Yesterday I gathered data from Alexa, Bloglines, Google, and Technorati and created a list of the world’s top 60 church blogs. 110 popular blogs were measured, and the highest ranked were published.
To see the list, visit: churchrelevance.com/resources/top-church-blogs
The list is far from perfect. The data sources are not perfect. And it is likely that I am unaware of other eligible church blogs. I will be periodically updating the list, so I hope it improves with time.
Please use the comments to tell me of any other church related blogs that you think could qualify for the list.
Thank you, Kent, for serving the global body of Christ by painstakingly compiling the data and producing the work that saves so many of us research time.
You might have guessed what my favorite thing about this list is. And no, it’s not the fact that I appear on it.
It’s that I love seeing the uniqueness of the body represented in the blogosphere. This list proves that there are diversities of gifts…… Pyromaniacs side by side with The Ooze, The Resurgence along with TWO female bloggers, myself & Kem Meyer, Ragamuffin Soul & Desiring God all on one list, each of us standing side by side serving God. The list reminds me how particularly individual the gifts, assignments and callings of each of us are.
Thanks for functioning in yours to produce what no one else has.
forgot @flowerdust - Congratulations Anne. You’ve truly created an entire online community!
the way your brain works is both uber cool yet radically makes my brain hurt with the data!
thanks for taking the time to do this.
i wish google subscribers was more consistent. i mean really. tony morgan…12? mine is higher too. need to figure out why google says one thing then reports another? hrrmmmmmm…
still - amazing!!!
i had to go in and look - my feedburner says google is 1101!! silly google.
@Cynthia & @Anne
Congrats to being two of the 3 female bloggers!
@Anne
I agree. I was frustrated with aspects from most of the data sources.
Some of the blogs also did not show up on Technorati for any Authority even though it is obviously clear that they would have a large number.
I guess all we can do is hope the sources get better with time.
Anne & Kent…. according to my crowdsourcing techniques for answers to life’s toughest questions…meaning ask the twitterverse…. Feedburner is being migrated completely over to Google and in the migration our subscriber numbers have dropped.
Some believe they will return to normal. Others say there is a new and more accurate algorithm being used. (Kent, I notice yours have been cut in half and I am missing 2/3rds).
Additionally, if you’ve ever migrated your domain name, changed blogs, etc. you know what a nightmare the Technorati rank’s reliability can be.
All this to say, let’s keep blogging and who cares about the numbers anyway? I mean, besides me.
great list of blogs, thanks for sending the info on to your readers
Kent, Anne’s right. I envy the way your brain works. Thanks for the list. I find more cool stuff everytime you share stuff like this with your readers. There are always people and resources I didn’t know about before. You’re awesome.
Kent, thanks for compiling this list!! I used to have to pull a list together myself manually, and now I can just look at yours! Very handy, especially probably for publishers and marketers…
I get the feeling technorati has lost street cred in the past year or two, and Alexa used to only track usage based on its toolbar — which is/was not representative of web traffic overall. I like the newer rankers like Quantcast.com and Compete.com
@DJ
I thought about using Quantcast and Compete.
Quantcast is partial to sites that add their code. In fact, when I added the Quantcast code, it nearly doubled my Quantcast stats. I thought this partiality would make it unfair.
Compete is similar to Alexa and gives a huge advantage to blogs that are part of big sites, such as Out of UR (ChristianityToday.com). Having both Alexa and Compete may skew the rankings too drastically in favor of the blogs with big parent sites.
I would love to hear feedback on these thoughts.
Kent - I read the process used to compile this list and thought “I think I just skipped a whole bunch of detail there”. I started to reread it and realized you’re just smarter than me, so I just decided to be grateful for your contribution.
I’m altering my blog reading because of your work.
Thanks again.
Kent, you never cease to amaze me
I have to give a shout out to Jason Powell - Director of IT of Granger Community Church.
His blog has lead so many people to Church IT Roundtable (www.citrt.org) which is a sigh of relief to many. IT can be a lonely world and knowing the impact of what Jason’s blog, as well as many others naturally, has had on many of us it is a must to give honorable mention =]
great job Kent!
someday I hope my sports/faith blog Prayers For Blowout makes the list.
It was cool to see that of the 60 blogs mentioned, I’ve interviewed 8 of them for my PFB Sports Survey. (#3, #12, #18, #21, #29, #33, #39, and #49)
If anyone else on the list is a sports fan, we’d love to have you take the sports survey. shoot me an email at prayersforblowouts(at)gmail.com.
again, great job Kent!
I have not done any research on the analytics but I would suggest looking at my list of Top 80 Church Leadership blogs.
http://www.andyrowell.net/andy_rowell/2008/03/church-leadersh.html
Here are a few you might want to check.
My “Church Leadership Blogs” Blogroll
* Adam Hamilton - Seeing Gray, pastor of one of the largest United Methodist Churches.
* Alan Hirsch - The Forgotten Ways author.
* Andy Crouch - Culture Making author
* Andy Rowell | Church Leadership Conversations (me).
* Baker Publishers - the church and postmodern culture.
* Ben Witherington - Professor of New Testament at Asbury
* Bill Easum - Observations, consultant, UM
* Bob Roberts, Jr. - glocalnet; pastor of NorthWood…
* C. Wes Daniels - gathering in light; Fuller Ph.D….
* David Fitch - the great giveaway, Life on the Vine
* Doug Pagitt - DougPagitt.com, Solomon’s Porch
* Frank Viola - Reimagining Church author
* Gifted for Leadership - A Community of Christian Women (Christianity Today)
* Greg Boyd - Random Reflections, Woodland Hills Church
* John Stackhouse - Professor of Theology at Regent College
* Nancy Beach - Willow Creek Community Church
* Neil Cole - Cole-Slaw, author of Organic Church
* Neue - Vision for Ministry - from the makers of Relevant
* Pete Rollins - author of How (Not) to Speak of God,…
* Tim Keel’s Blog - Jacob’s Well
* Tony Jones - The New Christians
* Will Willimon - A Peculiar Prophet, UM Bishop
Great to see Church Marketing Sucks on the list…we almost made it top 10!
I tried to figure out how my blog holycowablog.com compared but you are obviously smarter than I because it just made my brain hurt! That’s ok…I’m going go with ‘if I could have figured it out I would have been on the list”.
@Michael,
Your blog was ranked #88 out of the 110 blogs.
Thanks a ton for this research, Kent. I’m loving checking them out and have subscribed to several already.
So close…of course today my feedburner/google reports that I’ve had a drop by over 100 RSS subscribers…lovely technology.
Ok…off to figure out how to raise my rankings for next time!
Thanks for doing this an uncovering some blogs that I’m not following.
Thanks for posting this list. It is helpful. Although I am part of the Protestant/evangelical tradition, I am curious if you considered blogs from other Christian traditions. Roman Catholic? Orthodox?
Thanks again for all your work.
[...] Church Relevance posted their list of the “Top 60 Church Blogs.” Here is the explanation: There are hundreds of great church blogs and ministry blogs to read, but do you ever wonder which church blogs everyone else is reading? [...]
Sorry, but I left off a link that I was going to include which contains a lot of popular Roman Catholic blogs:
http://www.catholicblogawards.com/ballot_results
Blessings…JHG
[...] Check Out The “Top 60 Church Blogs” You can find the list and their links HERE. [...]
Thanks Kent for this work
I am interested by the process and criteria you used
but when I worked through a number of these sites which have their visitor statistics available I noticed there was no real correlation between visitor numbers and place on this list.
Thanks, hence, for asking which other sites might be added.
Your #10 gets an average of 497 visitors a day.
That would be a distressingly slow day for my blog http://www.liturgy.co.nz which on a good week gets 10,000 visitors a week.
Blessings
[...] Church Relevance posted their list of the “Top 60 Church Blogs.” [...]
Great list, gives me an opportunity to visit the blogs where the writers are truly reaching out for God to their readers. For those that don’t even come near to this list - I am pretty sure that God uses even them.
shot man
@Bosco
I list all 6 criteria and describe the process at the bottom of the list’s page. See: http://churchrelevance.com/resources/top-church-blogs
A blog may rank low in one or two of the six criteria, but may be very highly ranked in the other four, which still gives it a high overall ranking.
Kent,
you need to add the website ALittleLeaven.com into your calculations.
This is a site that deals with the things that are going wrong in the church and its drifting away from sound Biblical doctrine into man-centered philosophy and therapy. You may not like what the site says and exposes but it is clearly within the top 60.
Alexa Rank: 332,460
Technorati Authority: 174
Kent,
Thanks so much for putting this together! I was very surprised and elated to see “stuff christians like” ranked 3rd. That site is both hysterical and challenging and it’s great to see it get recognition.
Thanks again for taking the time to do this.
Kent -
Brilliant stuff. I really appreciate you raising the entire idea of blogging with your approach to everything.
Jon
Great job, Kent. I’m very impressed with the process that went into this. You’ve shown me new bloggers that I didn’t even know about. I would never have guessed some of the rankings on here if it weren’t for your list!
You might want to leave a link on the actual blog list page
http://churchrelevance.com/resources/top-church-blogs/
back to this page so that people know how they can give feedback.
I also just wanted to say “good job.” Well done.
I am always grateful for introductions to new blogs and am looking forward to learning more from your list, but I am intrigued that there are so few women bloggers represented. Is this a reflection of your own interests? of the statistics on visits to various sites? of the fact (if it is a fact) that fewer women blog or at least blog about Christianity? Just curious.
@Fencing Bear
I hope the next update to the list will have more women bloggers.
I was so focused on the stats and numbers during the process that I was equally surprised to see that there are so few women represented in the rankings.
By “church” blogs, each blog must discuss some element that are related to making better churches. Some theology blogs made the list because they have great posts on evangelism and Bible study.
I did come across additional few Christian women bloggers, but their topics were on parenting or relationships and unchurch-related.
[...] gives us their list of the top 60 church blogs and their choice of [...]