If you write it they will come...
I started writing blogs personally twenty years ago, it was very popular. Back then I blogged about my faith, gardening, books and home education.
I started writing a blog at MBS before we became a limited company, but deleted so many posts when we moved to this new website. We have about a third left of the original content.
So you might wonder what made it through that purge? Here is the list of top ten posts – which shows why people visit…
Post List
1) Top of the list by an amazingly large margin. And indeed the most consistently emailed about post…
Quaker A-Z: D is for Digital Diaries and Documents
In 2016 when our ISP was hit by a digital attack – I got three emails and two phone calls, from people telling me this post (and my website) wasn’t available before the ISP emailed me to explain my website was down.
2) Meeting Houses – Beacons or Burdens
One of the few from 2012 that made it through because it still gets visitors. It’s a subject that is still bubbling – Emily Providence’s Lifecycle of a Meeting was blogged about earlier this year!
Hopefully, all Quaker meetings are a spirit-led, all-age faith community trying to create a vibrant worshipping community which is based on their testimonies of equality, integrity/truth, peace, simplicity, and sustainability. This last testimony, sustainable action, raises the expectation that a community should strive to be able to support itself and its activities.
3) Marketing your Meeting House – the basics
Looking back at these posts makes me aware of how much has changed – and how much hasn’t!
This blog series led to the first of the workshops MBS ran a decade ago. It was being told that people had printed them out and used them as a template to create a marketing/publicity plan for their building and meeting that first sparked the idea of an online classroom. An idea that took a decade to come to fruition – but MBS:C launched earlier this year.
4) Quaker A-Z: N is for Noticeboards
This was the first post where I had to keep deleting comments.
No, not spam.
Instead, they were usually asking for recommendations on where to buy the noticeboards in the photos!
If you’re intrigued:
- the new ‘what’s on’ set is from https://churchnoticeboards.com/
- the other triple boards, seen above were made bespoke by a Quaker.
5) An explanation of the Quaker Alphabet project
Yet another thing in my life influenced by Woodbrooke. It was over a meal in the dining room that I heard of the Quaker Alphabet project – being done by Quaker theologians and historians. I was intrigued and decided to have a go during 2014.
A decade later I’m busy planning 2024’s series, this time through the lens of Trusteeship. Any requests or suggestions – email me or find us on FaceBook!
6) Quaker A-Z: U is for Understanding and Undervalued
A decade after writing this, I have people tell me they appreciated it being written.
Quakers exploiting Quakers is not Quakerly.
7) Quaker A-Z: M is for Mission and Money (but not Marketing)
I found it funny that the Marketing your meeting house – the basics (which is number 2 in that series) scored so highly and the other two didn’t.
Then this one did well in the read scores, and is very firmly not about marketing. I’d like to think it did so well because of the first part – discovering your, or your meeting’s mission. But I suspect it’s the Money second part where I talk about petty cash that was the real draw.
8) Quaker A-Z: H is for History plus Health & Safety
This is a bit of cheat – because this story isn’t in the blog post, it was in a linked deleted post. But at Muswell Hill we had the full set of these ‘I’m a xxxx (and a Quaker) posters, up on the doors just as you walked in the front door. They were very obvious – and they inspired the activities blogged about.
We had some stained glass to be repaired, and one of the contractors mentioned they had Quaker connections, which I cynically wondered about…. but the contractor walked in the front door, and while introducing himself suddenly stopped walking, stared at the posters and then in a much stronger Scottish accent than he’d had a few moments ago said, ‘That’s Jocelyn!’ explaining that they’d both been at the same meeting for a while.
This post made me laugh, and I did wonder how many people opened the post expecting something other than signs that made me laugh.
Because they made me laugh – they got put into another anniversary blog post.
10) Fire Drills during Meeting for Worship
This post caused quite a bit of discussion on the Wardenship email list when it came out.
When one meeting did their first drill, most of the parents didn’t head for the doors outside, but back deeper into the building to get their children!
Not realising that the children were being escorted safely out the back door at the time. Something I’d not thought about – but was then glad that this had only been a drill!
This was an interesting exercise – I’m intrigued as to why several posts scored highly for ‘clicks’ while other associated posts didn’t.
I wasn’t surprised that most of these are from the earlier years when I was blogging, and posting on Facebook about the posts. Writing slowed down as things got busier. Which is why I brought the A-Z series back in 2019!
Wendrie Heywood
MBS Founder
