Happy Christmas 2011 from Pure Christian Graphic Design! If you’re new to this blog, it’s authored by myself, Andrew Kelsall—a designer from England, UK. Thanks to all my readers and those of you who have commented and shared my posts; appreciated.

For more on Christmas, check out What is the true meaning of Christmas?

Original image credit (CC) Cliff Robin.

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Do You Want Christian News? If so, I recommend checking out Cprécis. The site reads:

Cprécis [c-prey-seez] is a Christian Content Aggregator. The purpose of Cprécis is to bring you the best in what’s happening in the Christian web community. We do this by collecting the headlines of the latest articles from the best sites and blogs that cover a variety of topics. We display the most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph. [Read more]

Here is a list of the Christian blogs listed on their homepage at the moment, along with a couple of posts from each blog or site. If you spot anything that doesn’t link-up with my Statement of Faith, please let me know. I hope you discover a couple of blogs and sites you’ve never seen before:

Inspiks

Thunder of His power
The Crowd by Matthew Ashton

A Christian Perspective

The Truth According to Katy Perry

Man Whisperer vs. True Woman

Reflections in the WORD

Qualifications for the Kingdom

Where is Your Heart?

Pro Worship Technics

How to Access Your Worship Music From Any Computer

Start! Bible – Free Gospel of John

W2W Soul

Bible in One Year Challenge

The Gift of Life

ChurchKreatives

Creating goals for the church creative

The Retro Network You Didn’t Know Existed

Media Salt

Resource Download: Organize Your Giving Page

Thoughts on a “Lean Back” Experience

You129 – Speak Out

Time for a New Generation of Black Americans

How the NAACP Has Changed

Mirificam Press

Mirificam Press Takes a Stab at the Movies

Bible Design: Illuminated Manuscripts to Postmodern Power Plays

ChurchCrunch

Glo Bible Update via CES

Media Fusion – Sermon Podcasts Made Easy

Church Media TV

Morning Motion: What We Learned

Morning Motion: Seeds Conference 2011 Promo

MBC Sermons

Last Article by Chinese Human Rights Lawyer

Christian Activist’s Tortured Described

Greg Atkinson

I Don’t Know About You, But I Believe in Second Chances

What’s Your Vision for 2011?

Gabe Taviano

Educate yourself and give Freedom

Is this your King?

Designyre

4 Reasons Non-Profits Need a Website

How to Lead Someone to Christ

Phil Davis

Sermon by David Platt that every American Christian should watch

Matthew 13:44

Art Lessons From God

Why Is It Hard for Artists To Spend Daily Time with God?

3 Questions That Address What’s Blocking Your Creativity

LiveChurch.tv

YouVersion: 1 Month. 1 Billion Minutes

One Prayer Update

Prodigal Magazine

Q&A – What is God’s relationship to time?

Michael Catt Interview (Creator of Facing The Giants and Fireproof)

Church Tech Matters

Efficiency on a Dime

Burnout and Lessons Learned

Media Ministry Blog

How to Create an Audio Podcast for Your Church

Creating a Ministry Theme/Logo

Dream in soul

Be Still and Know…

Morning Worship: Beautiful – From Kari Jobe

Jim LePage

Word: Matthew (The Headless Baptist)

Inspiration: Jeff Gill

Our Daily Bread

A Child’s Potential

Contract Faith

…and there you have it! I haven’t read all the articles linked above, but if you have any comments about the articles or sites linked, please leave a comment below…

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

I really don’t know why there is a vast majority of Christian websites and blogs using the Google AdSense advertising network. Many of these sites that include AdSense have very small traffic ranks, with the majority attaining a meagre 100 visits per day.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ perverted?

This leads me onto the basis of this post. Many of these Christian websites have traffic ranks of between 1000,000 and 17000,000, which means their revenue could be anywhere from £10 to zero (I know this because I have the Alexa Toolbar installed in my Firefox browser, so when I visit a website, it shows me the traffic rank).

For a little bit of money, the Gospel of Jesus Christ may well be perverted with the kind of ads Google will display on these pages. In the past, I have visited well-meaning Christian websites which talk about Christianity and sex, for example (which is okay depending on the topic and purpose of the article and site). When a site like this runs Google AdSense, certain ads will appear on these sites. Such sites will lead to, let us say, very inappropriate and downright evil links.

Is a little money worth spreading false doctrine?

Of course not! What many Christian Bloggers and site owners don’t know, is that Google AdSense ads are self optimising and work by choosing keywords from their pages. So if, for example, there’s an article about Christianity, they may be ads actually denouncing Christianity—or worse. I’ve seen such cases of “s*xy Christian singles” and of-sort.

Another thing to consider is that Google AdSense are sometimes targeted to users themselves. If a web user has a Google account and has web history turned on, AdSense will use a users history to determine what ads appear on any site which include the Google Ads network.

Recently, I was going to buy a garden shed, so I searched many web sites that sold them. For several weeks afterwords, all I saw where adds for sheds where AdSense were displayed. The most evil thing about this is that the shed adverts blatantly used a blasphemy against God to sell sheds! I emailed the company in question about it, to no avail.

Google Adwords alternatives

If  a blogger used Amazon Associates instead, he/she could actually make more money by selling Bibles. A widget that can displayed instead of ads could be used to sell Bibles and other Christian books. A single sale of a Bible could earn the blogger a percentage of the sale, which may be greater than a years worth of  Google AdSense revenue. The added benefit is that the blogger would earn money by spreading the gospel message—and not worldly theories, false doctrine and sex.

There are also other add networks such as BuySellAdds, which lets site authors display adds on their sites which first have to be approved by the site owner. I’ve seen some low traffic blogs selling up to £100 worth of these adds per month.

Of course, there are many other affiliate schemes out there, too.

Reasons for running adds at all

For these reasons, I choose not to run Google AdSense on this blog. Like I already stated, I run them on my main blog, but that one is just about graphic design in general so there’s no conflict of interest regarding Christianity. However, on this blog, they’re not appropriate. If you’re running AdSense on your Christian site, may I suggest you reconsider.

Also, every Christian site owner and blogger needs to consider why they’re running ads in the first place. Yes, we need to make money to live, but please consider what impact running adds has on the Gospel message—and whether or not these ads hinder it in any way. If they’re a benefit, then it’s worth consideration.

My final piece of advice is to pray about any decisions you make. All Christians are called to be part of the great commission, but this is in regard to the Gospel Message, not money.

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

Hi there. Things round here at Pure Christian Graphic Design have been rather slow of late.

Future Plans

I plan to blog a lot more for Pure Christian Graphic Design. If I get my working schedule sorted out properly, I may end up posting every week on this site. I plan for this site to have a great future, but please bear with me while it gets on its feet. Appologies if you’ve left a comment and I haven’t replied. I’ll sort through my posts at some point and reply to every one.

Regards, Andrew

★★★★★ Why not check out my popular post What does Heaven look like?.

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

In the process, I accidentally mixed-in a feed from my free stock photo sub-site. It’s all very complicated, but be rest assured they’ll be no-more Stock photo posts in your RSS reader.

Thanks

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

I’m a big fan of Twitter…Big fan. I heard of a new “Christian Twitter” lately, aptly named Gospelr. I think the site may still be in Beta testing, as there is absolutely no information on site about how the service is used—nor what it’s for.

However, if you head over to the site of the people who created it at Human3Error.com, there is an explanation as to its’ intent. It also links to the sites’ [invisible] FAQ page, which displays information about the nature of the service, such as:

★ Spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ
★ Encouraging others through community and communication
★ Keep friends, staff, ministries, family, and others updated through microblogging
★ Innovate and collaborate with others to discuss and brainstorm how we can best use web technology effectively for His Kingdom.

I’m all up for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, however, I can’t see myself using it. The great thing about Twitter is that you can engage with non-Christians if you want, or just set your account to private and invite just Christians. I don’t really see the need for Gospelr, although if it helps to spread the Word of the LORD, I will support it. If you think you may be interested in Gospelr and fancy giving it a try, head over there and sign-up.

What do you about Gospelr? Are you already a user—would you recommend it over Twitter?

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

I was both rather shocked and amused to hear that here in England, No Smoking signs have to be displayed inside Churches. It’s no joke. Apparently, to conform with the new ‘smoking-ban in public places rules’, even churches have to have them.

Rev Colin Slee, a senior cleric from the Dean of Southwark ignored the new rules― and stated that the local council threatened to close his church if he didn’t comply. Has the world gone mad?

He continued:

We’re going to have the ridiculous prospect at the next coronation of the sovereign solemnly entering Westminster Abbey past a “No Smoking” sign.

I would have thought No smoking in churches would be obvious. No wonder people are “fuming” (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun)

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

On the subject of Easter, I would like to talk about the great 40 year mission of evangelist, Arthur Blessitt. The story of this man’s life is very long, so much so, that a new movie has been made about his life entitled The Cross.

Basically, Arthur has been walking the world for 40 years with a giant cross. His mission has led him into danger and war zones, but has also enabled him to preach the Gospel to the world. On his travels, he has met Yasir Arafat, George W.Bush and the Pope. After walking 38,102 miles through 315 countries, he finished his walk in June 2008.

Why did he do this? Arther states:

At 5am one morning, Jesus spoke to me. He said, ‘Arthur, take the cross off the wall of your building, carry the cross on foot. Identify my message on the highways and roadsides where the people are.

Arthur recalled that his most memorable journey was taking the cross from Jerusalem to Calvary on Easter Sunday.

I wondered how I would feel. Would I be sad, walking in the footsteps of Jesus? No. I was filled with joy. Christ had suffered all the agony for me 2,000 years ago.

I would like to commend Arthur on this fantastic achievement which he did for God. Reading of this story has inspired me by the dedication he has shown the the Lord.

You can read a full article on the story of Arthur Blessitt here. Have you heard about Arthur’s travels before? What do you think of the great journey he has taken?

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall

Nearly there. Pure Christian Graphic Design is going ahead―that’s for sure. I have some subscribers already―and if you’re one of them, thanks.

Constantly being side-tracked by design projects and firstly sorting-out my other blog, AndrewKelsall.com, this blog has been in a half-designed site with three little articles to it’s name. I’m sorry.

Within the next couple of weeks, I should have PCGD in full swing, with at least one article per week for starters―and I’ll see how it goes.

So, thanks for your patience, please spread the word―and all-going-well, this is going to be a great site full of Christian Design inspiration and topics.

Yours Faithfully, Andrew Kelsall

This post is Copyright Andrew Kelsall, also author of the Andrew Kelsall Graphic Design Blog.Pure Christian Graphic Design - Christian Graphic Design Blog from Andrew Kelsall