so you know when you used to get an “A” on your spelling test, your parents would put it up on your family’s fridge, right?
this is kind of the grown-up-i-love-marketing equivalent of that. mom, my name’s in business week! and i’m printing it off and putting it up on my fridge. along with seth’s head.
several months ago, business week interviewed me for an article on seth godin, and how his principles and brilliance have been absorbed in many channels — from corporations, to artists, and even to little girl bible bloggers (yours truly).
I got an email from my buddy Brad at Catalyst. The Catalyst Vanagon is on a road trip and drove through the Baton Rouge area shortly after Hurricane Gustav ripped right through. Since it was not a hurricane of “Katrina” proportion, the media let it die pretty fast.
Healing Place Church, led by Pastor Dino Rizzo, is a great church in that area. I’ve known of the amazing stuff HPC has been doing locally for the last several years. LV Hanson (who I had the honor of meeting a couple months ago) met up with Dino to see how the blogging community can help.
Here is what they need:
“As of Friday, Sept. 5th, power is expected to be out in parts of southern Louisiana for 4-6 weeks; homes are destroyed, and many people in “the bayou” have yet to be reached. They need help! We asked Dino what they need and how the Catalyst audience might be able to help.”
His answer was simple - please send us blue tarps!
Will you send one (1) blue tarp to Healing Place Church as way of helping the recovery efforts from Hurricane Gustav? Our goal is 50 Blue Tarps by Friday, September 12th.
You guys have pulled together and sent over 100 mosquito nets to malaria ravaged countries. 120 books to pastors in the Dominican Republic. You have fed 80 families for an entire month through the Compassion Global Food Crisis.
Another opportunity to be love in a very tangible and needed way is here!
To send a blue tarp, order one AT THIS LINK and have it shipped to:
ONE (1) BLUE TARP
Healing Place Church
19202 Highland Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70809
225.753.2273
When you have purchased the tarp, please leave a comment (anonymously if you wish) so that they can measure and prepare for how many they will be receiving.
I realize the tarps are a little expensive so if you’d like to chip in toward the purchase of a tarp, please send me a PayPal (flowerdust@gmail.com) with the amount you would like to contribute and I will purchase as many as I can on 9/11 (and send everyone who sent PayPal a receipt for accountability).
Thank you guys SO MUCH. I can’t tell you what an awesome example you have set to the blogosphere. BlogHer (a HUGE estrogen filled website) even picked up on what you guys have done and featured this interview on their HOME PAGE yesterday. WAY TO LEAD THE WAY!!! Let’s keep it moving!
i had been out of church for a good part of five years, involved in many things i shouldn’t have been involved in. my best friend and i had just moved from dallas to kansas city and i started crushing on a hot guitar player named chris. his band was playing at a church so we decided to go.
something happened in that church. i thought it was a panic attack but it ended up being god blowing my face off in a very clear way, calling me back. i hid in the back of the room behind a partition, trying to keep my heart rate under 250 and prevent myself from hyperventilating.
a very spunky girl with bright red hair came up and out of nowhere, asked if she could pray for me. just what i needed. another religious crazy person. at 21, i had vowed to keep anyone religious far from my heart. however, i obliged. she prayed for things nobody would have known about, including my future involvement in ministry.
over the course of a few months, she suckered me into volunteering in that church’s youth ministry. a year later, i was hired on full time, and now, almost five years after that church-induced panic attack, i’ve been in full time vocational ministry.
in that time, we’ve both gotten married to the loves of our lives (she was my maid of honor) and have moved miles away from our families. me, only to nashville but her to south africa, where she and her husband feed babies and buy food and love the least and the dying.
she lives and breathes in life and death all the time, and she had a post today i thought everyone should read.
go say hi to my friend kristi. give her a hug. she is in the trenches and more faithful to being obedient than probably anyone else i have ever met.
It’s been a little bit of a hot topic lately…my boss, Pete, recently asked me why I don’t advertise on my blog…and then someone else asked me if I feel like my blog has turned into an advertisement for Compassion International. Today, my friend Ben posted on a plethora of blogging stuff, including advertising.(He also noted my incessant changing of profile pictures on my blog. Busted!)
So, I thought I’d clarify what I put up on my real estate here and why.
1. Nobody pays me to put up anything “ad worthy” on my blog. I get asked but always say no. Anything you see in my sidebars or read on my blogs I put there because I see value in it. People send me books all the time to review and I never promise anything…if it’s worth talking about, I’ll talk about it, but if this blog is not the right place, then I won’t. I don’t get paid when people sponsor kids and all the Catalyst talk and links have been at my own free will.
2. I do get paid when you buy a book from my sidebar. I use Amazon Associates to do that. However, all they money from that goes right back into the G.O. Ministry pastor’s library. I keep nothing.
3. No, I will never sell advertising on my blog. Ever.
Why not? It costs me a whopping $5/month to host this site. Your comments, emails, and support and love for each other (and for the ministries and people I’ve highlighted) is invaluable. And it keeps things pure…if it’s something worthwhile, we’ll talk about it.
What are your thoughts on blog advertising?
Disclaimer: If you or someone you love has ads on their blog, good for them. More power to you. This ain’t about trash talking. I love you all.
20 Comments
Blogging · Leadership · Writing
something happened in that church. i thought it was a panic attack but it ended up being god blowing my face off in a very clear way, calling me back. i hid in the back of the room behind a partition, trying to keep my heart rate under 250 and prevent myself from hyperventilating. 
