The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,400 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 20 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 691 posts. There were 24 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 12mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 15th with 148 views. The most popular post that day was Kenneth James Sniecinski’s Personal Blurb.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, drernie.com, otpproductions.com, mail.live.com, and inthesunnyspot.net.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jon andreas, scripture observation application prayer, soap scripture observation application prayer, a long obedience in the same direction – pdf, and purpose driven life chapter 26.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Kenneth James Sniecinski’s Personal Blurb November 2005

Growing Church Leaders March 2010
1 comment

Proverbs 3:5-6 SOAP (Scripture Observation Application Prayer) for LDT July 2007

What You Can Do to Help Those Behind Bars by Jon Andreas July 2007
18 comments

Demolishing Strongholds by Philip John October 2007

I hope to approve the final galley proof later today, which means it should be available for purchase at Amazon et al within a couple weeks. Expected retail price is $25 — not bad for a 200 page bible study.

“Holy, Holy, Holy”: Growing Church Leaders

Introduction: The Road to Holiness

They [the four living creatures] do not rest day or night, saying:

“Holy, holy, holy,

Lord God Almighty,

Who was and is and is to come!” – Revelations 4:8b

I did not intend to write about holiness.  My goal was to develop a Bible study for training Christian leaders.
Read the rest of this entry »

It is time for a revolution in how the church nurtures new leaders.

As Jim Downing of the Navigators points out, Jesus trained his disciples by imparting:

• Knowledge, through teaching
• Character, by modeling and example
• Skills, through guided experience

While knowledge can be learned anywhere, character and skills are best developed as part of a community that lives, worships, and serves together – i.e., a church.

That is why we developed Growing Church Leaders is a way for mature leaders to train the next generation of leaders in their churches to think biblically, live wisely, and serve faithfully. We encourage pastors to meet weekly with a small group of “faithful men and women, who will in turn teach others,” to lead them in:

• Memorizing bible verses
• Reading from classic Christian books
• Leading devotions, typically from the Psalms or Proverbs
• Studying entire chapters of the Bible, verse by verse
• Exploring how Scripture applies to their lives
• Responding with repentance, action, and worship

Our prayer is that every growing church will invest in establishing future leaders on a solid foundation of biblical truth, character formation, and spiritual discipline.  For that reason, this material is available as a free download at http://2transform.us/grow under a Creative Commons “share alike” license, as well as in book form. This allows you to adapt it to the needs of your church or denomination, as long as you allow others to do the same.

May God use His Word to build His Body for His Kingdom!

In Christ,

Ernest N. Prabhakar

Kingsway Community Church

San Jose, California, U.S.A.

May, 2010

Growing Church Leaders is a way for those who are mature to train the next generation of leaders in their churches to think biblically, live wisely, and serve faithfully. This course is designed to help senior leaders guide a small group of faithful men and women in:
* Memorizing Bible verses
* Reading classic Christian books
* Leading devotions, typically from Psalms or Proverbs
* Studying entire chapters of the Bible, verse by verse
* Exploring how Scripture applies to their lives
* Responding with repentance, action, and worship

Our prayer is that every growing church will invest in establishing future leaders on a solid foundation of biblical truth, Christian character, and spiritual discipline—i.e., practical holiness.

What Christian Leaders Are Saying

• “You have produced a Bible study magna cum laude.” —Luis Bush, Transform World.

• “Impressed with the quality of content and presentation … you are to be congratulated on a job well done!” —Barney Coombs, Salt and Light Ministries International

• “I really like the format, and it is well written for easy reading and good learning. I wish you well in this whole venture, which I believe will be of great benefit to the Body of Christ.” —Brian Watts, King’s Online Bible School

• “Ernie remained faithful to the teachings entrusted to him while presenting them in his own unique dialogue format. I enjoyed teaching the material in this book and look forward to our next class.” —John Isaacs, Kingsway Community Church

ERNEST PRABHAKAR is a ninth-generation Christian and second-generation immigrant from India. His ancestors converted from Hinduism in the early 1700s at the dawn of the Protestant missionary movement. His family immigrated to Chicago in 1967 a few months before he was born. He was raised and confirmed in the Lutheran Church, where his parents continue to be active in lay ministry.

Ernest holds degrees in physics from both Caltech and MIT, though for the last decade he has worked as a product manager for a large technology company in Silicon Valley. This book represents both the scientist’s desire to elegantly represent eternal truth and the marketer’s passion to communicate timely facts that engage the emotions and the will.

He and his wife Sandhya live with their two children in Santa Clara, California. They attend Kingsway Community Church in San Jose, where Ernest serves as a junior elder. You can often find him online at http://2transform.us/ and http://twitter.com/DrErnie/.

[Autobiographical Blurb for the book jacket of Growing Church Leaders]

Ernest Prabhakar is a ninth-generation Christian and second-generation immigrant from India.  His ancestors converted from Hinduism in the early 1700′s at the dawn of the Protestant missionary movement. His family emigrated to Chicago in 1967 a few months before he was born. He was raised and confirmed in the Lutheran church, where his parents continue to be active in lay ministry.

Ernest holds degrees in Physics from both Caltech and MIT, though for the last decade he has worked as a product manager for a large technology company in Silicon Valley. This book represents both the scientist’s desire to elegantly represent eternal truth and the marketer’s passion to communicate timely facts that engage the emotions and the will.

He and his wife Sandhya live with their two children in Santa Clara, California. They attend Kingsway Community Church in San Jose, where Ernest serves as a junior elder. You can often find him online at http://2transform.us/ and http://twitter.com/DrErnie/.

The goal of this process is to help you build the habits and trust necessary to safely and consistently resolve conflict in your marriage. Please review this together, then sign and date it. You are of course free to amend this by mutual consent at any time, but I encourage you to try it exactly as written at least once, to get the ball rolling.
Read the rest of this entry »

Growing Church Leaders is a tool for pastors and others in active ministry who want to nurture the next generation of leaders to:

• think biblically
• live wisely
• serve faithfully

Each of those three topics is covered in a separate module of twelve lessons each.   Every lesson includes:

• scripture to memorize
• assigned readings from classic Christian books
• devotional time, typically from Psalms or Proverbs
• interlinear bible study covering an entire chapter
• discussion questions
• RAW (Repent, Act, Worship) challenges

The goal of all this is to teach theology, character formation, and christian disciplines in context. Specifically, in the context of:

• the whole counsel of Scripture
• existing pastoral relationships
• the local church
• loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength

Our prayer is that existing leaders will use this as a vehicle to pass their values and vision on to the next generation, by meeting on a weekly basis for nine months with “faithful men and women, who will in turn pass it on to others.”

To that end, this course is also available for free at <http://2transform.us/grow> under a Creative Commons license, allowing you to customize and adapt it as needed (as long as you allow others to do the same).

Thanks to Andrew and others for their feedback on rebranding the LEAD class.

My current best thinking is:

• Title: Growing Church Leaders
• Subtitle: Foundational Bible Studies for the Next Generation
• Volumes:
  1. Think Biblically
  2. Live Wisely
  3. Serve Faithfully

I like the idea that we are encouraging existing leaders to teach a new generation that is “Biblical, Wise, and Faithful.”

My only regret is that it doesn’t have a useful “short name” or acronym. “GCL: FBS-NG” isn’t nearly as clever as LEAD!, though the title is much more searchable and self-explanatory.

Anyone have any better ideas?

While exploring publication options, one key piece of advice that jumped out at me was to choose an appropriate title, since that influences keywords, URLs, and everything else that people will use to find a book. I’ve never been entirely happy with “Leadership Enrichment and Development” because of its extreme generic-ness, despite the catchy acronym ‘LEAD’.

The two themes that I’d like to emphasize are:

• Training Church Leaders
• Interlinear Bible Study

The challenge is finding a viable name that isn’t already taken. Here’s what  I’ve found in use so far:

• Growing Church Leaders | Articles | BuildingChurchLeaders.com
• Amazon.com: Growing Church Leaders (9781931551038): Robert H. Ramey: Books
• ScholarlyCommons@AUT: Nurturing servant leaders in religious education
• Amazon.com: Building Leaders: Blueprints for Developing Leadership …
• Church Leadership Training Institute – clti.org
• Church Leadership Development International – Home
• Church Transformation Ministries – Church Leadership Development … (many uses of that term — good or bad?)

After naming the series, we also need to title the individual volumes, currently:

• Theological Foundations
• Christian Character
• Skills for Service

Not bad, but somewhat unbalanced (not fully alliterative, or evocative).  For alliteration, we could change the first to “Thinking Theologically“.  Conversely, to pursue the construction metaphor, we could make the last two “Constructing Character” and “Sharpened for Service.” But that might be too cheesy even for me…

Any suggestions?