Tag: Navigating By Faith

The Top Ten of 2025

The top ten+ articles on Navigating By Faith in 2025

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

It’s a tradition. I recount the top ten articles on blog at the end of each year. I suppose it’s only fitting to look at the mile markers over the part year, as I have been wont to review the mile markers of my lifelong journey over the years.

Over recent years, the readership of this blog has increased from 10,000 in 2019, to 20,000 in 2020, to 30,000 from 2021 through 2023, 20 61,000+ in 2024, and 112,000+ in 2025. The data demonstrates a shift in readership. according to Chat GPT, from more of a community minded, WordPress driven blog to a blog that ranks on Google and attracts a wider audience.

I have done nothing intentionally to trigger that change in readership. I suspect the change may have something to do one article that has become the most read article on the blog: Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today? It has been read over 34,400 times since I published it in September 2020, and over one third of those views (12,203) came in 2025.

The article is the result of my own angst over American Christian support of Donald Trump. It was written at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign after a conversation with my best friend from college in which I learned of his support of Trump. We both years together in a charismatic church that grew out of the Jesus People movement in the Northeast and morphed into the New Apostolic Reformation movement that melded the charismatic movement with the fundamentalist, Moral Majority.

These forces brought politics into church culture and fueled Christian political activism as a primary focus of the local, regional, and national church mission. We both left that church to go to law school, and our paths diverged.

Paul and I could pick up as if we last saw each other only a week ago, though years had gone by. Yet, our paths had taken us to very different places in our spiritual journeys. I had moved on.

From my new vantage point, Donald Trump appeared to me like a wolf in sheep’s clothing; while my good friend had embraced the prophetic excitement that fueled the support of a certain segment of the faith community for Trump. While Paul celebrated Trump like a modern incarnation of King Cyrus ordained by God to establish God’s people in the United States like a new promised land; I was convinced that Trump is like Saul, the king God’s people wanted because they rejected God as their king.

Though I was confident in my own assessment, I was deeply troubled by my good friend’s support and the prophetic fervor that fueled it. I spent many hours listening to those prophetic voices. Those voices took me into a world of faith and politics with gnostic, conspiratorial, arcane, militaristic, and occultic undertones.

The sons of Issachar “who knew the times” was a catch phrase spoken like a secret handshake among purveyors of prophetic understanding. I took my growing angst to the Bible to familiarize myself with the story of David living in exile from the paranoid King Saul where many members of the various tribes of Israel joined him, including the sons of Issachar, who knew the times.

I used writing to resolve my angst as I meditated on Scripture and sought clarity in prayer and meditation. The Sons of Issachar piece was my way of working through that angst. I was able to put a bow on my efforts with the Postscript to the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times, published a few days after the 2020 presidential election.

Thank you for indulging me as I recall the backstory to the most well-read article of this blog, which may also be the reason the blog ranks now on Google. Whether it is the reason (or not), it underscores how this blog characterizes my own journey and grows organically out of it. Following are the next most-read articles in 2025.

Continue reading “The Top Ten of 2025” →

Looking Back at 13 Years of Navigating By Faith

“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.”

kevingdrendel10 Comments

As another year closes out, I look back on my journey of faith and thought that is captured in this blog. The blog doesn’t capture all of my journey. Some things remain private, and some things remain undeveloped and unpublished. Of the things I have put out into the sunlight of the blogosphere, though, I hope they have been helpful, encouraging, and challenging, if not interesting.

I usually launch right into the top ten articles (or so) of the year in review, 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), but I realize the numbers might be boring to you, so I will try to keep that part brief.

I expect that the substance of the journey may be more intriguing to the reader, but the substance is also more difficult to capture and to summarize. I will do my best.

By the Numbers

I started this blog in September of 2012 with 20 articles that garnered under 500 views. The top article on attributes of success had just over 100 views, 5 likes, and 3 comments. About 180 of the readers came through Facebook. Those early attempts at writing are somewhat embarrassing to me (so no links are provided).

I wrote over 100 articles each year from 2017 through 2021, with the high water mark being 149 articles in 2017. My writing has slowed in the number of articles I have written over the last 4 years as the words per article have increased (peaking at an average of 1908 words per article in 2025)

In 2025, I have published only 57 articles all year, but viewership for the blog is projected to top out around 110,000. That is nearly as many readers as the blog had from 2012 through 2021 combined.

The top article this year was viewed over 23 times more than all the articles published in 2012. 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 stayed inside, and they read more. Perhaps, people were more contemplative because of the psycho-emotional impact of COVID.

I was excited about the increase in readership in 2020 and the increase again to 30,000+ in 2021 as the world began to emerge from the clutches of COVID. With the world getting back to “normal” in the following two years, readership settled around 30,000 views each year for several year.

Just last year, in 2024, the views skyrocketed over 61,000. The upward trajectory has continued in 2025 with projected views on pace to top 110,000.

The sudden increase in readership has taken me totally by surprise. I have not done anything differently than I was doing before, as far as I know. Perhaps, my writing is developing in ways that I do not realize. I do tackle more difficult subject matter and get into greater depth, but I would assume that might turn some people away.

I began writing out of a sense of obedience to God. I felt compelled to make use of the gifting He has given me. My main goal was to be faithful, and that focus continues to be a 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. That long, difficult segment of my like journey of my life set the stage.

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. I was shrinking back from God.

My priorities had 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 where I grew up, and I found myself attracted to and tempted by former ways of 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 ruts 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 windy place. 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. He didn’t overwhelm me, with it but it was persistent, like the nudging of a gentle wind.

I noticed, 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.

Continue reading “Looking Back at 13 Years of Navigating By Faith” →

Top Ten Articles on Navigating By Faith in 2022

If you want to retrace my steps this past year, jump in and read on.

kevingdrendel1 Comment

I have been blogging now for a decade. When I started, I felt like I had learned some things I had learned on my journey, especially from many years ago, that I needed to work out in writing. I also wanted to work out new things I was learning through the process of writing.

I felt called to write, but I ignored what seemed like God’s gentle, but steady voice for some time before I relented and committed myself on the path forward. I explored blog tools and sites, and I created Navigating by Faith late in 2013.

I have written 1035 articles since that time. Article views have grown from a meager 728 readers and 1028 views in 2013 to a very modest 22,608 readers and 30,751 views in 2021. In 2022, I finish with 21,716 readers and 30,198 views. Readership picked up through COVID, but it has plateaued.

The numbers ultimately are not of primary importance. The content is the key. The content reflects my own journey – where I have been, where I am, and where I am going. I try not to make it about me, though.

I have worked out some of the threads of thought that were first mined in my college days, and I have gone on to explore new threads of thought as I have applied myself to learning new things and exploring many tangents. From the beginning, I have tried to by guided by that same “voice” that prompted me to write. I have tried to go where it leads.

Following are the top ten articles in 2022 as determined by the number of views. I have added one additional article at the end because the theme it emphasizes in that total. If you want to retrace my steps this past year, jump in and read on.

Continue reading “Top Ten Articles on Navigating By Faith in 2022” →