LaRosa Johnson {dot} com

I’m not big on making resolutions for the new year, but I’ll admit that I have spent the past few days mulling over ideas. Not ideas of how I can improve myself or anything like that. Instead, I’m sitting here trying to think about ideas for ways to do more with Trailblazin Ministries in 2010.

Coming into this year I had come up with a few ideas that I thought were going to work out rather well. One of my goals was to start on a devotion series for 1st Thessalonians, after having finished James in December of 2008. Well, it got started but not until April, primarily because it took me forever to get my outline together for chapter one, and I’m still only part way through my outline for chapter two as we near the close of the year. The other major idea was to begin a study on spiritual gifts. That plan didn’t come together at all; I didn’t even get a chance to start on it. I guess the Lord had other plans & didn’t allow that to ever come together.

2009 wasn’t entirely a disappointment. The site got moved to a backend content management system (from Movable Type to Joomla to Drupal), as well as a much needed redesign. In terms of running the site, things are going a lot more smoothly. Plus, George Sly took on a bigger part this year, adding his own devotion series. So, I won’t complain. Even though all of the plans didn’t come together as expected, it was still a solid year.

Now, as I get ready to move into 2010, I really have a burden for putting up more content on Trailblazin Ministries, and doing it more consistently. I’m determined to get away from the music (not entirely, but it’ll take a major backseat to teaching), and I want there to be a heavy emphasis on teaching the Bible. There are two ideas that are really sitting in the forefront of my mind, but I really don’t know if I have the motivation to do them, even though I think they’d be great ideas.

The first idea is to have Trailblazin Ministries go through the entire Bible. I had thought about doing it in a single year, but that would be about 5-6 chapters per day, Monday through Friday; yet, if I do it in two years, it cuts the reading in half. Now, along with that, I would give my own summary & commentary of sorts on the text that’s being read. The big thing is that it’s such a major commitment and I don’t want to get it started and then quit a month or two into it. I’m afraid to try because I know my tendency to not see things through, as well as not really knowing how heavy my schedule may be. But, if I don’t try, I won’t know if I could have ever done it.

The second idea is more feasible, but I’m still not quite sure how it would work. It would be to do a “word study of the week” where I pick a Greek or Hebrew word and put together a word study on it, with definition, a listing of its usages, and so on. The only real hard part here is that most of my original language resources are in copyright and I don’t want to run into any kind of copyright issues if I have to copy & paste text. That’s really the only big hurdle and it’d be easy enough to plan out the list for the entire year.

Not to mention, I’d also like to do something more with my podcast.

All of this would be on top of maintaining the 1st Thessalonians devotion series, as well as any other content. I’d love to make this happen, but quite frankly I’m scared of failure. I really don’t want to start something and not see it through. So, pray for me, pray that I can get some clear direction for which way to take Trailblazin Ministries in 2010. If you have any ideas for content or for the podcast, feel free to pass them along. I’m open to all ideas, and I’ll at least consider them.

LaRosa Johnson Ministry bible study, Ministry, new year, planning, Trailblazin Ministries

A favorite quote from one of my favorite television shows, The A-Team.

That’s what I felt like saying yesterday when I was finally able to figure out a longstanding “bug” that I was having with the Trailblazin Ministries website and the drupal engine I was using. To make a long story short, I’m using a feature to automatically publish content at a future date that I set; but, when content would get published, comments would be disabled (and I wanted them enabled by default). So, after an article was published & live on the site, I’d have to manually go back and edit it to turn on the comments, which totally defeats the purpose of being able to automate the publishing of my content.

Well, I did some playing around with my local install of TM (via Wampserver) and tinkering with the settings. The main issue is that when “cron” is run (the tool that runs background processes on the site) it runs as an anonymous user, which does not have permission to administer comments (thus they get turned off). After playing around with some test posts, I found the problem. Apparently, I was using a method of “save post” & “publish post” together with “publish latest pending revision” (I have a revisioning system setup) and that was causing the issue. Whenever a post is saved it used the permission of that user, which is anonymous in this case. So, I simply undid the “save post” & “publish post” options & just left the “publish latest pending revision” and all is well!

I’m glad I got it figured out. I had posted on the Drupal forums, but that was no help since nobody replied; but, there’s a great feeling of satisfaction knowing that I was able to figure it out on my own, especially knowing that the error was caused by my own stupidity/ignorance. Either way, I’m happy and Trailblazin Ministries is working like a charm, just like I want it to!

LaRosa Johnson Tech Stuff drupal, Trailblazin Ministries, wampserver

In recent days, today included, I’ve had a few chats with my friend Antoine. On any given day, we talk about almost anything, especially in relation to living the Christian life. A few of our more recent conversations have really stuck in my head; most aren’t really related, other than showing the evolution of my spiritual walk and maturing as a person.

The first conversation was had earlier this week; we were chatting about Christian hip-hop music. I had mentioned the name of a few albums & songs that I had come across of late. Most of them left me shaking my head, and wondering what had become of the genre. In our chat, I had made a comment to the extent that I was really starting to lose hope/faith in the genre. His response to me was, “Starting? How about lost and looking for a reason to keep it there?” (paraphrase). It really made sense, and his follow-up comment wondering why I try to convince myself otherwise was spot on. For the most part, I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with the genre. I still support it because I dig the music (most days) and my site has found a nice niche with it. On the other hand, there’s a lot I see that I could do without, leaving me wondering why I don’t just let it all go.

With that in mind, I’m going to try my first experiment. I’m going to get rid of most of the Christian hip-hop from my Zune and car (leaving it on my computer, of course). In its place, I’m going to make use of my Zune Pass and add some of the other musical genres that I’ve been listening to of late, particularly jazz, soul, UK R&B/Pop, some electronic music, and anything else I find appealing. There are a few CHH albums I’ll keep around because I find them edifying; but it will only be a few (let’s say less than 20 out of the hundreds that I own).

Why do it? Mainly to get along without it; I’ve basically been listening to it non-stop for a little more than a decade. I’m tired of waiting for the scene to mature, and it’s not like it’s my “calling.” So, I’m just going to let it be and see where God takes me. Who knows, I may not look back. I don’t have a timeframe for this experiment, I’m just going to let it take its course.

That’s the first experiment. The second conversation was had this afternoon. I was telling Antoine how I felt that Trailblazin Ministries was in a good place right now, other than the fact that I wish that I could have content to put up daily, instead of being so sporadic. I told him that I’d like to see devotions published daily (M-F) with a full length study published monthly, along with sporadic music reviews & articles. His comment to me was, “Why aren’t you?” I told him that it was a time issue. He told me that it was a lame excuse and that if I really wanted to do it I could make it happen by simply better managing my time & prioritizing (much like I did when I picked up Hebrew this year). In thinking about it, I see where he’s coming from. There’s a lot of idle time in the day where I find myself just surfing the Internet; I could use that time for study and writing.

So, that’s my second experiment. I’m going to challenge myself to cut back on the “idle” times and be more diligent at studying and writing. I don’t think I’ll immediately get to writing devotions every day of the week, but I can start with at least two or three per week, and build from there. As far as devotions go, I’ll probably have to pick up a few additional topics of study so that I can remain fresh without focusing too hard on a single subject. That will help because if I get stuck in one topic/study, I can move to another and keep moving with content.

Experiment number three? Nothing major, just continuing to improve my management skills at work and keeping myself motivated. That’s another talk Antoine & I had. His words of wisdom have had immediate benefit, making for a productive end of the week. I just need to keep growing and learning, figuring out what works best for me, instead of simply doing what may have worked for someone else.

Let the experiments commence…

LaRosa Johnson LaRosa, Life, Ramblings advice, Christian hip-hop, experiment, Music, Trailblazin Ministries, writing