Our 2025 Highlight Reel: What You Clicked & Read
by Ashley Graham-Wilcox
This Thursday, we’ll gather for our final Admin Café of the year — Year-End Communication Breakdowns & Breakthroughs — to share what worked and what didn’t in this doozy of a year that that’s been 2025.
Before we do that together, I wanted to pause here to look at what your clicks, registrations, and long reads from the year tell us about the kind of work we’re all trying to do. And the data is interesting, but the story underneath it is maybe even moreso.
What You Showed Up For
When I looked at this year’s workshop data, it’s clear right away that you’re here for the tools.
Your top workshops of 2025:
Changes in Online Church Community: Moving Beyond Facebook and Twitter (with Ryan Panzer, who will lead a workshop on stewardship for us in March 2026)
Leveraging AI to Level Up Your Communications (with the Rev. Christian Anderson, who will be with us in-person at the Caffeinated Church Conference in April 2026)
Effective Church Website Design (thank you, Elizabeth!)
Simple Canva Videos (that was with me 🙋♀️)
Setting Strategy for Digital Ministry (with the Rev. Joseph Wolyniak and The Narthex project)
Looking at those topics together, I see a group of communicators who are thoughtful, resourceful, and trying to work with forethought, intention, and efficiency. Remember, most expert-led sessions are recorded and available to Caffeinated Church members here. (And you can become a Caffeinated Church member here.)
What You Kept Reading
Then there were the blog posts. Caffeinated Church’s traffic went up this year, but the better news is that you stayed longer (As in, for over three and a half minutes per blog post) — reading, sharing, sending notes that began with “I thought I was the only one…”
The top reads this year were:
“But What If I’m Actually Just Behind?” (Which makes me sigh-smile, because that essay was basically a confession.)
“Who’s in the Room (and Who’s on Your Feed)?” (Note to self to write this one each year)
“Things I’ve Learned About Social Media in 2025” (Ditto to this one)
“Saying ‘No’ Without Guilt” (Folks spent an average of over 8 minutes on this one!)
“Communication Lessons from Lake Esau” (A little letter home from camp to each of you)
Every one of those posts came from the same place: A desire to make this work more sustainable and more human (and yes, sometimes from a place of a little bit of desperation.).
☕What I See in All of It
When I look at all of this together — the full workshops, the bookmarked blog posts, the quiet notes that say “I thought I was the only one!” — I see a community that keeps showing up for each other and for the work. Because church communication isn’t just pixels and print pieces.
It’s how people know they’re welcome. It’s how a congregation remembers what matters. It’s how we make connection possible, week after week, even when we’re tired. (So tired.)
So, as we head into Advent, I hope you’ll take a moment to notice what you’ve already built this year. Every flyer, caption, bulletin, video, and schedule that made ministry happen. And, if you can, bring your wins, your flops, your “I can’t believe we pulled that off” stories on Thursday.
