Category Archives: Blog

Top posts from 2009

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So here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. What were the top posts from this past year?

  • One post that was discussed in the forum at preacherfiles.com was the post about sermon-less assemblies. The post has been viewed over 300 times, although the poll only has 40-something votes. Go ahead… vote in the poll. It’s not too late.
  • My post about the gates of Hades has also been popular. I don’t even have a clever explanation for that. I guess people are just interested in the topic.
  • The review I did about Danny Corbitt’s book about instrumental music in the church has also drawn some interest, with over 400 views of that post. I hope that means that more people read Danny’s book. No matter one’s views, the book presents material that should be considered.
  • Not surprisingly, the series I did on alcohol continues to draw a decent amount of traffic. The first post in that series has been viewed over 1000 times.
  • By far, the most popular post I wrote this year was “When Mistruths Go Viral.” It was also discussed on the preacherfiles.com forum. I’m glad to see that people are interested in correcting some false information that was circulating on the Internet.

Those are the top posts from 2009. Go ahead and start voting for your favorites from 2010!

Blog series from 2009

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A lot of the posts that I did this year were grouped into series. Here are the main series that we looked at this year:

If you click on the series name, it will take you to the first post in the series. Enjoy this trip down memory lane!

Simon Dewey in The Kitchen

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One of the most looked at posts on this blog is one of the oldest, a post I wrote about the woman at the well in John 4. However, people don’t come looking for what I’ve written. Several times a week, someone arrives to The Kitchen having searched for “Simon Dewey” on Google. That’s because I used an illustration by Dewey to accompany that post.

Simon Dewey is a religious artist from England. His works are strongly promoted by members of the Mormon church since Dewey is himself a Mormon. Admittedly, I knew nothing about him when I chose the illustration. It’s a bit ironic that he sends more traffic to my blog than most of the things that I write.

But that’s the way it is.

The Kitchen in 2009

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OK, it’s the time of year when we’re all more focused on holiday stuff than we are blogging. Well, I guess there are a few exceptions, but I’m not one of them. Still, I thought it would be interesting this week to look back at this first year with the new look blog.

According to Google Analytics, there have been 61,110 pageviews so far this year, with 1690 different pages being viewed. They do have more helpful stats, like the fact that those are only 27,345 unique pageviews (some people looked at the same page more than once).

8,929 unique visitors made 16,176 visits. 1,262 of those visits were people coming from Facebook, though I should also count the 635 visits that came via Networked Blogs, an app on Facebook. Over half of those who visited came from a referring site.

The main blogs that sent people my way were Jay Guin’s oneinjesus.info and Rex Butts’ kingdomseeking.wordpress.com. The site religiousaffectionsministries.org sends a number of people to the site, specifically to view the series on alcohol. Same goes for forum.preacherfiles.com, though they send people for a couple of different posts.

The visitors came from 117 different countries, though the U.S. dominated by far. Australia, Canada and the U.K. followed, which seems logical. Within the U.S., Texans dominated the list, with California, Oklahoma, Florida, Colorado, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, New York and Virginia rounding out the top 10.

Those are the boring numbers! Over the next few days I’ll look back at some of the top things that people have been looking at on the site. Meanwhile, go grab some eggnog.

Not for sale

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not-for-rentIn a comment this week, someone warned me that my thoughts may not be convenient to me financially. I’m well aware of that. If I wanted to be more popular, I would go with what sells. Praise the U.S. and the G.O.P. Make fun of global warming, Obama, etc. Dump on those who make tough decisions about whom to include in church directories. Criticize anyone who chooses to stand up for traditional doctrines. Talk about feeding people and building houses and avoid talking about evangelism…

I know what plays in Peoria.

Unfortunately, I’m committed to teach the truth as I see it. Not what’s popular. Not what’s trendy. Not what’s convenient or comfortable. As a friend of mine pledged when accepting the role of pulpit minister at a certain congregation: “I will teach the Word of God no matter the personal cost.”

This space is not for rent nor for sale.