Hello Steem!

I am quite excited to be on Steem! I waited 5 days for my account. I think I mostly heard about Steem from @jerrybanfield and have been watching all his Steem YouTube videos. I actually met and did some business with @jerrybanfield a couple years ago. He helped me gain 4,000 subscribers on a Facebook page I was promoting back then.

He is a good guy and I admire his willingness to take risks making money online and trying new things. It is definitely paying off for him :)

About Me

I am a Christian husband, father (of 6 boys), youth pastor, small business owner for 20+ years, life-long programmer, system architect and all around good, honest and ethical guy.

I am very busy working on my business, planning lessons and events for our church youth group and working on our 20 acre farm :)

I have learned many things in my life and I hope to be able to share some wisdom about those things on @SteemIt!

Things I want to contribute

My posts will be about:

#parenting
#fatherhood
#youthpastor stuff
#smallbusiness stuff
#development #programming
#woodworking
#farmlife
And general wisdom on how to be a good person and make this world a better place for all :)

My Worldview

I believe in truth. I believe that we can know ultimate truths and that God has revealed and is revealing truth in its most raw sense. I believe that without having something eternal and more firm than one human's understanding underpinning truth we cannot hope to find truth.

My philosophy of life has been largely formed and reformed by modern day people like Tim Keller, Adam Hamilton, Jordan Peterson.

I look back to ancient times for truth in the Bible and by leaders of the faith like Martin Luther and John Wesley.

I am a Christian, but not a fundamentalist. Was raised Catholic, but now Methodist. I use my brain, The Bible, History and my own experience to study, work through and formulate my opinions about things. I like to mull things over for days, months, even YEARS, and not just provide "knee-jerk" reactions. I am a "slow thinker". Not quick on my feet. I prefer to take my time to come up with "wisdom" and not just any old answer or regurgitate what others say about something without any basis of fact and true thought.

I believe that hard work can overcome MANY if not all deficiencies in our lives. Whether we are born with handicaps or taught them, I believe that you can overcome just about anything with hard work and a great attitude. My dad taught me the value of hard work and for that I am grateful.

I believe that life is sacred. Something to be grateful for each day. Something to take care of and nurture.

I believe you get rewarded with love, hope, peace and joy when you try your best to be a "good" person in everything you do. I believe you encounter "hell"(stress, discontentment, sense of meaningless) when you are a "bad" person. Well and also if you have some type of mental illness or other sickness can cause this too. :)

I guess I have never really gotten into blogging because I was always too worried about people that might find fault in my ideas. But one thing I have learned lately is that you can't ever try to be all things to all people. That you aren't going to make everyone happy. So just do all the good you can for all the people you can in all the ways you can as long as you can (paraphrasing from John Wesley :)

I just turned 49, have been married for 26 years and have six children - and feel like I am finally getting to the point where the things I have learned might be interesting and meaningful to others.

So I would appreciate the follow :)

Follow me - even if you don't see eye to eye with me

If you don't agree with me, I still would love to engage in meaningful conversation with you. I am not a hater.

I believe that the most important thing we do is build REAL relationships with REAL people and look forward to doing that on Steem!

Why I joined Steemit

Well for me it isn't about the money. I am not looking for another "job"!

Here are the reasons I joined Steem:

posts can't be directly censored by company worldview (in theory :)
since everyone is like a "part owner" in the platform due to the rewards system, everyone will care more about quality and supporting and growing the platform. The best marketing is always word of mouth!
the success of bitcoin will make people more trusting of cryptocurrency in general.
adding a blogging platform on top of the blockchain seems like the smartest idea ever on the Internet! We'll see how it works out :)
Incentivizing users to post, upvote and comment is brilliant and will guarantee the platform will succeed. But I wonder if this is sustainable forever?

In other words: I believe Steemit has a chance to compete with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter! I have never thought any other platform had that chance!