The most read posts of 2013

Happy New Year! This was the first year I did of blogging. And it was really fun! For me, I'm writing because it's fun and I think it can be helpful. This blog started as a way for me to post pieces of writing (vignettes, as it were) that I would write to share outloud.

I then changed the main purpose of it. I wanted to  to reverb sermons that I spent time writing during the week and usually only offered on Sundays. With the amount of content that I was producing, I thought reposting it might help people use it, might aid our cell leaders in their leadership, and might help others learn about Circle of Hope.

I felt compelled then to post about pop culture and current events between Sundays as well, so I also have posted about various topics and ideas that I think need to be addressed. With these three prongs (messages, vignettes, and essays), I think I've completed the "genres" that I cover.

Thanks for reading, subscribing, and following. Here are the posts you read the most in 2013.

10. Lessons learned from Breaking Bad (October 3, 2013); So before we go immortalize Heisenberg and his drug empire and Gilligan and his TV show empire, let’s consider that perhaps humility, self-sacrifice, and following Jesus are really the things that will make us eternal. Not just infamy.

9. Can I ever move? (July 22, 2013); Present is better than absent.We are not Emails, tweets, or posts, we are people. It doesmatter when we are physically together. We gain intimacy through presence—that’s why a text message or a video chat doesn’t cut it. 

8. I saw God on the Conshohocken curve (April 1, 2013); Just a few months ago, in a place that I often thought of as Thick, the Schuylkill Expressway, I saw God. Thick with traffic and horns and terror before the hope and redemption that we all know as the Conshohocken curve—when at out of nowhere, the bumper-to-bumper traffic that has pained us and plagued us turns into the sweet, sweet joy of the open road and our lead foots.

7. Being a Christian among the sin of wealth inequality (April 29, 2013); The average worker in the U.S. needs to work a month to get what the top executive in his company makes in an hour. The top one percent own half of the country’s stocks, bonds, and mutual fonds—the bottom half only own .5% of it.

6. The good, the bad, and the ugly of the Enneagram (September 2, 2013); Rohr warns his readers that it’s not wise to go around and “type” your friends. If we are not categorize each other, why give us such an easy way to do it—and why bother encouraging us to “find ourselves” in the Enneagram. That’s like telling a child not to eat from the cookie jar which you’ve place within their reach.

5. Even George, Jerry, and Kramer need Jesus (March 25, 2013); You might feel trapped because you are oppressed and disenfranchised by the world around you. You can’t seem to get out of debt. You can’t get a job. You can’t get an education. The prejudices and imperialistic powers around you are limiting what you can do.

4. Amazon is the U.S.’s messiah and I hate it. (December 12, 2013); Americans, normal ones anyway, are so underemployed and drowning in debt, the least they could get is the stuff they want really fast. But Amazon isn’t neutral, technology isn’t just a tool. It matters and the stakes are huge, and most notably, they are spiritual.

3. Changing before it’s too late -OR- Does anyone still watch the Simpsons? (April 15, 2013); I just watched through all nine seasons of Seinfeld again, and at the end of the show, when Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and George are in their prison cell and the camera backs away, I get a bit teary-eyed... even though I love the Simpsons, I just don’t see the same teary-eyed response when the show airs its finale in a few seasons. In fact, I haven’t really watched it since high school.

2. A foot massage is never just a foot massage (August 19, 2013); Sex is not just a physical exchange of fluids. It’s more than that. It has meaning. Your desire to do it, is indicative of that. It’s natural, it’s human, but it’s also emotional and spiritual. That’s what Jesus is talking about.

1. Opportunities that Billy Graham missed and the ones Franklin made sure he didn’t (November 23, 2013); If the most profound examples of Christians are being tied up with the likes of Palin, Murdoch, and Trump—I’d run the other way too. The Religious Right is killing us–and its losing its political power, too.