Every year, we take the time at Missio Alliance to look back at the ten most highly-read articles that we published through the course of the year. Through this exercise, we see what issues bubbled up to the surface for our audience and captured readers’ collective interest, and we also get a snapshot of our particular cultural moment at this moment in time.

This year, the topic of race and racial justice weighed heavy on the minds of our writers and readers, based on the number of thoughtful, truth-telling articles on the list that touched on these issues. We appreciated hearing from a range of Writing Team members and guest contributors in this area, from Nijay Gupta, David Swanson, Montague Williams, Donnell Wyche, and Leeann Younger.

Of course, no list looking back at 2020 would be complete without references to both the pandemic and politics, which David Fitch and AJ Sherrill provided. In addition, our list reflects our readers’ resonance with matters of spiritual formation, which MaryKate Morse offers on a regular basis, and this year was no exception through her beautiful, vulnerable piece on the art of grieving.

Our commitment to comprehensive mutuality is always on display in our online publishing; this year, our partner Southern Wesleyan University submitted an article that made it to our top ten list on “The Gender Chasm,” written by professor Andrea Summers.

And our most-read article of the year, written by Andrew Arndt, reflects an ongoing tension that church leaders and pastors continue to struggle with in our broken and divided age, which is the question of what the gospel truly is and is not.

Ministering to our congregations in the midst of racial tensions and challenges continues to be an area of need for our readers, and looking ahead to 2021, is an area that we will do our best to resource in an effort to serve the church into the future. (Check out our forthcoming online event, “Resilience, Race, and Resistance,” on January 28th, as one such example.)

Without further ado, here is the list of the top ten articles of 2020. If you missed any of these, it’s never too late to go back and read them; much of the content is just as relevant today as it was when initially published:

1. “Pastor, Can’t We Just Preach the Gospel?” by Andrew Arndt

2. The Art of Grieving: A Spiritual Practice for Our Time, by MaryKate Morse

3. Faithful Presence During a Pandemic by David Fitch

4. A Word for the Exhausted by Montague Williams

5. In Search of White Partners: What BIPOC Need by Donnell Wyche

6. Terrible Truths for the Church to Face by David Swanson

7. The Gender Chasm by Andrea Summers

8. This Political Moment: A Way Forward in a Divided Age by AJ Sherrill

9. Forgiveness Is Free, but Repentance Comes with a Cost by Leeann Younger

10. Neither White nor Black: Paul’s Case Against Being Colorblind by Nijay Gupta

Thank you for spending time with our Writing Collectives this year and helping to share and engage with our articles. As always, please feel free to submit ideas or pitches to us and to thank the writers directly for their excellent work. We look forward to continuing to publish words that strengthen, embolden, and encourage the church in 2021.