Are You a Reader, Writer, or Mentor?

Not everybody has time to do everything, right? But we really, really want you to read this post. It’s super important for helping people understand how we’re growing as a network and a community. In fact, we want you to read it so much that we are going to give away a free autographed book if you read this post and respond in the comments before Friday at noon central time.

Here’s the deal. We’ve developed a new “levels of engagement” concept at HighCallingBlogs.com because we want you to have permission to be as engaged in the community as you want. We’re trying to make this as easy as possible.

There are three primary ways to engage the community. We like the number three .

. . . as a READER and COMMENTER . . .

Readers are full members of HighCallingBlogs.com, but they are not necessarily active. In this role, you are primarily a reader and commenter:

• Read the HighCallingBlogs.com newsletter when we send it.
• Subscribe to receive our featured posts on HighCallingBlogs.com via RSS or email or to our daily digest of all posts via RSS or email . Or grab one of our widgets .
• Comment on posts as often as you can. This is such an encouragement to bloggers!
• THEN, let us know about posts you think we should feature at HighCallingBlogs.com. We’ll give you a hat tip if we use your suggestion.

. . . as a BLOGGER and WRITER . . .

This is the level of engagement we had in mind when we originally created HighCallingBlogs.com. In this role, you are an active reader, commenter, blogger, and content creator. Here’s what most of you are already doing:

• Register your existing blog with us or start a brand new blog for free.
• Load a HighCallingBlogs.com badge , textlink, or widget on your site . (This step is required to be included in our feeds.)
• Participate in our group writing project every month.
• Read other blogs in the network and comment as often as you can.
• Link to other blogs in the network when they write a post that is particularly inspirational to you.
• THEN , let us know about posts you think we should feature at HighCallingBlogs.com. We’ll give you a hat tip if we use your suggestion.

. . . as a LEADER and MENTOR . . .

As the community grew, we quickly realized that we could not read and support each blogger to the degree we had hoped. That’s why we need community leaders and mentors to commit to helping others. As a leader, you would:

• Actively read a category of bloggers and engage them through comments, trackbacks, and email.
• Work closely with HighCallingBlogs.com as a contributor to the site.
• Write about the high calling of your daily work on a regular basis at your own blog.

Now, about that giveaway.

"Über Celebrity God Blogger" Mark D. Roberts (also one of our High Calling bloggers) is giving away an autographed copy of his book No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer to one of the commenters.

So in the comments section below, tell us TWO things.

1) Are you a reader, writer, mentor? You can speculate on that a bit if you like as well.

2) How do you read the blogs in the community now? Do you use a blog roll, RSS category feeds, the featured posts at HighCallingBlogs.com, bloglines, igoogle, google reader, technorati? Mostly we’re just curious.

BONUS! Tell us about a blog in the community that you think people should read more.