Almost 4 years ago, I wrote my first blog post:
What are Christians to do? on July 5, 2010.
Since then, I have authored 868 blog posts on this blog and 391 over at wesleyankids.org. You could say that I’m rather invested in writing and sharing thoughts and resources. I am inherently an educator, and as a pastor I want to educate students, parents, and other ministers.
Since beginning to write for wesleyankids.org, I have somewhat neglected this blog. I didn’t want to, but I only have so much time in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a month… you get the idea. And if I have to choose between educating parents about parenting and neglecting the act of engaging with my two girls, then I wouldn’t really have anything to share about parenting now would I? This blog has suffered from such intentional neglect because I love my family, my job as a pastor, my role at wesleyankids.org, my current seminary education, and life itself.
However, and I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, I made an intentional effort to spend more time in 2014 on reflection. I could reflect online, but there are many things I need to reflect on that does not, nor will ever, make it online. So instead of doing only the appropriate reflection on this blog online, I decided to do some actual writing in a Journal. Now I’ve maintained a journal for years… ever since 2005, but I haven’t wrote a lot in them other than to-do lists, thoughts, and such. Not many stories made it into my journals.
That changed this year.
Since January 2014, I’ve wrote a ton of reflection stories in my journal. It takes longer for me to write than it does to type, but this process has been great. I can’t believe how many stories I’ve got in my journal from the past 5 months. I made it a rule that I would not blog any of these stories until I ran out of pages in that journal. Well, the other day I ran out, and I’ve already got several pages written in the new journal.
Now to the changes here at jeremymavis.com
Most of my journal writing reflection has to do with a limited number of categories, namely: ministry, theology, technology, parenting, and weekly reflections. So I’ve decided to re-organize this blog around those 5 categories. A sixth category, random, will capture all those posts that I want to write about but don’t fit any of the other categories, like this one.
I’ve also prettied up the blog. A couple of months ago, I switched from a theme I had for 3 years to a more interactive theme that comes loaded with features. Using those features, I’ve actually created a home page my website that introduces me in a fun way instead of a just a list of blog posts. You can check it out here. You can always access the blog posts here. There are also a list of sermons I’ve done over the years as a pastor available as well. And, as always, there is a convenient way to send me a message on my contact page.
