2016: A Year in Review
Each year, we try to take a little peek back at the previous 12 months. Each time we do that, we are grateful.
We are so thankful that anyone actually comes to our site or subscribes to our email list, but when we look back on the previous year, we see that thousands have read our posts and/or listened to our podcast. Trust us, we are humbled!
Goals for 2016: Reviewed
We try to set goals for our site each year, and 2016 was no exception. We met one of the goals, and got very close on the other two.
We set a goal of crossing 1500 subscribers to our site through email. As of when this post is being written, we are well over that goal, at 1581.
We set a goal of having 1750 Facebook “likes” for our site. We did not reach that goal, but are very close, with 1647.
Finally, our goal was to average 600 downloads per podcast (within the first month of release). The average is slightly over 400 per episode, which is still very encouraging.
Top 10 Posts of 2016
The following list shares the 10 most viewed posts since January 1, 2016. Keep in mind that these articles were not necessarily written this year, but they have garnered the most views this year. (Original publication date in parenthesis)
10. “On What to Wear in Worship” (October 12, 2016)
9. “What about Sunday and Wednesday Nights?” (January 5, 2016)
8. “An Open Letter to the 4th Avenue church of Christ” (December 4, 2014)
7. “You Think You’re the Only Ones Going to Heaven?” (January 19, 2016)
6. “How to Vote as a Christian in the Upcoming Presidential Election” (October 11, 2016)
5. “About Video Games in Worship” (May 18, 2016)
4. “Hymn Reflection: How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” (July 5, 2013)
3. “7 Reasons Why We’ll be in Worship on Christmas Day” (December 14, 2016)
2. “5 Things Elders Need to Hear Regularly” (August 10, 2016)
- “Are You Church of Christ?” (June 1, 2016)
Goals for 2017
With all that in mind, we begin to think about the upcoming year. As we said earlier, we want to set some goals. These are not done for our own pride or just for the sake of “numbers.” Instead, we set these goals to motivate ourselves to try to get this material before the eyes of as many people as we can.
So here are three goals for the upcoming year, but we hope to reach and exceed them all.
Email Subscribers. This is, easily, the most important goal, because it helps us track how many people are desiring the content we produce. By the end of 2017, we hope this list has grown to over 1800 subscribers. If you’ve never joined the list (which is totally free), you can do that here.
Facebook “Likes.” The vast majority of the traffic to our site comes from Facebook, so it is important for us to grow this page. We would like for it to at least equal our email list, so we want to have over 2000 likes by the end of the year. If you’ve never liked our page, here it is.
Produce Podcasts All Year. Our podcast has been hit-or-miss in the past, but we have really started to stay on track in the last few months. We produce a program every two weeks, and that is our goal: to never miss a program–producing one every two weeks–throughout all of 2017. (Though we may have a change in format coming. That’s still in the discussion phase. Stay tuned!) If you’re not familiar with our podcast, or would like to see what we have produced so far, here is a link to our archives.
Conclusion: Thank You!
This site exists because of you. You come here. You share articles. You interact with us on Facebook. You download the podcast. We are grateful and humbled by it all.
So, as we start heading toward 2017, we take this opportunity to say a heartfelt “thank you!”
