Thanks to the work of the Barefoot Preacher, we will be starting to delete inactive blogs off our list here. If for some reason your blog disappears, please let us know and we will get you back on in a snap.

Welcome to Bishop Scott Jones who has just added his voice to the MethoBlog.

We've been made aware of some problems with at least three Wordpress based sites whose feeds are acting strangely and for whom we are getting multiple posts at one time. We've not been able to full address the problem, but we are looking at it. It seems as if all on self-hosted sites (not Wordpress.com) and may have multiple blogs associated with that site. Please check your feeds (Gavin, Jeff and Kim especially) to see if there is something odd at your end. --jay

Hi all. I am going to take a risk and open up the commenting system to anybody. Trying to maintain user accounts for all has gotten too unwieldy and there are user farms that spam those as well. I may very well move to a different commenting system to help, but let's see how things go. Comment away.

Last week at our session of the Tennessee Annual Conference, we saw a major generational shift in regards to the clergy delegation for General Conference. From what I can tell, only one delegate who had been previously was elected, and many in our delegation skewed toward the youngerish end of the clergy pool.

Was this an aberration? What are you seeing in your elections throughout the connection? Is there a generational shift happening church wide, and if so, how do you think it will effect the General Conference?

Leave your comments and let's talk about trends we're seeing.

It's hard to believe, but back in 2004 I originally registered the domain for the MethoBlog and set up the first iteration of this site. The original purpose was to have a space to blog about the General Conference in Pittsburgh that year and to have a site that was more focused on Methodist faith and practice. However, when Shane Raynor was forced to shut down his site that had previously aggregated MethoBlogger content, Gavin Richardson and I reworked the MethoBlog to take on this role, and in 2008 I put together the template and format that you see now, using the state of the art at the time, Drupal 5. This format has served us well, and I think the majority of folks use the RSS feed to keep up with the MethoBlogging world, but the site is getting long in the tooth, and it is more than time for an upgrade. The problem that I have is that I'm a United Methodist pastor with more responsibilities than I can shake a stick at, so we really need to find a Drupal developer who would be willing to give some pro-bono time to working on MethoBlog 3.0. If you think you would be willing to take this on or know somebody who might be interested, click on the "Contact Us" link at the top of the page and let's talk.

We're always looking for ways to help pay for this site, and to help you express your MethoStyle. As such, we are creating a line of stuff on Zazzle.com featuring sayings by John Wesley. Trust us . . . we ain't getting rich off the royalties we make on that site, but every dollar or so helps in the end. Get your Metho-lifestyle on and start wearing John in public.
create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Every year about this time I get a notice from my web host telling me that they are demanding a pound of flesh for hosting this site. I confess that this MethoBlog thing sort of runs on it's own, simply aggregating content from you and spitting it back out to help you keep up with the conversation in the MethoWorld. I don't spend as much time as I should maintaining the site, but since people keep asking to have their blogs included and since it seems that people are using the RSS feed, we keep on going.

So, all of this leads me to a request that I hate to ask. Back when I started this thing, we were a two salary (two clergy, two church) family and coming up with a couple of hundred bucks a year was workable. These days we are down to a single pastor's income that isn't exactly in the top ranks of clergy salaries in our conference. Coming up with that couple of hundred bucks is a bit more of a strain. SO, I am coming to you, the community that uses this site, to see if you might be able to kick in a few bucks and help out. I'm not looking to raise much, so every $5 helps. All I am looking for is a few dollars from friends who find this place helpful to help me keep it going.

Thanks again for your participation here. I always have great intentions of upgrading and helping to make this site more useful, but the life of being a pastor always seems to get in the way. Please know how much I appreciate your support, and especially your insights into life in the Methodist way, and the Kingdom of God.

Peace, Jay

Sorry all. A couple of you have complained about a blog that was leaving spam and I confess that I only quickly scanned it. The "articles" didn't look like typical spam posts so I thought the author was just prolific, but after reading again it's clear that spam as taken over his blog. We have cut him off and so things should be a bit more laid back for a while. --jay

If you have a chance, head on over to http://onlywonder.com/2010/11/05/united-methodist-parsonages/ where I am asking some questions about our system of parsonage based housing. Here's an opportunity for you to vent about your parsonage, offer suggestions to improve our system, and share your funny parsonage stories.