The Cripplegate blog is in its fourth year, and our readership is increasing every month. But in looking back over 2014, we noticed something unusual: this year, many of our most read posts were actually from previous years. In fact, seven of our top ten posts were originally posted before 2014. People are finding them through Google searches and Facebook shares, meaning that our most helpful content is not even necessarily recent, but is in some ways timeless.
Here were our top ten most read posts of 2014, as measured by unique IP addresses to view them:
Five signs of spiritual maturity. This post is from our blog’s first year (2011), but was one of our blog’s most read posts this year. Clint gave five ways to identify spiritual maturity. Not only is this list helpful in examining yourself, but it goes beyond the basics of “likes reading the Bible” and gets into the motives that mark maturity.
An open letter to my daughter. Byron Yawn wrote this letter to his daughter explaining what kind of love he has for her, and what kind of woman he wants her to become. Written in 2011, this has remained one of our blog’s most popular posts through the last few years (13,000 new views this year, and 71,000 views over the last three years).
John MacArthur responds to John Piper regarding Strange Fire. After the Strange Fire conference, John Piper recorded a response to John MacArthur’s concerns raised in the conference (I honestly wonder if Piper had even heard much of the conference before making his remarks…). MacArthur boiled Piper’s response down to four concerns and wrote four of his own blog posts addressing those concerns. Our Cripplegate post summarizes those four MacArthur posts.
Why we sing “I have Decided to Follow Jesus.” A look at the amazing international story behind this hymn. The words are from an Indian martyred for following the teaching of a Welsh missionary. They were set to music by an Indian evangelist and the song was taken by a Canadian and made popular in the US.
John Wesley’s Failed Marriage. This post was from last year, but for mysterious reasons known only to the internet, more people (16,000) read it this year then when it was first posted.
Driscoll drama: to those who sold tickets. Our blog generally stayed away from the issues surrounding the (temporary) end of Driscoll’s pastoral ministry. In this post, Jesse made an appeal to those who promoted Driscoll’s ministry to see their role in this fiasco.
Three must have Bible apps. This post from 2012 might be a little technologically dated, but apparently it remains helpful, with 16,500 unique readers this year.
Is it true that Jesus never addressed homosexuality? Mike’s post from 2012 proved relevant this year. It was the most searched for post on our blog, and the third most read post from this year with 17,000 unique hits this year.
Kristallnacht: The end of Christianity in Iraq. This year saw the Christian faith all but eradicated from Iraq. While the persecution had been gradually building for years, it came to a head on one particular weekend.
So who exactly IS the mainstream of the charismatic movement? A common response to the Strange Fire Conference was to say that the conference unfairly portrayed the charismatic movement. The truth, this response went, was that most charismatics are careful and cautious with the gifts. Lyndon decided to check this story out by seeing who exactly the most popular charismatic Christians are (using Twitter followers), and then compared them to the more “careful” charismatics. The result is our most read blog post of the year, with 24,000 unique readers. .
If you are curious, here are our lists from 2013, from 2012, from 2011.
How about you? Did you have a favorite post from our blog this year?
