Top Ten Posts of 2013

I like lists–top ten lists, book lists, year end lists, new year lists, all kinds of lists. I’m always interested to see the list of best books put out by various magazines and bloggers at the end of the year. I also enjoy it when the blogs I frequent list their most trafficked posts of the year.

So, in case you were curious–or missed some of these the first time around–here are the most viewed posts from my blog in the past year.

10. Seven Thoughts on Pastors Writing Books

9.   10 Errors to Avoid When Talking About Sanctification and the Gospel

8.   How to Pray Using Scripture?

7.   Things People Should Never Say They Never Heard at Your Church

6.   Advice for Raising Godly Children

5.   What Are the Essentials of the Christian Faith

4.   How Can I Tell If I’m Called to Pastoral Ministry?

3.   Is John Piper Really Reformed?

2.   The Scandal of the Semi-Churched 

1.   Why the Arguments for Gay Marriage are Persuasive

(Note:  One guest post, “The Story You May Not Have Heard” by Jason Helopoulos, had enough hits to make the top ten.)

In looking over this list, I’m pleasantly surprised that only a few of these posts were generated by controversy (1 and 10, and to a lesser extent 9 and 3). I don’t know how to check my blogging stats, and I very rarely take the time to figure out which posts were popular (although you can make a good guess by tracking Facebook likes). I started this blog as an outlet for writing things I was interested in saying. And for the most part, that’s still what I do. I write about what I’m thinking, what I’m reading, and what seems to be affecting the people I know.

There is a strong temptation for bloggers to write mainly (or only) about pop culture and current events. I don’t fault Christian bloggers who write on these topics. I have before, and I’m sure I will again. But if all we aim to do is to spike our traffic by weighing in on the latest public spat, we will find that our posts get attention quickly and get forgotten even faster. Which is, I suppose, one reason that to my knowledge I’ve never written anything about Duck Dynasty or Miley Cyrus. For my part and my gifts and my calling, I’d rather look at my year-end top ten list and think five years from now “You know what, some of these are still helpful” as opposed to “Now what was that all about?”