As another year closes out, I look back at the journey of my thinking that is captured in this blog. The blog doesn’t capture all of my journey. Some things remain private. Some things remain undeveloped and unpublished. Of the things I have put out into the sunlight of the blogosphere, I hope it has been helpful, encouraging, challenging, and interesting.
I usually launch right into the top ten (or so) articles, but I want to take a moment to review where I have been and where I am going. The numbers tell a surprising story (to me). They might be boring to you, so I will try to keep it brief.
I expect my thought journey and faith journey may be more intriguing to the reader. It is also more difficult to capture and to summarize. I will do my best.
By the Numbers
I started this blog in September of 2013 with 20 articles that garnered under 500 views. The top article on the attributes of success had just over 100 views, 5 likes, and 3 comments. About 180 of the readers came through Facebook.
In 2025, I was on a slower pace, publishing only 57 articles all year, but viewership for the blog is projected to top out around 110,000. The top article this year was viewed over 23 times more than all articles published in 2013. In the fact, the top article in 2025 was viewed more times (11,790) than all the articles in any year prior to 2020 (11,016 in 2020).
The climb from 500 views to 110,000 views was not a sudden thing. Readership increased with jumps and plateaus through 2019, with a peak of just over 11,000 in 2018. In 2020, readership jumped over 20,000 views, which I attribute to the pandemic. People were limited in their activities. They were reading more and, perhaps, being more contemplative because of the psycho-emotional impact of COVID.
I was excited about the increase in readership in 2020. Readership increased again to 30,000+ in 2021 as the world began to emerge from the clutches of COVID. As things got back to “normal” in the following two years, readership settled around 30,000 views.
The real break out year just last year, 2024. The views skyrocketed over 61,000. The upward trajectory has continued in 2025 with projected views on pace to top 110,000.
The past two years have taken me totally by surprise. I have not done anything different than I have ever done. I started writing out of a sense of obedience to God to make use of the gifting He has given me. My main goal was to be faithful, and that continues to be the driving force.
I have tried to stay true to the theme of the blog, which is “navigating by faith.” I try to write out of my own experience, to write in keeping with my own thought and faith journey, and to write as I sense God is leading me.
My Faith Journey
In 2012, I was coming out of a long, slow regression in my faith. Perhaps, others might call what went through a deconstruction.
I wandered for more than two decades in a spiritual malaise. My faith became stagnant. I stopped seeking. I stopped reading the Bible. I stopped praying with purpose. I eventually stopped going to church.
My priorities shifted from a spiritual focus to career and providing for my family. The cares and concerns of the world overtook me as I pulled back from spiritual seeking and devotion to God. I moved with my family back to the area in which I grew up, and I found myself attracted to and tempted by my former thinking and way of life.
As I look back, I can say that I had accumulated baggage that was holding me back and stifling my spiritual growth. I had accumulated theological structures that God needed to strip away. That “deconstruction” was long and painful as I languished in spiritual doldrums for over 20 years.
I came to a point at which I had nothing to cling to but God and His mercy. I didn’t even know if He would “take me back” when I came face to face with the realization that the spiritual life within me was in danger of petering out completely, like a pilot light flickering in a cold wind. I turned to God, and I said, “Where else will I go? Only you have the words of life.”
In that moment of surrender, God had mercy on me. With no illusions of grandeur that characterized my early Christian walk, I sought God and embraced faithfulness. Around that time, I began to sense that God wanted me to write. It didn’t overwhelm me, but that sense was persistent, like the nudging of a gentle wind.
I noticed it, and I flirted with the idea for many months before I finally relented in my heart to do it. I set up an account in WordPress, and I began to write in September of 2012. The summary of the last 13 years tells the rest of the story.
My Writing
The blog title, Navigating by Faith, aligns with the beginning of my faith journey in college. God took me back to the beginning to start rebuilding on that early foundation. I was a seeker, I was eager to learn, and I had no preconceived notions of what I would find. I was a clean slate.
Many of the insights I had as a nonbeliever reading the Bible for the first time in college have been rehashed over the years in my writing. Much of my writing from the beginning through the present includes my personal discoveries in reading Scripture and working them out in the writing process.
I have always had an evangelical bent. I have always paid homage in my thinking to the Great Commission. I am always sensitive to the way in which a person who doubts or does not believe in God might encounter my writing. I felt that doubters and nonbelievers should the “audience” of my writing when I started, but my “audience” has shifted.
I find myself being more prophetic as time goes on. I find myself writing to the people who call themselves Christian as much or more than I find myself writing to those outside the Church.
I found great joy in apologetics, and I have written often on the subject of science and faith, archaeology, other apologetic topics. Over the years, though, my perception of who I am writing for has changed. I am not sure that apologetics has more value for the nonbeliever then for the believer.
I am not sure that apologetics is all that effective for convincing anyone of the truth. What is called apologetics in modern parlance, for me, has become more of a source of devotion, discovery, and appreciation for the wonder of the God of the universe.
At the same time, current events, politics, and cultural tensions have arrested my attention. I am grieved in a prophetic way that the world is so polarized, and the Church is as polarized as the world.
The tensions in the Church have gained the focus of my attention, and I have been holding up current events, politics, and cultural tensions to the light of Scripture since 2014, when I wrote, Immigration: the Strangers Among Us. Christian ambivalence during the Syrian refugee crisis exposed my own ignorance and the need to understand what the Bible says about immigration. Though it only has 222 views, that article was a watershed piece for me.
My personal, devotional time gives me much of the inspiration for my writing. Listening to podcasts and reading provides other food for thought. Politics, current events, and cultural turmoil have increasingly commanded my attention. I write about what I am thinking about and wrestling through. I would much rather write inspirational pieces, exploring the amazing tapestry of the Bible, and praising the glory of God through science and “apologetic” “proofs” of God and His character than writing about politics, current events, and cultural tensions, but the prophetic burden is a deep impulse that I do not think I should ignore.
Article Trends
With all of that said, the themes and subject of my writing really have not changed all that much over the years. I wrote more inspirational, self-help, and personal stories in the beginning. The odd article on current events, like the Boston Marathon bombing in 2012 and the Hobby Lobby case in 2014, were more widely read, however.
Inspirational pieces, like It is Well with My Soul: The Story (2014) (3292 views), have been top articles year after year. Purely bible-based seeker sensitive articles, like Tuning into God’s Frequency (2016) (3312 views), Is God a Hard Taskmaster? (2017) (2541 Views), and Women and the Resurrection Story (2015) (1175 views), have also regularly been among the most read articles in multiple years.
The few articles I have written on archaeology and the Bible, like the Ebla Tablets Confirm Biblical Accounts (2015) (2103 views), have also been perennial favorites. Articles on apologetics consistently show up in the most read column each year, but especially in the 2015-2020 time frame. The Ebla Tablets, CS Lewis on “True Myth” (2018) (6358 views), C.S. Lewis on Individualism, Equality and the Church (2015) (1888) and The Message in the Earliest Creeds in the New Testament (2016) (4320 views) have repeatedly been among the most read articles.
I have very reluctantly and hesitantly entered into the political fray. Most of my political writing was nonpartisan until about 2016. I am a conservative, Republican, so I kept my concerns about Donald Trump mostly to myself until after he took office. Even then, I was relatively quiet about it until midway through his first term.
That’s when I wrote Donald Trump, Fruit and Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing (2018), which has been among the most read articles for a number of years with 2200 views. Everything changed in 2020, though. I was increasingly troubled by Donald Trump as his presidency wore on, and all the more during his second second presidential campaign. Even then, I stayed silent until near the end.
The prophetic whirlwind surrounding Trump was peaking as the election loomed. I was at once confronted by my own prophetic sense that Donald Trump is not the man some Christians thought he was, and the hype and cocksureness of a segment of the Church that was becoming increasingly more militant and unhinged in support of him.
A conversation with my best friend from college, who I respected without question, was the difference maker. His commitment to Trump compelled me to resolve the tension once and for all in my own mind. I spent hours listening to the people he was listening to, and turned to Scripture where they found an anchor in the “sons of Issachar who knew the times.” That’s when I wrote Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today? (2020).
That one article has far surpassed all other articles as the most viewed piece on the blog with 34,097 views. It seems no wonder that politics and current events took center stage on my blog in 2020 with a global pandemic raging and the tumult of the presidential election.
A follow up article in 2020, Postscript to the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times (2200 views), has also become a most read article. The Redemption of Korah: the Sons of Korah, written the same year, is far more like the articles I want to write. It is an inspirational reprieve in which I explore a “hidden” gem that I discovered during my devotional reading. It has become the second most read article on the blog with 17,380 views to date.
2021 signals the waning of my interest in apologetics as a tool for convincing people of the truth of God. The article, Apologetics: What It Means for Our Speech to be Seasoned with Salt, was motivated by my sense that what we say is not nearly as critical to the effectiveness in sharing the truth of God as how we say it and how we live out the message of the Gospel. At 6638 views, it is the 4th most read article on the blog.
Ironically, 2020 marks the a change in readership gravitating toward the more bible-based writing and scriptural analysis The Redemption of Korah is the second-most read article, and God Meets Us Where We Are, written then same year, has become the third most read article at 12,849 views. The Critical Difference between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Fruit of the Holy Spirit (2023) has become the sixth most read article at 5575 views. Is Merely Believing in Jesus Enough? (2024) already has 3240 views; The Significance of Eve’s Seed in the Plan of God (2024) has 2880 views.
Other recent top articles have more of a religion or worldview theme include Diving for Pearls in the Stories of Dustin Kensrue and Mark Driscoll (2024) (3050 views) and Critical Race Theory from a Christian Perspective (2020) (2031 views). The Bible, inspiration, and music come together in The Borderlines: A Place Called Earth (2021) (1857 views). And, I have managed to mix in a few apologetic pieces that have generated traffic, like An Interview with Dr. Bruce Greyson on Near Death Experiences, Part 2 (2022) (2019 views) and St. Augustine on the Literal Meaning of Genesis (2024) (1885 views).
Though the Sons of Issachar is the top article in every year since it was written in 2020 (with the exception of The Redemption of Korah in 2023), and though I have written more and more on politics and current events, the more bible-based articles have (by far) been the most read articles in the last 4 years. I take some solace in that to mitigate my forays into the political arena.
A Change in Readership
As I sit here, I don’t know why the blog has grown from 30,000, to 61,000, to 110,000 views in the last three years. I don’t advertise on the blog or monetize it. That isn’t why I write, though I am not opposed to doing that. I don’t really promote it, other than to post on Facebook, Most of the time on Facebook, and I post the articles only in my Navigating By Faith Facebook group, as I am posting for other Christians, primarily, and not for the public at large.
“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.”
(Proverbs 16:9)
My intentions are to be true to what God has laid on my heart and to be faithful to write. I work that out as best as I can and plan my way accordingly. I haven’t changed much in my approach to writing since I started. I have attempted from time to time to post on other media, like LinkedIn, X, and Tumbler, but I haven’t done that much in the last 3-4 years. The sharp increase in the readership is not the result of me doing anything different than what I have done from the beginning.
As I was wondering about this, I noticed that comments and likes have actually decreased despite the fact that views and visitors have increased precipitously. The article engagement peaked in 2020 at just over 20,000 views. Since it has steadily gone down, and it fell to pre-2025 numbers in 2025, though readership has soared.
My curiosity led me to query Chat GPT for an answer, and I found an answer that seems to make sense. The traffic previously was driven by the WordPress and Facebook communities, which are engaged readers who tend to respond and comment. Chat GPT says, “As blogs grow, the content often shifts—sometimes unintentionally—to attract search traffic.” Post that begin to rank on Google, for instance, “bring in more readers but fewer conversational opportunities, so comments decline.”
Articles that rank in Google draw more people who do not know the author. Google draws people doing research and more readers who are not likely to return to the blog to develop a connection. Google also reaches more international readers.
I also learned that WordPress traffic has become more mobile, and mobile readers are less likely to interact as well. Recent changes in the WordPress interface have made engagement more difficult. Many bloggers had reported this since 2021.
Finally, online habits have changed. Conversations have increasingly moved to social media platforms. People use AI to summarize blog posts. More people are avoiding public conversations to avoid confrontation.
In the final analysis, Navigating By Faith seems to have shifted from a small community readership to a large search-driven readership. Chat GPT says, “This is normal, healthy, and common for high-performing blogs.”
I am certainly not going to sweat it. I will continue to trust God with the blog as I have done since it generated under 500 views in the 2012. If you are still reading this, I am especially grateful for you hanging in there with me. I do like the engagement, even if you disagree with me, so leave a comment (whether you leave me a “like” or not). I usually respond, and I appreciate you.
Navigating by Faith 