August is here! Summer vacation is winding down, school is about to begin, and hopefully some cooler temperatures are in the near future.

July was a very busy month for me. From my diagnosis with sleep apnea and the details surrounding that and getting adjusted to a new reality to a mission trip to an Apache reservation in Arizona, July was packed with stuff.

With so much going on, and with traveling taking up a good chunk of the month, I set my writing aside for a few weeks, only covering what I consider to be the bare minimums for JeffRandleman.com and DeliberateDads.com.

However, with the summer ending, and things falling back into a normal routine, I expect to ramp it up a bit more as we enter into the fall.

In looking over my stats for the month however, I realized something significant, to me at least. I usually only pay attention to the top seven posts for the past 30 days. And they are consistently the same ones. It hit me this time, that I rarely look at the next ones on the list. And what I found stunned me.

There are posts that come very close to making the top seven but just miss it. And they are posts that I never imagined would be so near the top of this list. They don’t make the top because they don’t have the keyword searches that the others do, such as “philosophy of ministry,” and “mission vs. vision.” But they are just hovering below those posts.

I suspect that the next seven on the list, or ten, or twenty, vary greatly from month to month. I’m going to be watching those a lot closer to see how they fare.

So this month, I want to share the top eleven posts for the month of July:

1. How To Take Notes While Reading The Bible
2. 6 Characteristics Of A Good Communicator
3. The Difference Between Purpose, Vision, and Mission
4. My Current Philosophy Of Ministry
5. Why You Need To Develop A Philosophy Of Ministry
6. 7 Steps To Defining A Purpose And Vision For Youth Ministry
7. 11 Things I Love About Field Notes Brand Journals
8. Tips For Becoming More Consistent In Your Bible Reading
9. Trying A New Bible Reading System
10. Classic Bible: My Favorite Passages From Nehemiah
11. How To Gain Insight By Hand-Copying The Bible

Of course, the majority of the top slots are filled with posts from the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series. But the rest are posts on how to read and apply the Bible to our lives more effectively and a few others that surprised me. I’m intrigued and can’t wait until next month to see what changes here.

My favorite post from the month of July was A Beautiful Mess, although I didn’t have a lot of material to choose from. Hopefully that will change now that summer is ending.

I am praying that you have a great month! I look forward to seeing what God brings in the weeks to come!

Question: 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. You can leave a comment by clicking here.