Post 1K

This is the 1,000th post here on the Desperate Pastor blog.

Wow.

My first post, on April 25, 2009, was titled, "The Beauty of Broken Things." Now, not quite three years later, it is a little hard to believe that this blog should pass 1,000 blog posts shortly after my daily prayer blog reached 2,000 prayers posted.

In that time, I've gone from struggle to victory, from discouragement to depression to deliverance, from pastoring full-time back to writing full-time (but still, in many ways, of course, a pastor at heart). I have blogged about the Bible (32 times), books (177 times), the church (83 times), a "church of the week" (122), Cobblestone Community Church (80), conferences and retreats (only once?), creativity (13), health (35), a "laugh of the week" (66), leadership (90), ministry (84), prayer (31), preaching (49), quotes (44), staff (4), technology (27), travel (4), and a "video of the week" (113). Fifty of my posts have been "rants and riffs," and just recently I started offering a "link of the week."

I've thought many, many times about discontinuing the blog. Still do, from time to time. Still may. But for now, I'm amazed and grateful to have reached 1,000 posts, through thick and thin, an average of almost a post a day.

So, it seems as good a time as any to try to narrow down those 1,000 posts to ten favorites. Seems impossible. Not that I've been that good, that often. But I CAN be that self-adulating. So I shall give it a try. Here they are, my personal top ten--out of a thousand--Desperate Pastor posts:

1. Sense-ational Preaching

2. How I Got My Groove Back

3. How Technology Helps Me

4. Top Ten Things I've Learned as a Pastor

5. A 21st Century Epidemic

6. Me and My Prayer Journal

7. Balancing Ministry and Family

8. Pastoral Naiveté

9. The Blessings of Compline

10. Why Every Pastor Should Go to Israel

Wow, that's really hard. I would probably change the list if I thought just one or two seconds longer. So I won't.

But if you're reading this post, thank you. Thank you for whatEVER posts you read on this blog. Thank you for traveling this far with me. I hope you'll stick around and walk it with me for as long as it lasts.