This is the first time I’m making note of a mile stone on the blog, but this post is #200, and its been just over a year since I started the site.
Post #100 was my post talking about how excited I was for the upcoming Orange Conference that I posted on March 28th.
At Post #100, I had amassed 16,000 hits, but I was still on wordpress.com. A week after posting that, I switched to being self hosted on wordpress.org because I reached the goal I had set before switching of reaching 20,000 hits, and it was three posts that set me over the edge, Youth Room Atmosphere , When it’s no longer any fun, and 5 easy excuses for sub-par Youth Ministry.
Since Post #100, a lot has changed, both personally and on the blog.
I already mentioned that I switched from wordpress.com to being self hosted through ainsworth hosting, and obviously that brought along some changes in the design. But I also was asked to start writing for Churchleaders.com. But in August, I also switched the name of the site from Small Town Student Ministry to Intentional Student Ministry as we had some major changes in our life.
If you go back through to post #100, many of my posts were about being in a small town and also dealt with a lot of tension we had at our last ministry. Since then, we resigned from our church and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and are now serving at an amazing, amazing church. I was reading a post last night that got me in so much trouble for writing, but I still hold true, and how I have exactly what I said I needed in a Senior Pastor here. It’s amazing the difference.
During that transition, I wrote maybe 4 blog posts over the course of three months, and that really hurt the stats, but many new people have found the site, and that is encouraging.
I will say that I feel now like I am just another voice in the crowd of Youth Pastor’s with blogs. When I was smalltownstudentministry.com, it felt like I was one of the rare voices for that giant group of youth pastors. And I will say, also, that I don’t have as much time to blog as I used to.
But here is to hoping that post #300 won’t take as long as #200 did.
Until then, thanks for reading.
200 baby!!! nice job. hard to write small town student ministry when your new youth group is the size of a small town!! keep up the good work. i am counting on you making the top 20 youth min blogs this year.