Top 200 Church Blogs. Do reformed nerds really rule?

Church blog rankings have one purpose and one purpose only: To allow the reformed bloggers to ridicule the emerging church bloggers. If there was another purpose, it would be for all of us church bloggers to stroke our tender blog-egos.

Kent Shafer just released his Top 200 church blogs and it seems the Reformed bloggers are kicking butt. Again. Ouch!

[you probably didnt know it was a contest . .  ay?]

TOP 200 CHURCH BLOGS
as of March 26, 2011

	Name	Author
1	Between Two Worlds	Justin Taylor	41670	95287	6	4254	176112
2	GetReligion	Various	206553	49788	7	2294	472214
3	The Resurgence	Various	118067	79455	5	4602	313338
4	Michael Hyatt	Michael Hyatt	33048	41480	5	1888	184228
5	DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed	Kevin DeYoung	41670	95287	5	1837	82634
6	Jesus Creed	Scot Mcknight	21454	154562	6	928	67490
7	Don Miller	Don Miller	128980	12232	5	10755	93282
8	Internet Monk	Various	371386	13075	6	2114	256242
9	Pyromaniacs	Various	230138	9379	5	3287	175631
10	Dr. Albert Mohler	Albert Mohler	118908	42069	4	2342	362420

OK - I am looking at 5 blogs that would probably be "Reformed", 4 blogs that would probably come under the "Emerging" label, and one blog (Get Religion) that would be neither. 5-4. A fair win.

 

Perhaps Ed Stetzer is correct: "Reformed nerds rule. Emerging church is dead".

But wait! Lets look at another list.

Wikio has released the Top 20 religion blogs and you will find a completely different list of blogs. I copied this from Maggie's blog.

Top Blogs - Religion and Belief - April 2011

1. The Church Mouse Blog

2. eChurch Blog

3. Islam in Europe

4. Lesley's Blog

5. The hermeneutic of continuity

6. Anglican Mainstream

7. Bartholomew's Notes on Religion

8. Epiphenom

9. Thinking Anglicans

10. Phil's Treehouse11. Adrian's Blog

12. Clayboy

13. The Freethinker

14. Maggi Dawn

15. Nick Baines's Blog

16. Of course, I could be wrong...

17. Apologetics 315

18. The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley

19. An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy

20. Bishop Alan’s Blog

 In this list, the Reformed dont win at all. HA HA!! Does it make a difference that the Wikio list is composed in UK? Yep I guess so. A little reality:

1. Language matters. All these blogs are English only so its not fair to call any of them "world's top blogs" without ranking foreign-language sites.

2. Geography matters. Even Kent admits that.

3. Criteria matters. Kent uses 5 criteria to measure his Top 200 but there are many ways to measure a blog. Blog Rank, for example, uses 20 different criteria and the results are very different.

Christianity  Blogs: The ultimate rank

#	Blog Title						RSS	Site Score	Badge
1st	Challies Dot Com	16,010	83,758	77,742	380,327	5		100
2nd	Christian Personal Finance	8,614	7,774	28,051	50,636	5		99.65
3rd	Desiring God Blog	28,258	n/a	n/a	139,671	3		99.34
4th	Ragamuffin Soul	6,829	169,061	198,138	104,784	5		99.33
5th	22 Words	5,331	20,004	38,332	68,112	5		98.7
6th	ChurchCrunch	4,390	120,018	74,351	31,758	4		98.53
7th	Bible Gateways Verse of the Day	n/a	444	1,344	2,764,431	7		98.52
8th	Tall Skinny Kiwi	2,842	n/a	n/a	83,240	5		98.35
9th	Church Relevance	5,151	149,605	359,709	5,546	5		98.3
10th	Between Two Worlds	37,385	n/a	2,295,000	135,292	6		97.99
11th	tonymorganlive.com	7,086	299,510	480,589	66,098	4		97.95
12th	WithoutWax.tv by Pete Wilson	2,266	n/a	309,525	108,871	4		97.85
13th	Compassion International - Christian Blog on Child Poverty	3,285	14,057	72,600	41,028	5		97.62
14th	Human3rror	2,180	370,913	141,873	41,500	4		97.61
15th	Perry Noble dot com	10,618	223,936	439,366	85,798	4		97.52
16th	Logos Bible Software Blog	36,790	n/a	n/a	43,605	6		97.17
17th	GetReligion	n/a	38,152	205,524	434,509	7		97.02
18th	TheResurgence	n/a	24,524	100,569	309,464	5		97
19th	Albert Mohlers Blog	n/a	44,634	112,904	364,716	4		96.96
20th	internetmonk.com	n/a	124,851	404,776	230,241	6		96.95

In this scenario, I beat out Justin Taylor (who was number one on Top 200) but Tim Challies rules the roost. [once again].

And in fact a lot of reformed bloggers dominate the BlogRank list as well as Kent Schafers Top 200 . . . so . .  I have to reluctantly agree with Ed Stetzer and admit that the Reformed bloggers, actually, win in the blog game and emerging church bloggers, in fact, lose!

At least they do for now . . .  but just you wait . . . heh heh!!

RELATED: Why the Reformed bloggers are beating the Emerging Church bloggers.