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Greetings CF Forum Members! 
Okay, so I have these specific ideas in my head (and my heart) for this Christian Apologetics website and blog that I’ve made a little headway in starting, although I am an amateur at this and have never done anything like it before. I am seeking some food for thought, resources, inspiration and encouragement as far as laying the proper foundation and getting myself pointed in the right direction with the design and layout of the website as well as content for my first blog article. I have sought out some help and support from other places on the Internet and have managed to find a helpful online blogging course called the Christian Blogger’s Bootcamp (among some other helpful internet resources), and while this is generally a great resource for learning how start a new Christian blog (or improving an existing blog), it still does not cover the specific kind of content that I plan to include and write about on this particular website and blog. So, that is why I prayerfully feel led by God Almighty to the people of Christian Forums to gain some wise advice and suggestions. I pray that the good Lord will speak to me through the people of Christian Forums. ;-)
For starters, you can find my website at the following URL: www.fearlesstruth.org. My website is called Fearless Truth Ministries and it’s slogan is “Courageously Revolutionizing Culture One Belief At A Time”. You can read the Mission & Vision statement for this ministry by clicking here, although I will include it in this post just for good reference:
So far, this is all the information I have put up on the website. The rest of it is just Wordpress with a framework and theme (called Extra) that I purchased (via subscription) from ElegantThemes.com. The website’s domain name is registered with GoDaddy and the site is hosted on BlueHost (www.bluehost.com). So far, I have done a little design and layout of the site, and as you can plainly see it is still a bit buggy and not perfect in appearance (as well as incomplete), but I’d figure it’d be best not to hassle with the bugs for right now (just work on the design); I’ll fix the bugs later. ;-)
Okay, so I don’t mean to sound like a perfectionist (I try not to be), but since the first blog article is supposed to lay the foundation for everything else that follows, it can’t just be a good article, it has to be a great article! The article doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to have a standard of excellence that will really make it stand out and get as much attention as possible from new readers and subscribers. ;-)
But, I really need your prayers. I really need some help. I need advice. I need suggestions. I need direction ----->
It’s not that I don’t already know what topic(s) it is, specifically, that I want to write about for the first blog article, it’s just that I am struggling in my attempts to research the topic(s) that this article is supposed to be about and put all the information together in such a constructive manner (and in my own words, of course [no plagiarizing!]) that it just flows into excellent, verifiably accurate, writing! I definitely need reliable, trustworthy sources of information for research. I just can’t expect to get right down to the truth of matters by compromising on the reliability and honesty of my research. Amen to that! †
Okay, with that said, so just what exactly is this first blog article and this ministry generally supposed to be about? Well, I’ve already got off to a great start with my mission and values statements, don’t you think? But the mission and values statements only touches the basics, or the superficial, that is. So from here, I will try to describe it and summarize in some more detail what Fearless Truth Ministries is meant to be about (without actually writing a complete blog article as a post on Christian Forums! ;-) ). . .
It begins by narrowing things down to the culture and the fact that we are now living in a post-truth era in civilization and society. What does that mean, exactly, when I say post-truth? Well, in case you’re not already familiar with the term, allow me to explain. Around the end of 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries selected the word post-truth as the International Word of the Year 2016. The word’s definition is: “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The link to the official article about this can be found by clicking here (please click on the link and read the short article before going any further ;-) ). You can, of course, if you need to, find plentiful other references and information about the term post-truth through the use of search engines on the Internet.
The truth of the matter is, is that belief and truth are not the same thing. While belief is a subjective matter, truth is an objective matter. In other words, while a person may choose to believe whatever he/she wants about any specific topic/subject, no matter what it is, what that individual believes about a specific topic/subject does not change the truth even if the person’s belief is not the truth. Another way of saying this is that nobody can change reality, regardless of how strongly they believe in something that doesn’t fit with reality. Belief doesn’t change the facts. While belief may vary from person to person, facts and truth always remain constant. Truth is always the same. Truth just is what it is, like it or not. Am I making philosophical sense? ;-)
That being said, in many cultures around the world today, billions of people are basing their personal beliefs on subjective appeals to emotion rather than on objective reasonable facts. People simply believe what they want to hear, or whatever “tickles their ears” so to speak, rather than believing what they need to hear, which is truth. In contrast, people often reject any belief simply on the grounds that it makes them feel uncomfortable (or even scares them), even if that particular belief really is the truth because their is evidence that strongly supports it and it passes all logic, reason, common sense and rational tests.
Fearless Truth is not meant to be a people-pleasing ministry at all, especially when it comes to matters of truth and personal belief. What God knows about truth (especially biblical truth, although extra-biblical truth is still important) is more important to this ministry than what people believe about matters of truth. We are not to tell people what they want to hear, but rather what they need to hear, which is the truth. Now I’m not trying to claim that Fearless Truth is to have 100% monopoly on truth; such a claim would make the ministry cultish, is immoral and unethical, and personally, I would definitely discourage anyone from following any group (religious, political, business, etc.) or individual that claims to have a 100% monopoly on truth (thinks they’re always right), regardless of their worldview. Fact is, people run organizations, no person is ever perfect (Romans 3:23), therefore, people make mistakes (even honest mistakes) and can’t possibly always be right. Indeed, a monopoly on truth claim is one of the most common warning signs of a cult, and Fearless Truth is no cult! Amen to that! †
Although Fearless Truth may not be a people-pleasing ministry, as Christians, we are commanded to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). And this is in accordance with the mission statement: “. . .to lovingly apply Biblical and Christian principles of defending truth. . .”. Despite the fact that, as believers in Christ, we are not to concede truth to emotional appeal, I do not believe that it is realistic to just expect people to always accept a truth as personal belief that emotionally makes them uncomfortable or afraid of it, even if the belief is reasonable and makes good sense. I do not wish to share the love and truth of the gospel with people based solely on logic, reason and common sense by itself and expect them to just accept it, whilst at the same time people are still struggling with their emotions to come terms with the truth and be at peace with the truth, a peace that surpasses all understanding (Phillipians 4:7). A better method is to help people to understand, at an emotional level, the good that is in good and the evil that is in evil, or in other words, why should a person feel good about accepting a particular truth as personal belief instead of allowing it to make them uncomfortable or afraid of it? Speak the truth in love, with humility, gentleness and patience.
I have heard it said many times before by people in Christian ministry that often the best method to defend truth and get your points across to others is to explain it in story-form. This is why I plan to convey the points I intend to make in this introductory blog article not just from a practical perspective, but also from a historical perspective to get the message across to readers, namely from comparing good times (the good ole days ;-) ) from the bad times in American History, by making a comparison between times of revival and spiritual awakening to times of division and cultural disintegration into immorality in American History. And using these times in U.S. History to explain that there is a strong connection between truth and freedom (John 8), that the more a culture, society or an even entire nation embraces truth, the more freedom those people will have; the more a culture, society or an entire nation rejects truth, the less freedom those people will have. Historians have already identified three periods of great awakenings and spiritual revival in American History (Google this). There have also been (this according to my own perspective) at least 2 periods of deep division and moral decline in the culture, one of them occuring in the years leading up to and throughout the American Civil War, and the other originating from the time of former President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal in the 90s through the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 up to the present day.
Make no mistake, Fearless Truth, in accordance with it’s mission and vision statements, is a Christian ministry whose sole focus is to boldly go and make a positive impact on world cultures, making disciples from all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). This is to be accomplished by embracing the strong connection that exists between truth and freedom (John 8), which, by the way, is the essence (or most important aspect) of this ministry! Amen to that! †
As far as the layout and design of the website is concerned, I chose Wordpress as a CMS (Content Management System) and ElegantThemes (www.elegantthemes.com) as a framework for the site because both are fairly easy to use and require no knowledge of coding, which is something that I have not learned and I do not want a steep learning curve when it comes to the design and layout of the website. I also don’t need the expense of hiring a company or an individual to design the site for me, as my financial resources and budget is very limited right now, so I’m not at all interested in that. I know I could’ve chosen a more popular Wordpress framework such as Genesis for the site, but I’ve heard it requires quite a bit of knowledge of coding, even though Genesis works better than ElegantThemes when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Besides, with ElegantThemes I can purchase either a year or a lifetime subscription and have access to all of their themes rather than having to pay for themes individually (if I wanted to change the theme) if I were to use the Genesis framework. Currently ElegantThemes gives subscription access to 88 different themes for one price ($89/year or $249/lifetime). I have already paid to start with a year of subscription access before making any long-term commitment to ElegantThemes. ;-)
I’m also looking to keep the design and layout of the site as simplistic and basic as possible (just for starters) because I don’t want to be spending a lot of time on maintaining and keeping up with the site until I’ve learned how everything works that it becomes second nature to me and quite routine to keep up with everything. Rest assured, I am CompTIA A+ Certified, and so I know some stuff about computers and technology and can catch-on and learn these kinda things rather quickly, easily and naturally. ;-) To be honest, though, I am looking for some suggestions and advice on exactly how to setup the design and layout of the website; remember, I need to keep the site as simple as possible, but at the same time as functional as it needs to be in order to meet my needs. I am looking for suggestions and advice as far as what kind of content to include on the site and what kind of content I can live without, for now (just for starters). In the future, after the website has had some significant growth and I have learned more about how to maintain it and keep up with it, I will likely be wanting to add some more complexity (more kinds of content) to the design and layout of the site making the website more sophisticated, but for now I will just stick with the basics. ;-)
Also, I chose to use Wordpress instead of something simpler like Google Blogger because this is meant to be a serious blog and not just a hobby blog. Indeed, I am looking to do as much as possible to promote the site and generate as much traffic to it as possible. Reason being, is because not only do I have long-term goals in Christian ministry that I plan to grow this into, because I also have short-term goals including planning to use this to generate an additional source of passive income to supplement the income I already have from working a full-time day job. I will likely be wanting to setup some affiliate advertising on the site to generate some passive income, but I may also want to deploy other methods to use it to earn some extra income.
Two things I have done to help promote the site is start a Facebook page and a Pinterest page to go with it, although I have yet to setup a Twitter (and possibly an Instagram) account. You can access the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/fearlesstruthministries and the Pinterest page at www.pinterest.com/fearlesstruth. And yes, I am looking for suggestions and advice on setting up my ministry/website to work in conjuction with various social media accounts, as well as tips on how to effectively use social media to promote it. ;-)
Well, I suppose that wraps things up for the OP in this thread. I’m looking forward to hearing back on any suggestions or advice on researching the very first blog article for Fearless Truth and for some helpful tips on the layout and design of the website. Thank you for your time and attention, everyone, and for your understanding.
Sweet Jesus, I pray that you speak words of wisdom in replies to this thread through the members of ChristianForums.com! In your name I pray. Amen. †
Okay, so I have these specific ideas in my head (and my heart) for this Christian Apologetics website and blog that I’ve made a little headway in starting, although I am an amateur at this and have never done anything like it before. I am seeking some food for thought, resources, inspiration and encouragement as far as laying the proper foundation and getting myself pointed in the right direction with the design and layout of the website as well as content for my first blog article. I have sought out some help and support from other places on the Internet and have managed to find a helpful online blogging course called the Christian Blogger’s Bootcamp (among some other helpful internet resources), and while this is generally a great resource for learning how start a new Christian blog (or improving an existing blog), it still does not cover the specific kind of content that I plan to include and write about on this particular website and blog. So, that is why I prayerfully feel led by God Almighty to the people of Christian Forums to gain some wise advice and suggestions. I pray that the good Lord will speak to me through the people of Christian Forums. ;-)
For starters, you can find my website at the following URL: www.fearlesstruth.org. My website is called Fearless Truth Ministries and it’s slogan is “Courageously Revolutionizing Culture One Belief At A Time”. You can read the Mission & Vision statement for this ministry by clicking here, although I will include it in this post just for good reference:
MISSION STATEMENT: The mission of Fearless Truth Ministries is to lovingly apply Biblical and Christian principles of defending truth without fear of retribution from opposing cultural influences or offending personal beliefs. We are to maintain focus, no matter what, on righteously dividing the spirit of truth, which is manifested in Jesus, from the spirit of deception, which is manifested in Satan.
VISION STATEMENT: Our vision is to make a positive impact on world cultures as an inspiration pointing to the way, the truth and the abundant life that is found only in the freedom of living life in devotion to Jesus Christ. We aim to bring about God’s justice by freeing captives from tyranny, oppression and the deceptive teachings of flawed worldviews, false religion, false doctrine, false teachers, false prophets and false messiahs.
So far, this is all the information I have put up on the website. The rest of it is just Wordpress with a framework and theme (called Extra) that I purchased (via subscription) from ElegantThemes.com. The website’s domain name is registered with GoDaddy and the site is hosted on BlueHost (www.bluehost.com). So far, I have done a little design and layout of the site, and as you can plainly see it is still a bit buggy and not perfect in appearance (as well as incomplete), but I’d figure it’d be best not to hassle with the bugs for right now (just work on the design); I’ll fix the bugs later. ;-)
Okay, so I don’t mean to sound like a perfectionist (I try not to be), but since the first blog article is supposed to lay the foundation for everything else that follows, it can’t just be a good article, it has to be a great article! The article doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to have a standard of excellence that will really make it stand out and get as much attention as possible from new readers and subscribers. ;-)
But, I really need your prayers. I really need some help. I need advice. I need suggestions. I need direction ----->
It’s not that I don’t already know what topic(s) it is, specifically, that I want to write about for the first blog article, it’s just that I am struggling in my attempts to research the topic(s) that this article is supposed to be about and put all the information together in such a constructive manner (and in my own words, of course [no plagiarizing!]) that it just flows into excellent, verifiably accurate, writing! I definitely need reliable, trustworthy sources of information for research. I just can’t expect to get right down to the truth of matters by compromising on the reliability and honesty of my research. Amen to that! †
Okay, with that said, so just what exactly is this first blog article and this ministry generally supposed to be about? Well, I’ve already got off to a great start with my mission and values statements, don’t you think? But the mission and values statements only touches the basics, or the superficial, that is. So from here, I will try to describe it and summarize in some more detail what Fearless Truth Ministries is meant to be about (without actually writing a complete blog article as a post on Christian Forums! ;-) ). . .
It begins by narrowing things down to the culture and the fact that we are now living in a post-truth era in civilization and society. What does that mean, exactly, when I say post-truth? Well, in case you’re not already familiar with the term, allow me to explain. Around the end of 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries selected the word post-truth as the International Word of the Year 2016. The word’s definition is: “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The link to the official article about this can be found by clicking here (please click on the link and read the short article before going any further ;-) ). You can, of course, if you need to, find plentiful other references and information about the term post-truth through the use of search engines on the Internet.
The truth of the matter is, is that belief and truth are not the same thing. While belief is a subjective matter, truth is an objective matter. In other words, while a person may choose to believe whatever he/she wants about any specific topic/subject, no matter what it is, what that individual believes about a specific topic/subject does not change the truth even if the person’s belief is not the truth. Another way of saying this is that nobody can change reality, regardless of how strongly they believe in something that doesn’t fit with reality. Belief doesn’t change the facts. While belief may vary from person to person, facts and truth always remain constant. Truth is always the same. Truth just is what it is, like it or not. Am I making philosophical sense? ;-)
That being said, in many cultures around the world today, billions of people are basing their personal beliefs on subjective appeals to emotion rather than on objective reasonable facts. People simply believe what they want to hear, or whatever “tickles their ears” so to speak, rather than believing what they need to hear, which is truth. In contrast, people often reject any belief simply on the grounds that it makes them feel uncomfortable (or even scares them), even if that particular belief really is the truth because their is evidence that strongly supports it and it passes all logic, reason, common sense and rational tests.
Fearless Truth is not meant to be a people-pleasing ministry at all, especially when it comes to matters of truth and personal belief. What God knows about truth (especially biblical truth, although extra-biblical truth is still important) is more important to this ministry than what people believe about matters of truth. We are not to tell people what they want to hear, but rather what they need to hear, which is the truth. Now I’m not trying to claim that Fearless Truth is to have 100% monopoly on truth; such a claim would make the ministry cultish, is immoral and unethical, and personally, I would definitely discourage anyone from following any group (religious, political, business, etc.) or individual that claims to have a 100% monopoly on truth (thinks they’re always right), regardless of their worldview. Fact is, people run organizations, no person is ever perfect (Romans 3:23), therefore, people make mistakes (even honest mistakes) and can’t possibly always be right. Indeed, a monopoly on truth claim is one of the most common warning signs of a cult, and Fearless Truth is no cult! Amen to that! †
Although Fearless Truth may not be a people-pleasing ministry, as Christians, we are commanded to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). And this is in accordance with the mission statement: “. . .to lovingly apply Biblical and Christian principles of defending truth. . .”. Despite the fact that, as believers in Christ, we are not to concede truth to emotional appeal, I do not believe that it is realistic to just expect people to always accept a truth as personal belief that emotionally makes them uncomfortable or afraid of it, even if the belief is reasonable and makes good sense. I do not wish to share the love and truth of the gospel with people based solely on logic, reason and common sense by itself and expect them to just accept it, whilst at the same time people are still struggling with their emotions to come terms with the truth and be at peace with the truth, a peace that surpasses all understanding (Phillipians 4:7). A better method is to help people to understand, at an emotional level, the good that is in good and the evil that is in evil, or in other words, why should a person feel good about accepting a particular truth as personal belief instead of allowing it to make them uncomfortable or afraid of it? Speak the truth in love, with humility, gentleness and patience.
I have heard it said many times before by people in Christian ministry that often the best method to defend truth and get your points across to others is to explain it in story-form. This is why I plan to convey the points I intend to make in this introductory blog article not just from a practical perspective, but also from a historical perspective to get the message across to readers, namely from comparing good times (the good ole days ;-) ) from the bad times in American History, by making a comparison between times of revival and spiritual awakening to times of division and cultural disintegration into immorality in American History. And using these times in U.S. History to explain that there is a strong connection between truth and freedom (John 8), that the more a culture, society or an even entire nation embraces truth, the more freedom those people will have; the more a culture, society or an entire nation rejects truth, the less freedom those people will have. Historians have already identified three periods of great awakenings and spiritual revival in American History (Google this). There have also been (this according to my own perspective) at least 2 periods of deep division and moral decline in the culture, one of them occuring in the years leading up to and throughout the American Civil War, and the other originating from the time of former President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal in the 90s through the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 up to the present day.
Make no mistake, Fearless Truth, in accordance with it’s mission and vision statements, is a Christian ministry whose sole focus is to boldly go and make a positive impact on world cultures, making disciples from all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). This is to be accomplished by embracing the strong connection that exists between truth and freedom (John 8), which, by the way, is the essence (or most important aspect) of this ministry! Amen to that! †
As far as the layout and design of the website is concerned, I chose Wordpress as a CMS (Content Management System) and ElegantThemes (www.elegantthemes.com) as a framework for the site because both are fairly easy to use and require no knowledge of coding, which is something that I have not learned and I do not want a steep learning curve when it comes to the design and layout of the website. I also don’t need the expense of hiring a company or an individual to design the site for me, as my financial resources and budget is very limited right now, so I’m not at all interested in that. I know I could’ve chosen a more popular Wordpress framework such as Genesis for the site, but I’ve heard it requires quite a bit of knowledge of coding, even though Genesis works better than ElegantThemes when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Besides, with ElegantThemes I can purchase either a year or a lifetime subscription and have access to all of their themes rather than having to pay for themes individually (if I wanted to change the theme) if I were to use the Genesis framework. Currently ElegantThemes gives subscription access to 88 different themes for one price ($89/year or $249/lifetime). I have already paid to start with a year of subscription access before making any long-term commitment to ElegantThemes. ;-)
I’m also looking to keep the design and layout of the site as simplistic and basic as possible (just for starters) because I don’t want to be spending a lot of time on maintaining and keeping up with the site until I’ve learned how everything works that it becomes second nature to me and quite routine to keep up with everything. Rest assured, I am CompTIA A+ Certified, and so I know some stuff about computers and technology and can catch-on and learn these kinda things rather quickly, easily and naturally. ;-) To be honest, though, I am looking for some suggestions and advice on exactly how to setup the design and layout of the website; remember, I need to keep the site as simple as possible, but at the same time as functional as it needs to be in order to meet my needs. I am looking for suggestions and advice as far as what kind of content to include on the site and what kind of content I can live without, for now (just for starters). In the future, after the website has had some significant growth and I have learned more about how to maintain it and keep up with it, I will likely be wanting to add some more complexity (more kinds of content) to the design and layout of the site making the website more sophisticated, but for now I will just stick with the basics. ;-)
Also, I chose to use Wordpress instead of something simpler like Google Blogger because this is meant to be a serious blog and not just a hobby blog. Indeed, I am looking to do as much as possible to promote the site and generate as much traffic to it as possible. Reason being, is because not only do I have long-term goals in Christian ministry that I plan to grow this into, because I also have short-term goals including planning to use this to generate an additional source of passive income to supplement the income I already have from working a full-time day job. I will likely be wanting to setup some affiliate advertising on the site to generate some passive income, but I may also want to deploy other methods to use it to earn some extra income.
Two things I have done to help promote the site is start a Facebook page and a Pinterest page to go with it, although I have yet to setup a Twitter (and possibly an Instagram) account. You can access the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/fearlesstruthministries and the Pinterest page at www.pinterest.com/fearlesstruth. And yes, I am looking for suggestions and advice on setting up my ministry/website to work in conjuction with various social media accounts, as well as tips on how to effectively use social media to promote it. ;-)
Well, I suppose that wraps things up for the OP in this thread. I’m looking forward to hearing back on any suggestions or advice on researching the very first blog article for Fearless Truth and for some helpful tips on the layout and design of the website. Thank you for your time and attention, everyone, and for your understanding.
Sweet Jesus, I pray that you speak words of wisdom in replies to this thread through the members of ChristianForums.com! In your name I pray. Amen. †
Any comments, questions, suggestions or advice? 
