ists are popular these days on blogs of all types. “Christian” blogs are no exceptions:
- Four Keys to a Fruitful Pastorate This is hardly a list at all, but good, much-needed advice.
- Ten Reasons to Oppose a Wall Street Bailout
- Top Ten Ways to Write Bad Worship Songs
- Ten Reasons Why I Appreciate the ESV Study Bible
- Four Lists on Lists, and the Big List
There are five reasons why lists are so popular:
- They are so easy to create.
- They are easy to read, digest, and remember.
- Lists represent a body of knowledge, making its author seem knowledgeable.
- Lists are a natural way to process information: grocery lists, to-do lists, hit lists, black lists.
- Most of all, it has been shown that posts made up of lists tend to boost rankings with the blog-bean counters such as Technorati.
Five keys to good lists.
- Be funny.
- Be brief.
- Be informative.
- Make lists about the minutiae of life, things you don’t normally think about.
- Lists need to contain at least five items, but no more than a dozen or so.
Martin Luther would have made a good blogger. He certainly was a good list maker. It was on this day in 1517 that this German monk of the Augustinian order wrote a list with ninety-five items. He felt so strongly about that list that he went and nailed it to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany. The list contained things like:
- The Pope wears funny clothes.
- And he has bad breath too.
- Why can’t we build St. Peters in Germany?
- Do the mass in German. The higher critics will be speaking it in four-hundred years anyway.
- Besides all that, I want to get married.
Many Christians wrongly believe that Luther’s list of ninety-five eventually boiled down to the five points of Calvinism, when in fact they shook out to make the five solas, but those two lists need to be saved for another post.
Have a happy Halloween Reformation Day and “Boo” to you too, Michael.
