On these last days of the year, newspapers, magazines, television, and the internet are filled with “top stories,” “the year that was,” and “most popular topics” kinds of retrospectives.
This blog brings you—on average—a half-dozen Grace Brethren-related stories each week of the year and we got to wondering what the “top Grace Brethren stories of 2011” would look like, based on pageviews and blog traffic for this site. BMH’s Liz Cutler Gates has reviewed the numbers, and here were the most-viewed stories of the past year.
From January 1, 2011, through December 30, this blog had 94,154 pageviews, with the average time spent on a page of one minute, 49 seconds. The top 20 stories of 2011, based on the number of pageviews, are as follows:
1. Waldorf, Md., Pastor Jeff Thornley With the Lord— 1,288
2. Jeff Thornley Dies of Heart Attack — 831
3. Van Returning Teens From Momentum Rolls — 721
4. Long-Lost Brothers Reunited — 482
5. Pray for Pastor David Bogue — 340
6. Storm Rolls Through Winona Lake, Downs Trees — 306
7. Jeff Thornley Obituary — 298
8. Moving Forward After the Death of a Pastor — 286
9. Grace Brethren Ministers Honor Three — 268
10. Pastor Bob Kern With the Lord — 251
11. ICDI Dedicates International Headquarters Building — 250
12. Mike Yoder Gives Accident Update — 249
13. Randy Poyner With the Lord — 242
14. Services For Charles Lawson Announced — 231
15. Yoder Accepts Call to Worthington — 225
16. Scott Avey Video Featured on Jay Leno Show — 224
17. Mike Yoder Installed as Columbus Pastor — 218
18. Jean Wooler Obituary — 201
19. Mansfield Grace Brethren Pastor on “Price is Right” — 196
20. Fetterhoff Appointed as Moderator of Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches — 195
The analytics also noted that 3,642 of the visits were from mobile devices, indicative of a national trend in the U.S. to shift more internet accessing from desktop and laptop computers to smart phones and pad devices.
Visitors to the blog came from many parts of the world, including (in descending order), U.S., Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, India, and Russia. Within the U.S., the most visits came from Indiana (15,668), Ohio (9,050), Pennsylvania (5,535), California (3,518), Illinois (2,543), Maryland (1,800) and Florida (1,679). This distribution generally reflects the geographic location of Grace Brethren churches with one exception—there are no Grace Brethren churches in Illinois.
BMH thanks our regular viewers and encourages you to spread the word that this is the best, the fastest, and the only source for all-Grace-Brethren news and feature items as they happen. Start the new year off by making this the home page on your computing device and you’ll never be “out of the loop” with important news from the Grace Brethren world!
Happy New Year from the staff of BMH, the communications arm of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches, which is dedicated to “building bridges of communication among the people and churches of the FGBC” (from official BMH mission statement)!
