January was a busy month for the Randleman family. My father-in-law visited for a week from Colorado, arriving the day before our new son was born. Jude Michael was born on January 8, 2013, and both mother and baby are doing wonderful. You can see some of the birth announcements I created on our family website.

February promises to keep us going pretty steadily as well. Some of my family will be visiting from Missouri this month, and we have a day planned for Disney, as well as checking out some of the other area attractions around this part of the country.

And with a lot of new and exciting things coming soon to our church and ministry, it will be a busy time. DeliberateDads.com is going well also. I created and did all the detail work in getting the DadCast launched and published to iTunes. An introductory podcast went live in late January, and the first full length episode will come out this week. That’s pretty exciting as well!

In case you missed them, here are my top seven posts for the month of January:

1. The Difference Between Purpose, Vision, and Mission
2. Why You Need To Develop A Philosophy Of Ministry
3. Trying A New Bible Reading System
4. My Current Philosophy Of Ministry
5. Leadership Means Believing In People
6. Book Review – Made In Heaven by Ray Comfort and Jeffrey Seto
7. Book Review – The True Account Of Adam & Eve by Ken Ham

With the start of a new year, it’s no surprise that my Bible reading posts scored high on the list. New Year’s resolutions always seem to bring these to the top. Three additional posts in this group are from my Foundations of Youth Ministry series. This series continues to amaze me at the amount of traffic it sees. I’m thankful to see that what I’m writing is continuing to generate interest.

The final two on the list are a couple of books I reviewed for New Leaf Publishing and Master Books. These were fascinating books, and will add to our homeschool resource library.

My favorite post written in January was one that I saw published in the Hernando Today newspaper, called How I Revitalize My Faith. That column led to more conversations about writing for the paper in the near future. That’s got me pretty pumped!

Looking forward to what happens in the coming weeks!

If you are a blogger, leave a comment with your top post for the month. If you don’t blog, leave a comment with a favorite post or blog that you read this month.

2012 is over. 2013 has begun. It’s been a crazy year in a lot of ways, but it’s been a great year as well. And, as far as my writing is concerned, it has been a very productive year here at JeffRandleman.com.

It was exciting. We moved over a thousand miles away, to the Gulf Coast of Florida.

I launched a new online resource designed to help dads become great dads, at DeliberateDads.com.

And behind the scenes, I saw some significant events as well.

One of the most important parts of maintaining a blog is taking stock of analytical statistics. In order to become for of an effective presence with my writing, looking at these stats is essential to see where I’ve been and where I am now, so that I can project where I’m going.

WordPress makes viewing these statistics pretty simple in the dashboard, and to top it all off, they send out an annual report so that I can see how things have stacked up for the year.

Here’s a brief synopsis of 2012:

• I’ve written 205 posts this year. That’s 26 more than I wrote in 2011.
• I saw almost a 33% increase in views that I had in 2011.
• My top five posts were all written over a year ago, indicating that my content has lasting impact. That excites me.
• In 2011, my readers came from 28 different countries. In 2012, 151 different nations were represented.
• Discussion increased dramatically in 2012 over 2011, with many more comments than I saw last year.
• December of 2012 was my biggest month since I started blogging in September of 2008.

Here are the top ten posts from 2012, including the date it posted, and views it received throughout the year:

2012 has come and gone. It’s been a big year for the Randleman family. There have been several significant events, including our move to Florida and the launch of DeliberateDads.com. We are days away from another significant event: the arrival of child number six, Jude Michael Randleman, and the pregnancy has been a fun process with several new friends here.

JeffRandleman.com has seen some significant events as well. Check out my 2012 Top Posts & Year End Review for more specifics and how the year stacked up.

In case you missed them, here are my top seven posts for the month of November:

• The Difference Between Purpose, Vision, and Mission
• Trying A New Bible Reading System
• Classic Bible: My Favorite Passages From 3 John
• Tips For Becoming More Consistent In Your Bible Reading
• Praying For Others
• 11 Things I Love About Field Notes Journals
• Our Tradition: Christmas Eve Candle Light Service

Normally, I can predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy which of my posts make this list. Most months, a couple of posts dealing with purpose, mission and vision make the list, as it did again for December, in the top slot. But the rest of the list surprised me. The other six posts normally don’t make this list, although with it being December, the fact that they did so makes sense. They are posts on such topics as Bible reading plans, and Christmas traditions, typical Christmas and New Year’s topics.

My favorite post written in December was one announcing the launch of DeliberateDads.com, a blog I am especially excited about, designed to help dads be better than the normal, average dad. Check it out!

I’m also pretty excited about what’s in store for the coming year here at JeffRandleman.com. I have big plans, but I know God has even bigger ones. I can’t wait to see how he uses this site for impacting his Kingdom.

Have a Happy New Year!

If you are a blogger, leave a comment with your top post for the month. If you don’t blog, leave a comment with a favorite post or blog that you read this month.