The Aquila Report posted over 2,900 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read. The top story this year had over 20,890 hits.

We average 8 new stories each day, with a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to the readers of The Aquila Report. As a web magazine we are an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.

In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year. That’s easy for us to determine – we just count the hits! We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run and the five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 1-10.

10. Top 5 Abused Bible Verses

There you have it, my Top-5 abused passages of Scripture. What are yours?

9. Motherhood: The Introvert’s Challenge

Why was it that I was feeling this constant urge to get away from my children if I loved them so much? Add to that the sincere Christian desire to live a life of self-sacrifice for the sake of the well-being of others and one has a recipe for burnout. The guilt led me into a vicious circle out of which I could never free myself. The harder I tried to work against my introverted nature to be the mom I thought my kids needed me to be, the more intense the feelings of “I need to get away” would become and the guiltier…

8 Sinclair Ferguson to Retire as Pastor of First Presbyterian (ARP), Columbia, SC

Based on a letter sent to members of the congregation only, the weekly newsletter of First Presbyterian Columbia, “First Things”, contained a public notice of the intention of their Senior Minister, Sinclair Ferguson, to resign and return to Scotland.

7. Top 10 Reasons Our Kids Leave Church

Our kids leave because we have failed to deliver to them the faith “delivered once for all” to the church. I wish it wasn’t a given, but when I present law and gospel to these kids, the response is the same every time: “I’ve never heard that.” I’m not against entertaining our youth, or even jumbotrons, or pizza parties (though I probably am against middle aged guys trying to wear skinny jeans to be “relevant).. it’s just that the one thing, the MAIN thing we’ve been tasked with? We’re failing. We’ve failed God and we’ve failed our kids. Don’t let another kid walk out the door without being confronted with the full weight of the law, and the full freedom in the gospel.

6. What Your Pastor Tells His Wife about You

While pastors and their wives are wrestling with the issue of how much and which confidential information to share with one another, the general public is shocked . . . shocked to find that we share anything.

5. Young Evangelicals Are Getting High

Young Christians are going over to Catholicism and high Anglicanism/Lutheranism in droves, despite growing up in low Protestant churches that told them about Jesus. It’s a trend that is growing, and it looks like it might go that way for a while: people who grew up in stereotypical, casual evangelicalism are running back past their parents’ church to something that looks like it was dug out of Europe a couple hundred years ago at least. It’s encouraged by certain emergent leaders and by other “Christian” authors whose writings promote “high” theology under a Protestant publisher’s cover.

4. Identical Twins Studies Prove Homosexuality is Not Genetic

Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.” Dr. Whitehead believes same-sex attraction (SSA) is caused by “non-shared factors,” things happening to one twin but not the other, or a personal response to an event by one of the twins and not the other.

3. A Defense of Six-Day Creation

This doctrine of six day creation was also the consensus of the theologians, ministers and elders at the Westminster Assembly. And it’s my conviction that we in the Presbyterian and Reformed community of today have lost credibility with respect to this affirmation.

2. The New Legalism: Missional, Radical, Narcissistic, and Shamed

Missional, radical Christianity could easily be called “the new legalism.” A few decades ago, an entire generation of Baby Boomers walked away from traditional churches to escape the legalistic moralism of “being good” but what their Millennial children received in exchange, in an individualistic American Christian culture, was shamed-driven pressure to be awesome and extraordinary young adults expected to tangibly make a difference in the world immediately. But this cycle of reaction and counter-reaction inaugurated by the Baby Boomers does not seem to be producing faithful youth adults. Instead, many are simply burning out.

And the number one article of 2013 with over 20,890 hits:

1. Ten Reasons Why “Same-Sex Marriage” Affects Your Marriage

Redefining marriage to include people of the same sex is a legal endorsement of the fungibility of a man and woman in marriage. To set “any two persons” on a par with a man and a woman in marriage is to reduce the worth of their roles. To draw an analogy, if a government declared the price of coal to be equivalent with the price of gold, would the cost of coal go up, or would the cost of gold come down?