In April of this year, we released the Calvary Chapel South Bay blog.

Our purpose was to build up the body of Christ in the areas of evangelism, discipleship, servant hood, and missions.

We thought to ourselves that if we could just reach a few hundred people a month with our articles, then we would have been successful in accomplishing our mission.

But it’s just like the Lord to exceed our wildest expectations.

In the past 8 months since the blog first started, we had 37,251 page views to our blog articles, with many of them having hundreds of social shares on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

We want to give glory to God for how He used this blog to reach people all over the world.  We couldn’t do anything worthwhile without Him.

And we want to thank you, our reader, who visits, shares, and comments on the articles that we write every week.  You are a big reason behind our motivation for continuing to write on this blog.

A Big Thank You to Our Authors

This blog is powered by authors who volunteer their time and don’t receive any kind of financial compensation for their writing.  They enjoy writing and they see it as a ministry to build up the body of Christ.

On a similar note, it may come as a surprise to you that it takes on average between one to four hours for one of our authors to turn in their blog post.

It then takes me two more hours to put pictures together for the blog post and to do some minor editing of the article before it gets published.

In case you don’t know who our blog authors are, they are below listed in alphabetical order:

• Amanda Cook (view all blog posts written by Amanda)
• Ani Ma’Amin (view all blog posts written by Ani)
• Patty Martinez (view all blog posts written by Patty)
• Summer Reed (view all blog posts written by Summer)
• Wendelin Philips (view all blog posts written by Wendelin)
• And myself, Peter Guirguis as the editor.

We give thanks to the Lord for raising these authors and equipping them with the gift of encouragement through their writing.

This blog wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for their love of God and for them volunteering their precious time.

Most Popular Blog Posts From 2013 (in random order)

There have been some great blog posts throughout the year as many of you shared them on different social networking sites.

In case you missed any of them or if you want to re-read any of the great advice that was offered, here are the most popular blog posts of the year.

Please note that while the blog posts below are numbered from 1 to 10, the numbering is only here to help you navigate through the list as the blog posts are in random order.

1.  3 Steps to Becoming an Ultimate Prayer Warrior by Wendelin Philips

2.  Are You in Need of Christian ‘Anger Management’? by Ani Ma’amin

3.  Are You Doing These 5 Things to Help Build the Kingdom of God? by Wendelin Philips

4.  The Hardest Yet Most Rewarding Thing is This (video) by Patty Martinez

5.  10,000 Reasons to Praise the Lord by Ani Ma’amin

6.  Your Top 7 Questions About Prayer Answered by Amanda Cook

7.  How to Know if You Are Trusting God by Amanda Cook

8.  Are You Wondering if God Isn’t Talking to You? by Patty Martinez

9.  9 Christian Athletes Who Stand Up for Their Belief in Christ by Ani Ma’amin

10.  How to Know If You Are Walking By Faith by Amanda Cook

From all of us here at Calvary Chapel South Bay, we wish you a Happy New Year filled with God’s blessings, joy, and peace.