Good Words for High Calling Bloggers

50,000 words each week. That’s how much people are writing as participants of HighCallingBlogs.com. A new draft of a nonfiction book about faith and work–each week! How awesome is that?

Gordon and I are slowly getting a handle on the gargantuan task of managing the network of HighCallingBlogs.com.

Our goal was to find 20-25 folks who might partner with us last year. It was really slow at first, so we created a two-tiered system to allow for a wider range of blogging expertise–from A-Listers like Mark D. Roberts to newbies who haven’t even written their first post.

Now, anyone can join, anyone can agree to participate in one of our professional categories, but Gordon and I would feature the best blogs and posts to help folks filter through the noise. And there was a lot more demand for this kind of network that we anticipated! After one week of asking if people were interested in this kind of two-tiered network, we had over 100 requests to join.

Now, there are over 200 new posts each week! At 250 words a post on average, we’re looking at 50,000 words of reading each week. That’s a short novel of material. We’re Dangerous Blogs for Boys. We’re Daring Blogs for Girls. We’re building the Faith and Work Almanac for 2008, one week at a time.

Gordon and I do our best to read all of it, and our goal is to comment on every post, though that hasn’t been possible lately between the two of us.

It’s turning out to be a wonderful challenge–especially since both of us are doing this as a side project to see if we can build a community. As soon as we saw what was heading for us, we knew we were going to need help. This afternoon, I’ll be talking more with Chris Cree who is going to be helping us a lot on the back end. And yesterday, one of the interns offered to help us read and comment and sift through trends in the community. And we are looking for a new web coordinator who I hope can devote some portion of time to helping with the network.

Of course, the only way to really do this is for people in the network to step up to the task with us. We’re working on a strategy to involve more volunteer leadership in the next few months, starting with one leader per category. Already, we’ve added dynamic RSS readers into each category so people can easily browse the most recent content by topic. That element is still under construction, but I’d encourage you to take a look at what we’ve done so far. Soon you’ll be able to embed those feeds in your own sidebar if you like!

I know we’re making this up as we go, but I really really believe in the value of this network. I don’t mean that in a monetary sense. We’re not trying to take over the world or create some kind of marketing machine for pushing faith and work products out to readers. I promise. We just want to show the world what it looks like when Christians think about the spiritual significance of their work.

Maybe you’ve watched the news lately. Christianity often gets reduced to politics and issues and professional ministers who are trying to grow their churches. Don’t get me wrong, my faith affects the way I think about voting and government and organized worship on a Sunday morning. But that is a very, very small part of what it means to be Christian.

God has given me a High Calling. He has sent me his Spirit as a helper. He has shown us his Word, Jesus, as an example and an inspiration and a means for salvation.

And that changes everything.

Here are some fun things I read in the network this morning:

• Dick Staub at The Kindling’s Muse writes about Glimmers of Artistic Hope.
• Every Square Inch finished his series on Charles Spurgeon with his post about Leaving Work Behind.
• Sally’s Words asks What Are You Worried About? and shares a powerful scripture I had not noticed before. (She also uses the word “gargantuan” just like me.)
• Mary DeMuth talks about Writing for God’s Glory and Their Applause with an example that really touched me.
• Spaghettipie posted her fifth Parenting Spotlight. If you are a parent and you haven’t read any of these yet, go there now.

Now, I’m off to a doctor’s appointment for routine maintenance. See you this afternoon.