I’d like to bring your attention to a few changes around here. First up is the Top Loops widget in the right hand sidebar. This displays the top 5 rated loops that Our Rising Sound has released. If you haven’t voted please goto the loops and rate them. Honesty is the best policy, don’t give everything 5 stars unless you thing every single one of them deserves it. And I’m here to tell you not all of them do.

Secondly you may have noticed a new commenting system. I’ve been evaluating Intense Debate for quite some time and working out some issues. It’s up and running now and this allows for a lot more fluid conversation on posts so I expect all you sleeper readers to come out of the shadows and leave some comments. You can vote for comments, reply to specific comments in a thread fashion and now we have gravatar support so you can see pics of who is leaving comments.

If you read this blog, please leave a comment on this post introducing yourself. I know for a fact many MANY more people read the blog than comment, and I’d like to get a bit more interaction going here. Helps with post ideas and makes this blog more useful for everyone involved.

So please leave a comment and let us know who and where you are.

The loops area of this site keeps on growing. I’ve seen a lot of interest from more and more worship leaders, so in an effort to bring more organization and to keep it fresh I’ve added a rating feature. So if you would be so kind as to browse the current catalogue of loops (note there are 2 pages worth) and rate the loops with your honest opinion. I have no guidelines as to your criteria for rating, just look it up in your gut (and ears). Your rating is completely anonymous, so if you think the loop sucks I won’t chase you down, rate with confidence. You can see what it looks like below and no you don’t have to rate 5 out of 5, this is just an example

Once a good number of rating come through I’ll add a widget to the sidebar that shows the Top 5 user rated loops so visitors can quickly see what’s hot, excuse me, hawt…and what’s not. Thank you for your feedback and if you contact me and let me know you rated every loop maybe I’ll give you a prize, like a nice e-card or something.

Today is the last day of 2008 and it’s been a big year for Our Rising Sound. We broke the 100 RSS subscriber mark, started releasing worship loops for free, created a Podcast for all our audio posts, Worship.com started publishing ORS content and we created relationship with a lot of worship leaders, pastors and bloggers. Below are the Top 5 viewed posts for 2008. Thanks so much for a wonderful year, thank you for being part of the blog and we have a lot of great articles ready to go in 2009.

1. Presbyterian vs Catholic Church Sign Debate
2. Illinois Winning Lottery Number on Election Day – 666
3. Man sues church for $2.5 million after Holly Spirit knocks him down
4. Top 5 things I miss about 90s worship
5. Michael Guglielmucci, author of “Healer”, exposed as fraud

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I’ve received a quite a few comments recently that I’m deleting and not approving. So I thought it would be a good idea to lay out clearly what kind of comments are frowned up.

What will get your comment deleted or disapproved?

• Use of profanity. I don’t mind strong language, but if you’re cursing like a sailor you probably don’t have anything valuable to say. Keep it PG-13 please.
• Harsh rebuke or critique without any sensible argument or entertainment value. If you’re going to say how much something sucks or how much you disagree with something, all I ask is you spell it out in an articulate way or at the very least be entertaining. If you wanna be a jerk, than speak well or be funny, it’s that simple.
• Self Promotion Spam. I don’t mind if you want to promote your stuff here. I love helping others out as much as I can. But at least pretend to have read the post you’re commenting on. Throw me a bone here.

What won’t get your comment deleted?

• Thoughtful disagreement. I really don’t mind people disagreeing with me. I disagree with a lot of people, so I’d love to hear your beefs. Just be articulate, concise and don’t cuss.
• Relevant self promotion. If you have a post on your site that is relevant to the post here you’re commenting on, by all means, link away. Just make sure it’s relevant.

A big thank you to all my readers and subscribers. A few weeks ago we crossed the 100 subscriber barrier, a point I had hoped to reach by the end of the year. So thank you to everyone who has subscribed to the blog either via RSS or email and also thank you to our new podcast subscribers.

This success of this blog depends on you guys blog evangelizing and spreading the word. So if you know of friends, family, co-workers that might enjoy the blog please encourage them to subscribe. For all you silent subscribers make sure and comment so I can meet you, hit me up on facebook, stumbleupon or twitter.

Here’s to passing 200 in much shorter time!

Starting with the most popular post on this site, Presbyterian vs. Catholic Church Sign Debate, which has received almost 50,000 views.

This is too funny. I just preached on “Do Dogs Go to Heaven?” yesterday. Then I blessed the animals. If you’re interested, you can go on the following website and hear the sermon and see some of the pictures taken.

I’m anything but interested, but thanks. The fact that someone actually preached on dogs going to heaven and then blessed animals just makes me ill and angry at the same time. Here’s a great follow up comment.

…I’m a Catholic and I’m not even sure if I have a soul.

That’s just priceless. Now onto probably the best comment ever received. This comment was made by a Mr. Scot Longyear in response to me calling him out on playing a Michael Jackson song in worship in the 10 Commandments of Blogging post.

Listen up Thriller,

Billy Jean is NOT my love. Maybe you should take a look at the man in the mirror. I don’t think you want to be startin’ somethin’, even though it is human nature. I know you just won’t stop ’till you get enough, you pretty young thing. Leave me alone you smooth criminal. Why you wanna trip on me? Just remember the time and keep the faith. Above all, remember it don’t matter if your black or white. It’s easy as A-B-C.

Oooooh whooo

I don’t know how anyone can top that. However, Mike takes the prize for the most chilling comment ever. My post on if non-christians should be in worship bands apparently awoke some hellish anger in him. Although it doesn’t seem like that hellish anger ever goes to sleep.

I wouldnt be caught dead on a stage with bible thumpers! unless I were eating there babys

I love getting comments like this, it really is fun to chat with absolutely crazies sometimes. So I responded the only was I know how, sarcastically.

Me: Mike God bless you man, checked out your myspace, looks like you’re plenty busy polishing skulls and such so thanks for taking time out of your day for that valuable feedback. I’m going to add that to my list of criteria when trying out new band members, “Must not eat children.” Rock on brotha.

That’s the best of the best for now. Thanks to everyone who’s engaged in dialogue in the posts. I appreciate it, keep it up!

I’m pleased to announced that Our Rising Sound will now be contributing on the Worship.com blog. If you haven’t been over to Worship.com make sure and subscribe to the blog feed, there are a lot of great articles and a wide variety of contributors including, Bob Kauflin, Scot Longyear (I follow your lead) and the Resurgence. I’ll certainly need to dress appropriately and behave myself over there with that crowd. There is no change of content on this site, business as usual here, but now some of the posts will also appear on Worship.com.