Best of the Blog 2011

Favorite moments on Breaking Free this year…

It was another great year on our blog. We’ve published over 260 posts, seen hundreds of thousands of visitors, and received over 1,100 comments this year. But most importantly, our blog has again been a center for community and conversation about crucial topics regarding Internet safety, purity, and integrity.

Below are some of our favorite moments on the blog from 2011.

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Great Interviews with Experts

• Dr. Albert Mohler – I had the great honor of picking the brain of Albert Mohler, the President of the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention. He spoke with me about the dangers of too much digital technology and the importance of Internet accountability in the home.
• Donna Rice Hughes – I had the honor of interviewing internationally recognized Internet safety expert Donna Rice Hughes. She spoke with us about her Internet Safety 101 resource.
• Dr. Judith Reisman – This was, I think, my favorite interview this year. Dr. Reisman is an expert in how media impacts the way people think, and has done extensive research about the key players that paved the way for the sexual revolution. In this interview she talks about the disturbing research conducted by Alfred Kinsey and his legacy.
• Overcoming Lust: How the Gospel Changes Us – For our 100th podcast I invited back two former guests: neuroscientist Dr. Bill Struthers (author of Wired for Intimacy) and Eric Ludy (author of When God Writes Your Love Story). We had a great conversation about how the gospel changes the way we think.
• Be Aware: Porn Harms – As a part of a Porn Harms campaign, we did a roundtable discussion with Jan Meza (an ex-porn star), Noel Bouché (VPO of pureHOPE), and Michael Leahy (founder of Bravehearts) to talk about how porn is addictive, how it impacts children, how it leads to sex trafficking, and how it leads to the mistreatment of women.
• Porn Culture: How It Impacts Our Daughters – Cris Clapp Logan, former Director of Communications and Congressional Relations for Enough is Enough, speaks about the impact of pornography and sexualized media on young women.

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New Free E-Books

• Internet Pornography: A Ministry Leader’s Handbook – We began the year with a great compilation project for pastors who struggle with pornography, including chapters from some wonderful guest authors with extensive experience in this area.
• Your Brain on Porn: 5 Ways Pornography Warps Your Mind and 3 Biblical Ways to Renew It – This e-book was a long time in the making. I wanted to write a pro-sex approach to the subject of porn addiction that married both secular research and Biblical values.

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Favorite Guest Posts

• Thoughts on the Pastor’s Smokin’ Hot Wife, by Jeff Fisher – This post received some great feedback. After Pastor Joe Nelms’ famous (or infamous) NASCAR prayer, it received a lot of attention online. This post includes from thoughts from Jeff Fisher or PornToPurity. Boogity, boogity, Amen.
• Finding Excellence with Internet Accountability, by Ron Hunter Jr. – The Executive Director and CEO of Randall House wrote an excellent post for us back in March about why all his employees use Covenant Eyes.
• Sexual Purity is Not the Goal, by Reagan North – The Student Ministry Director at Mars Hill’s Shoreline church wrote a fantastic post to parents reminding us that our primary objective is not to raise sexually pure teens but to lead their kids into a loving relationship with Jesus. If we make morality the goal, we miss the mark.
• Progress and Prayer: Do we worship technology? by Daniel Darling – We had the pleasure of bringing Pastor Daniel Darling, author if iFaith, into our writing team this year. In this post he reminds us of the biblical pattern regarding technology: progress without God always leads to self-destruction.
• 7 Questions Wives of Porn Addicts Often Ask, by Ella Hutchinson – This series of posts became some of our most popular this year. We get so many questions from women who are suffering in marriages with porn-using husbands. Ella Hutchinson tackles some very tough questions for them.

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Modesty Week (November 6-12)

This year we had a number of great posts about the subject of modesty. The year began with a post written by an international model, Rachel Lee Carter, “A Model Uncovers the Truth About Modesty.” In August we published, “Straight Talk on Bikinis,” by Alyssa Shull, which quickly became one of our most read posts in 2011.

Based on the response from these two posts we invited both Rachel and Alyssa back for a special podcast and article series on Breaking Free:

• 5 Ways to Transform an Immodest Wardrobe, by Rachel Lee Carter
• Teaching Girls About the “Heart” of Modesty (part 1)
• Stumbling Block: More Thoughts on Immodesty (part 2)
• Tank Tops, Leggings, and the Art of Fashionable Modesty (part 3)
• Fathers, Step Up: Teaching Modesty and Purity to Our Daughters (part 4)
• Cleavage, Bikinis, and Facebook: Straight Talk to Young Women, by Alyssa Shull
• Dressing with Dignity, by Leslie Ludy

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Justice Week (September 4-10)

For our second year we partnered with the student interns at pureHOPE to bring our readers “Justice Week.” These four interns spent their summer working with pureHOPE to research the issues of pornography and sex trafficking, to explore the nature of justice and its relationship to purity, and to develop resources to mobilize the church to pursue purity and oppose sexual exploitation.

These interns personally interviewed experts on sex trafficking, including founder of Harvard’s Protection Project Laura Lederer, and former victim sex trafficking Theresa Flores. Ana Stutler did a fantastic job on “The Connections Between Pornography and Sex Trafficking.”

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White Ribbons Against Pornography (WRAP) Week (October 30-November 5)

Since 1987, WRAP Week has been annual awareness week to rally citizens to learn more about the harms of pornography. This year on Breaking Free we partnered with a number of organizations to teach others about these harms. We hosted three live web events:

• Hooked: A Christian Response to Porn Addiction – Crystal Renaud and I hosted a webinar about how the church should respond to the issue of pornography addiction. She was a joy to work with!
• Christian Families Living in a Porn Culture – Our own Sam Black traveled to the Promise Keepers national headquarters in Colorado to interview their CEO, Dr. Raleigh Washington. This was a great conversation with a man who has impacted so many for Christ.
• Becoming an Anti-Porn Activist – I moderated an roundtable discussion with folks from Morality in Media, My House Initiative, the Pink Cross Foundation, Girls Against Porn, and the Arizona Family Council.

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Great testimonies from women who use Covenant Eyes:

• Testimonies from women who struggle with porn – In the past, Covenant Eyes has been pegged as a “man’s product for a man’s problem.” This year, I loved reading testimonies from Natalie and Amy about how they too learned the benefits of Internet accountability in the struggle against lust online.
• Testimonies from wives – One of the saddest parts of my job is reading the countless comments from women whose lives have been shattered by their husband’s use of pornography. This year women like Cindy Beall have written about how God has transformed their marriages. I interviewed Josh and Serena about how God redeemed their marriage. We also heard from Erin about how Covenant Eyes has helped her marriage start out on the right foot.
• Testimonies from moms – More and more we are hearing from parents about how Internet accountability in the home is transforming the way their kids are using the Internet. LouAnn and Joy speak about the measures they have put in place in their home to help their kids use the Internet with integrity.

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Conversation Starters for Parents

This year we started a new category for parents on Breaking Free called “Tabl Talk.” The goal is to use recent news headlines as conversation starters about Internet safety and responsibility.

We’ve received some great feedback about this. Kids and teens need wise parental guidance to navigate through the digital age, and parents need touch points to make conversation relevant. My hope with this series is that it will provide parents with good talking points based on real life stories and current information.