When you write a blog, it’s always fascinating to see what articles and reviews end up getting the most hits! Often there’s some real surprises.

Some articles do better than you expect, and others are less popular than you imagined. And there’s always a few entries every year that I wrote years ago but they’ve somehow managed to convince Google’s to stick them at the top of its algorithms.

With a couple of days to go, I’ve been encouraged to see a 13% increase in annual page views compared to 2019 – and we finally broke the 1000 subscribers barrier! Thanks for joining if you were one of them!

I’ve probably reviewed (and unsurprisingly read!) less books this year compared to the year before – a strange result of lockdown life I think. Instead I wrote more one-off articles – as well as starting a monthly App review for Evangelicals Now.

So, discounting my annual list of Christmas & Easter videos, as well as the weekly Sunday Refill posts, here’s the most popular posts here in 2020.

Maybe there’s something you missed, but might like to check out?

1. Five Images That Might Help As We Share the Gospel in the 2020s
2. “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience”
3. Not Deciding: Leadership Lessons from Band of Brothers
4. Tune for Tuesday: Jesus, Strong & Kind by City Alight & Colin Buchanan
5. Five Reflections from the Bible Society’s Lumino Project
6. ‘Jesus > Religion’ by Jeff Bethke – A Review
7. Tune for Tuesday: Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me
8. App Review: Dwell
9. ‘When Narcissism Comes to Church’ by Chuck DeGroat – A Review
10. Facing the Disorientation of Digital Overwhelm

Thanks for stopping by here in 2020. Look forward to seeing you in 2021!

Do you have a new year resolution for how much you’ll use your smartphone? What about one for what you’ll use it for?

EXPLORE:
Apple/Android
Free

Readers are likely to be familiar with The Good Book Company’s flagship daily Bible-reading notes, Explore, perhaps fewer have realised there is also a popular app option. Rather than lugging a Bible and paper devotional around, the app combines both, meaning that daily Bible reading can occur wherever you have your phone.

Cultivating a good routine

The app is simple, attractively designed, and harnesses the kind of features you’d expect: font size can be increased depending on preference; a daily reminder feature offers a helpful prompt when it comes to cultivating a routine of Bible reading; bookmarks can save your place in a particular study.

Once in the app, you can purchase from a plethora of reading plans, whether buying the latest month’s plan, or choosing to focus on a Bible book or topic of your own choice. In that sense, Explore app users have more flexibility than those reading the paper version.

A 28-day helpful introduction to daily Bible reading, ‘Time with God’, can be downloaded free of charge (as can studies on Titus) but other plans range from £0.99 to £2.99, depending on number of daily studies. Once bought, these then remain in the app’s library.

Physical or Digital?

Some may argue that the act of physically getting your Bible out in public, e.g. on the train or in the office, was a helpful step in both discipleship and witness. But in reality, perhaps the inconvenience of such Bible reading ‘on the go’ ends up limiting the amount of Bible reading that is actually done.

By the way, a little disclaimer: this reviewer occasionally writes notes for Explore, but here our focus is on the app rather than the quality of the devotional writing!

However, if you value Explore’s careful, well-applied book-by-book approach, yet you struggle to ‘make it happen’, perhaps because your best times for Bible reading aren’t at home, then this app is well worth considering.

More info on Explore here.

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A version of this article was first published here in the January 2021 Issue of Evangelicals Now and is shared here with permission. EN is a monthly newspaper published in print and online, offering a biblical perspective on current issues and insight on what’s happening with God’s people worldwide. Online subscription is just £10 p/a with print & online combined for just £18. Order a free sample or subscribe here.

We’re all familiar with the Christmas story, but do you know the ‘story behind the story?’

If you were following this blog last Christmas, you may recall we trialled a daily email Advent devotional, ‘Finding Hope Under Bethlehem Skies’, which journeyed through the book of Ruth.

We’ve now edited this, added reflections for Sundays, and turned it into a limited print-run in order to raise funds to support Barrow Foodbank and church ministry here in Barrow.

Finding Hope Under Bethlehem Skies contains twenty-five daily devotions that take us on a surprising Advent journey. Each one contains a reflection, a question/prayer and a suggested response song, which links to a Spotify playlist.

Click on the still below to watch a little video.

You can access the Spotify playlist here.