Self-Aggrandizing Announcement

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Jay F Guin

Top Church Blogs - Top Christian Blogs Kent Schaffer at ChurchRelevance.com has posted a list of the Top 200 Church Blogs. Once again, One In Jesus has made the list (at 144). So have Jim Martin and Matt Dabbs.

But you know me. And so you know that I just had to look a little deeper into the numbers.

Kent does a tremendous amount of work to assemble this data, and I greatly appreciate it. What I’m about to say is not a criticism, because it is, in reality, impossible to rank blogs scientifically without getting information only available from the authors.

Matt and I have done this in the past, and it’s a LOT of trouble just working within the Churches of Christ universe. To do it Internet-wide would be unimaginably difficult. Therefore, any ranking based on publicly available data will necessarily be inaccurate. It’s an impossible task — and I can’t criticize anyone’s failure to do the impossible.

Kent uses several data sources (available at the above link) to compile his ranking, but some of those are seem unrelated to the true ranking. For example, the Faith & Reason blog has by FAR the lowest Alexa rank (rank of average daily visitors over the last three months; lowest is best) and highest Compete Visitors (number of unique visitors in a given month), and therefore should surely be ranked number 1. No one else is close! But the use of the other data brings Faith & Reason down to number 3.

Now, Alexa and Compete are by no means perfect, based the research Matt and I have done. But they correlate to true rankings far more closely than any other publicly available data.

Therefore, just for fun (Yes, I know, I have a strange idea of fun) I reranked the blogs based on just those two data sets. Here are the results.

I doubt that that this is a perfect ranking, but Jesus Creed (my favorite) moves up from 41 to 3, which seems about right. And blogs that reported zero visitors in Compete move toward the bottom of the list.

Most importantly, of course, Matt and I move up into the top 100! (I told you it was fun! And I’m enjoying working with tables, another HTML skill partly learned.)

Then again, I’m not familiar with most of these, and so maybe the data isn’t right. Does this seem about right?

New Rank	Old Rank	Blog	Author	Alexa Rank	Compete Visitors	Average of Normalized Scores*
1	3	Faith & Reason	Cathy Lynn Grossman	341	12,506,374	0.00%
2	57	Believe It or Not	Kate Shellnutt	2,196	849,428	46.62%
3	41	Jesus Creed	Scot McKnight	8,191	415,862	48.41%
4	79	The Pangea Blog	Kurt Willems	8,191	415,862	48.41%
5	119	Theoblogy	Tony Jones	8,191	415,862	48.41%
6	138	Exploring Our Matrix	James McGrath	8,191	415,862	48.41%
7	145	Nadia Bolz-Weber	Nadia Bolz-Weber	8,191	415,862	48.41%
8	147	Euangelion	Various	8,191	415,862	48.41%
9	156	Black, White, and Gray	Various	8,191	415,862	48.41%
10	172	Slow Church	Various	8,191	415,862	48.41%
11	174	Fibonacci Faith	Richard Dahlstrom	8,191	415,862	48.41%
12	188	Christian Piatt	Christian Piatt	8,191	415,862	48.41%
13	192	Faith Forward	Various	8,191	415,862	48.41%
14	125	Mark D. Roberts	Mark D Roberts	7,008	258,408	49.03%
15	183	Catholics, Media, and Culture	John Kennedy	7,008	258,408	49.03%
16	13	Desiring God	Various	28,148	191,637	49.50%
17	1	Between Two Worlds	Justin Taylor	27,290	129,741	49.74%
18	9	DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed	Kevin DeYoung	27,290	129,741	49.74%
19	11	The Gospel Coalition Blog	Various	27,290	129,741	49.74%
20	15	Tullian Tchividjian	Tullian Tchividjian	27,290	129,741	49.74%
21	16	Pure Church	Thabiti Anyabwile	27,290	129,741	49.74%
22	24	Christ is Deeper Still	Ray Ortlund	27,290	129,741	49.74%
23	60	Kingdom People	Trevin Wax	27,290	129,741	49.74%
24	2	Michael Hyatt	Michael Hyatt	20,367	80,256	49.87%
25	54	ChurchLeaders.com	Various	45,149	120,678	49.94%
26	16	Christianity Today Live Blog	Various	21,199	50,122	50.00%
27	12	Ligonier Ministries	Various	45,873	105,124	50.01%
28	129	Pastor’s toolBox	Various	7,824	15,375	50.01%
29	131	Christianity in Today’s America	Various	7,824	15,375	50.01%
30	46	Dallas News Religion Blog	Various	6,340	7,540	50.03%
31	95	Relevant Blogs	Various	42,964	85,512	50.06%
32	32	Ministry to Children	Various	107,153	222,768	50.11%
33	104	Bock’s Blog	Darrell Bock	22,858	4,674	50.20%
34	4	Tim Challies	Tim Challies	54,677	39,272	50.35%
35	21	Compassion International	Various	53,135	15,851	50.43%
36	28	Swerve	Various	49,652	3,145	50.45%
37	10	The Resurgence	Various	72,039	55,516	50.45%
38	6	Stuff Christians Like	Jon Acuff	63,182	29,107	50.48%
39	42	Evangel	Various	90,626	58,598	50.61%
40	89	Church Mag	Various	78,234	11,274	50.69%
41	20	Rachel Held Evans	Rachel Held Evans	117,725	39,692	50.94%
42	103	Fire in my Bones	J Lee Grady	136,691	67,561	51.01%
43	5	Fr. Z’s Blog	John Zuhlsdorf	130,838	40,346	51.06%
44	74	Zwinglius Redivivus	Jim West	118,791	4,086	51.10%
45	101	Christian Web Trends	Paul Steinbrueck	137,693	2,140	51.28%
46	59	Mark Driscoll	Mark Driscoll	152,396	21,117	51.34%
47	33	High Calling Blogs	Various	162,977	14,793	51.47%
48	18	9Marks	Various	171,951	21,312	51.52%
49	53	Apprising	Ken Silva	182,329	37,547	51.56%
50	72	Here I Blog	Mark	174,403	4,401	51.62%
51	139	Digital @ Leadership Network	Various	174,078	2,747	51.62%
52	8	Dr. Albert Mohler	Albert Mohler	207,183	30,239	51.82%
53	82	Todd Bolen	Todd Bolen	218,422	5,694	52.02%
54	23	Ed Stetzer	Ed Stetzer	222,159	13,741	52.03%
55	19	Don Miller	Don Miller	221,581	12,232	52.03%
56	64	XXXchurch	Craig Gross	225,605	11,019	52.07%
57	7	GetReligion	Various	249,403	39,055	52.18%
58	49	Gifted for Leadership	Various	241,137	11,908	52.21%
59	93	Pastors.com	Various	264,206	34,252	52.34%
60	25	Ragamuffin Soul	Carlos Whittaker	259,544	17,222	52.36%
61	29	Ron Edmondson	Ron Edmondson	261,932	16,196	52.39%
62	21	Pyromaniacs	Various	269,237	11,287	52.48%
63	130	Ferrell’s Travel Blog	Ferrell Jenkins	268,543	3,197	52.50%
64	75	Liturgy	Bosco Peters	276,519	12,357	52.54%
65	157	Orange Leaders	Various	288,677	31,352	52.58%
66	63	Catablog	Various	284,990	7,658	52.64%
67	109	Terry Mattingly	Terry Mattingly	298,738	1,081	52.79%
68	31	Church Relevance	Kent Shaffer	314,879	15,208	52.89%
69	14	Internet Monk	Various	317,315	17,771	52.90%
70	149	Glenn Peoples	Glenn Peoples	312,734	260	52.93%
71	144	One in Jesus	Jay Guin	319,899	5,025	52.98%
72	177	Vridar	Neil Godfrey	331,100	0	53.10%
73	136	Kingdom Living	Matt Dabbs	333,837	5,933	53.10%
74	45	Reformation 21	Various	342,947	12,212	53.16%
75	67	Blog and Mablog	Doug Wilson	343,996	9,622	53.18%
76	30	Parchment and Pen	Michael Patton	349,728	16,999	53.21%
77	47	Stuff Fundies Like	Darrell	357,243	10,890	53.30%
78	66	Blogging Theologically	Aaron Armstrong	375,402	6,173	53.49%
79	44	Call & Response	Various	401,881	11,272	53.72%
80	69	Big is the New Small	Scott Williams	405,046	3,377	53.78%
81	100	Shaun Groves	Shaun Groves	421,350	935	53.94%
82	155	The Briefing	Various	438,033	1,044	54.10%
83	127	Nathan Bingham	Nathan Bingham	442,623	1,889	54.14%
84	175	Everyday Christian	Various	448,540	11,346	54.15%
85	52	Without Wax	Pete Wilson	452,072	3,358	54.22%
86	78	Storied Theology	J. R. Daniel Kirk	457,123	1,562	54.27%
87	34	Church Marketing Sucks	Various	460,216	7,508	54.28%
88	37	John C. Maxwell	John C. Maxwell	463,484	5,014	54.32%
89	55	Christian Nightmares	Anonymous	468,810	2,597	54.38%
90	25	Acts 29	Scott Thomas	473,393	10,482	54.39%
91	106	Youth Specialties	Various	479,686	13,943	54.44%
92	51	nakedpastor	David Hayward	490,684	6,689	54.57%
93	27	Out of Ur	Various	494,960	12,644	54.58%
94	118	Modern Reject	Nicole Cottrell	497,699	6,324	54.63%
95	70	Todd Rhoades	Todd Rhoades	504,105	7,288	54.69%
96	76	Beyond Evangelical	Frank Viola	505,907	5,144	54.72%
97	179	Church Stage Design Ideas	Jonathan Malm	510,730	3,089	54.77%
98	77	Reformation Theology	Various	516,065	8,228	54.80%
99	48	Take Your Vitamin Z	Zach Nielsen	537,633	4,121	55.02%
100	190	Till He Comes	Jeremy Myers	546,814	10,328	55.08%
101	134	Small Group Dynamics	Various	545,007	1,403	55.10%
102	163	Plywood People	Various	553,757	1,086	55.18%
103	194	Maurilio Amorim	Maurilio Amorim	572,060	2,091	55.35%
104	39	Perry Noble	Perry Noble	581,018	4,613	55.42%
105	159	Founders Ministries Blog	Tom Ascol	593,232	0	55.55%
106	36	Steven Furtick	Steven Furtick	601,208	9,715	55.59%
107	86	The Naked Bible	Michael S. Heiser	629,648	8,704	55.86%
108	113	PaleoBabble	Michael S. Heiser	629,648	8,704	55.86%
109	151	Sharefaith Blog	Various	644,429	14,187	55.98%
110	95	The Blazing Center	Various	652,386	7,746	56.08%
111	99	Matthew and Madeleine Flannagan	Various	659,576	524	56.17%
112	40	Tall Skinny Kiwi	Andrew Jones	664,984	3,079	56.21%
113	38	Worship Matters	Bob Kauflin	673,688	6,120	56.28%
114	111	Thom Rainer	Thom Ranier	677,018	6,354	56.31%
115	153	Church Leader Insights	Nelson Searcy	710,531	26,459	56.55%
116	84	Jesus Needs New PR	Matthew Paul Turner	703,788	3,553	56.58%
117	87	The Church of No People	Matt Appling	707,363	2,830	56.61%
118	159	Scott Bailey	Scott Bailey	711,368	107	56.66%
119	94	Tony Morgan Live	Tony Morgan	728,750	3,269	56.81%
120	133	Near Emmaus	Brian LePort	729,083	2,749	56.82%
121	106	Life in Student Ministry	Tim Schmoyer	734,075	8,761	56.84%
122	61	People of the Second Chance	Various	763,959	4,530	57.14%
123	121	Phil Cooke	Phil Cooke	766,565	1,609	57.17%
124	145	Ben Arment	Ben Arment	770,030	645	57.21%
125	105	Andy Naselli	Andy Naselli	782,121	5,150	57.30%
126	123	A Place For the God-Hungry	Jim Martin	784,680	2,236	57.34%
127	50	Adrian Warnock	Adrian Warnock	802,218	4,608	57.49%
128	120	Think Christian	Various	820,597	4,163	57.67%
129	101	Pomomusings	Adam Walker Cleaveland	835,820	3,704	57.81%
130	189	Unsettled Christianity	Joel L. Watts	840,846	0	57.87%
131	62	The Museum of Idolatry	Chris Rosebrough	846,095	4,555	57.90%
132	35	Standing on my Head	Dwight Longnecker	848,429	7,094	57.92%
133	85	Mark Oestreicher	Mark Oestreicher	853,393	2,786	57.98%
134	166	Adam McLane	Adam McLane	870,085	1,875	58.14%
135	176	Fundamentally Reformed	Bob Hayton	904,901	3,639	58.46%
136	170	Introverted Church	Adam McHugh	905,557	2,239	58.47%
137	139	J.C. Ryle Quotes	Erik Kowalker	908,145	5,895	58.48%
138	68	The Cartoon Blog	Dave Walker	907,750	2,744	58.49%
139	71	Mark Batterson	Mark Batterson	914,653	3,933	58.55%
140	56	The Gospel-Driven Church	Jared Wilson	932,481	6,615	58.70%
141	141	Tim Schraeder	Tim Schraeder	935,729	4,290	58.74%
142	165	Robert Cargill	Robert Cargill	945,833	1,848	58.85%
143	182	Justin Wise	Justin Wise	972,552	401	59.10%
144	98	Timmy Brister	Timmy Brister	976,385	1,525	59.14%
145	137	DJ Chuang	DJ Chuang	980,482	3,948	59.16%
146	79	Josh Harris	Josh Harris	986,787	7,204	59.21%
147	116	Christ and Pop Culture	Various	986,527	4,131	59.22%
148	135	Ordinary Pastor	Erik Raymond	987,957	3,386	59.24%
149	90	What’s Best Next	Matt Perman	1,020,889	5,202	59.54%
150	191	Christian Research Network	Various	1,025,863	5,879	59.58%
151	149	Brad Lomenick	Brad Lomenick	1,028,905	712	59.63%
152	88	Eugene Cho	Eugene Cho	1,034,327	5,740	59.66%
153	185	Margaret Feinberg	Margaret Feinberg	1,035,961	4,089	59.68%
154	91	Reformissionary	Steve McCoy	1,041,751	2,029	59.75%
155	83	Brandon A Cox	Brandon Cox	1,063,924	2,668	59.95%
156	114	Joe Thorn	Joe Thorn	1,103,854	2,728	60.32%
157	173	Doug Fields	Doug Fields	1,124,976	2,786	60.52%
158	163	The Worship Community	Various	1,153,063	6,163	60.77%
159	110	NT Resources Blog	Rod Decker	1,152,390	3,005	60.78%
160	131	Glocal Christianity	Matt Stone	1,160,591	6,274	60.84%
161	155	Ben Reed	Ben Reed	1,168,265	1,370	60.93%
162	180	NT Blog	Mark Goodacre	1,194,106	0	61.18%
163	197	Gathering in Light	C. Wess Daniels	1,245,843	812	61.66%
164	162	Stuff Christian Culture Likes	Stephanie Drury	1,308,402	1,568	62.24%
165	95	The Sacred Page	Various	1,359,386	2,791	62.72%
166	126	Johnny Baker	Johnny Baker	1,373,034	0	62.86%
167	43	Brian McLaren	Brian McLaren	1,377,235	6,279	62.87%
168	112	Godspace	Christine Sine	1,450,282	3,681	63.56%
169	73	Vintage Faith	Dan Kimball	1,466,089	2,682	63.72%
170	187	Drew Goodmanson	Drew Goodmanson	1,520,199	3,730	64.22%
171	81	Reclaiming the Mission	David Fitch	1,520,090	2,735	64.22%
172	196	DashHouse.com	Darryl Dash	1,526,860	1,236	64.29%
173	198	Church Tech Today	Various	1,609,883	2,798	65.06%
174	92	Rethinking Youth Ministry	Various	1,623,789	8,806	65.17%
175	148	Mere Orthodoxy	Various	1,641,553	673	65.37%
176	65	Glory to God for All Things	Father Stephen	1,881,308	4,465	67.60%
177	124	Your Church	Various	1,919,064	10,573	67.93%
178	170	Ancient Hebrew Poetry	John Hobbins	2,052,062	4,185	69.20%
179	184	Will Mancini	Will Mancini	2,069,680	1,350	69.37%
180	114	Skye Box	Skye Jethani	2,112,651	3,478	69.77%
181	169	Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth	Nick Norelli	2,123,841	0	69.89%
182	178	Phil Gons	Phil Gons	2,218,793	1,156	70.77%
183	158	Bruce Reyes-Chow	Bruce Reyes-Chow	2,223,993	3,893	70.81%
184	200	Political Jesus	Rodney Thomas	2,284,718	1,509	71.39%
185	58	Peter J. Leithart	Peter J. Leithart	2,425,622	3,063	72.70%
186	166	The Evangelical Outpost	Various	2,584,566	1,310	74.20%
187	108	Culture Making	Andy Crouch	2,584,455	888	74.20%
188	180	Targuman	Chris Brady	2,615,716	1,430	74.49%
189	142	Tim Chester	Tim Chester	2,631,779	0	74.64%
190	194	Youthblog	Ian MacDonald	2,876,323	2,572	76.92%
191	161	Confessions of a Small Church Pastor	Chuck Warnock	3,131,701	7,601	79.29%
192	121	The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus	Jon Birch	3,280,160	0	80.71%
193	193	p.ost	Andrew Perriman	3,702,686	781	84.67%
194	186	THEOOZE	Spencer Burke	3,860,066	698	86.14%
195	128	A K M Adam	A K M Adam	4,237,225	0	89.67%
196	117	Leading Smart	Tim Stevens	4,681,603	2,518	93.83%
197	151	Cerulean Sanctum	Dan Edelen	4,905,851	1,794	95.93%
198	166	Bishop Alan	Alan Wilson	5,163,552	0	98.35%
199	198	Church Mouse Publishing	Anonymous	5,170,251	0	98.41%
200	143	The Forbidden Gospels	April DeConick	5,339,927	0	100.00%

* For the sake of space, I’ve not shown the math. The method is to convert each raw number to a percentage of the largest figure in the column. Hence, the highest Alexa score is 100% and the lowest is nearly 0%. Since the highest figure in Alexa is the worst score and in Compete it’s the best score, I subtracted the Compete percentage from 100% so that the lowest score would be the best, like Alexa. I then averaged the two and ranked by average. If anyone wants the full spreadsheet, I’d be glad to email it.

About Jay F Guin

My name is Jay Guin, and I’m a retired elder. I wrote The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace about 18 years ago. I’ve spoken at the Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU, Harding, and Tulsa lectureships and at ElderLink. My wife’s name is Denise, and I have four sons, Chris, Jonathan, Tyler, and Philip. I have two grandchildren. And I practice law.

View all posts by Jay F Guin →

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7 Responses to Self-Aggrandizing Announcement

Glenn Peoples says:

April 13, 2012 at 6:39 am

What a herculean effort!

I’m not sure how to read this though. My “complete visitors” number listed here is 260.

However, my unique visits total for March 2012 was 6,515. (http://statcounter.com/p5435065/summary/?granularity=monthly)

What does the 260 refer too?
Glenn Peoples says:

April 13, 2012 at 6:44 am

My bad – I see at the Church Relevance blog that the figure refers to January, in which I had 7,474 visits. (I also see it’s “compete,” not “complete,” my double bad!)
Matt Dabbs says:

April 13, 2012 at 10:34 am

Jay,

Here is a reference point of actual visits for some of these blogs – http://biblioblogtop50.wordpress.com/

To be in the biblioblog they have to accept you as one and you have to place their counter on your blog so they get your actual visit numbers. Your numbers seem more accurate to me. I am fairly certain you get more page views than I do. I think we probably get about the same number of unique visitors in an average day but your guys do more clicking than mine 🙂
Mark says:

April 13, 2012 at 11:53 am

I moved up to 50, cool!

Does google PR factor into the rankings at all?
Matt Dabbs says:

April 13, 2012 at 3:36 pm

Mark,

It does in Kent’s numbers.
Jay Guin says:

April 13, 2012 at 9:59 pm

Mark,

As Matt points out, Kent uses the Google Page Rank as a factor. But in Matt’s and my studies, we see little correlation between GPR and how many people read a given blog. There’s some correlation, but it’s not a particularly helpful measure. Therefore, I didn’t include it as a factor in my own re-sorting of the data.
Jay Guin says:

April 13, 2012 at 10:19 pm

Thanks, Matt. I’ve filled out the form to be accepted. It’ll be interesting to see if OIJ breaks into the Biblioblog top 50.

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Self-Aggrandizing Announcement

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