattle. Mary’s quotes create retweets for me. 

  In Twitter world, following protocols like @username and #hashtags help your Twitter presence. 

Authors are including ready made tweets and hashtags for their books on their website to communicate to their tribe. Michael Hyatt included tweets for his new book, Platform, on his media kit page.

7. I add my Twitter contact information everywhere. 

Join the fun tweeting! Find me in Twitter world at @lyndieb. I have no connections to the products listed other than as user. 

 

Only Jesus

Today, August 6,  the church celebrates the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah joined Jesus on the mountain to talk about Jesus last days. There is so much beauty in this story for every character, but mostly because Jesus, for  a brief, shining moment glorified on earth. I wrote Only Jesus in honor of this day.

Only Jesus 

They climbed a mountain just to watch Him pray, 

Peter, James and John fell asleep along the way, 

Little did they know it would be a gospel day, 

For the glory of the Savior was revealed that very day, 

A flash of light awoke them, and to their great surprise

Moses and Elijah were standing by His side

While talking of days ahead, His journey to the cross

He changed into a glory that made the world seem lost. 

Peter was excited, started building plans,

But the kingdom he was seeing wasn’t built by human hands,

Yet love started building in Peter’s heart that day, 

For God’s law and His prophets merged into the Way

Before their very eyes, God’s kingdom had appeared

And even God the Father, joined in with His cheer

“Listen to My Son, for His Life I have ordained”

And when the Glory lifted, only one could still remain. 

It was Jesus, only Jesus,

The vision of the prophets and the answer to the law.

Jesus, Only Jesus

Is the very face of God. 

So thank you Lord, for Moses and Elijah, too. 

But most of all for knowing they would never do.

Their laws and their visions showed us how to live

but to save a soul as lost as mine, it took all You had to give. 

It was Jesus, only Jesus, 

The vision of the prophet and the answer to the law

Jesus, only Jesus

Is the very face of God. 

American Bandstand - My MTV

August 5, 1957"American Bandstand," hosted by Dick Clark, made its network TV debut on ABC.

In the late ‘50s, afternoon TV shows helped me go from elementary student to big sis to my younger siblings. 

Howdy Doody brought us together watching a program we all enjoyed. Can you say ‘Howdy Doody’ without smiling?

We hung out for a while in the magical world of  The Mickey Mouse Club where anything was possible. 

After the end of big kid school, the sounds of Les Elgart playing Bandstand Boogie took us to   American Bandstand. In real life, those teenagers would have never let us so close. We watched what they wore, listened to what they said, paid attention to what they liked. We dreamed of one day ‘hopping over to Philadelphia’ and being on band stand with them. We identified Philadelphia with  American Bandstand before we knew about the Declaration of Independence. 

I found this video of the original theme music. I’m not able to verify it’s legality, but the photos are great. I love the photo of the saddle oxfords. My socks always looked like those.  

Howdy Doody, Mickey Mouse and American Bandstand. Could life had been any better?