Each month, I like to look back over the past thirty days or so to see what people are most interested in on the blog. Though I wish I could say I understand the trends, I’m still surprised by something, every time.

On the awesome side of the news, traffic on the blog jumped to twenty seven thousand pageviews in the past thirty days. And people say Americans don’t read!

On to the biggest stories of the month…

#5. Things I Hate (But Shouldn’t): A late entry (I wrote it yesterday), this one jumped into the top five, well, because people love to read about what others hate to see if they hate the same things. Do I understand it? No. But I’ll admit I used the format to sneak in some challenges to Christians to be more open and inclusive. Hey. it’s what I do.

#4. Sh*t Emergents Say: My friend, Travis, put this video together to help us laugh a little at ourselves. No matter how new a group seems, they end up behaving in some ways like all other groups. Here’s a great example of the “code” employed by emergents about theology and faith. Funny stuff.

#3. Church Sign Epic Fails: This is actually a three-part entry. All three of these related posts made it into the top ten, so I grouped them together. The First entry got the most views, probably because it has been up the longest. Not far behind was “More Church Sign Epic Fails” and “Church Sign Epic Fails, Part Three.” Like I said, we gotta laugh at ourselves, if for no other reason than to keep from weeping bitterly in our Cheerios.

#2. Mules, Sex and Rick Santorum: I have to say that I think this wins outright for the most intriguing title. I take some pride in creating titles that make you want to read one, but this one, was just plain weird…weirdly awesome! The piece came from Santorum’s claims that birth control went against God’s plan for creation, to which I offered several examples of sex in nature that had no promise of leading to procreation. Though I did include a photo of a pair of fruit flies caught up in a “Barry White” moment, there are no images of mules doing the nasty. That would just be tacky.

#1. Why Young Adults Quit Church: Originally, I had intended for my whole list to be all in one blog post, but by the time I got through the first seven reasons, I was already at a thousand words. So I broke this one up into two parts over a couple of days (See Part Two Here). And as comments from Huffington Post to Red Letter Christians and Sojourners indicate, the list could go on and on. Not meant to be a “naughty” list, it’s meant to help start discussion about the disconnect between religious institutions and Young Adults. Will the institutions ever meet their needs? Maybe, maybe not. But the people inside can, only if they care more about those people than the institutions they’re often so hell-bent on saving first.