This weekend marks the three-year anniversary of the beginning of Red Letter Christians. To be exact we went live on December 8, 2010 with five pieces, all of which were written by Tony Campolo. 1, 096 days later we’ve published over 1, 300 articles from 160 authors garnering over 3 million pageviews in the process!

To be honest there have been many moments over these three years when I wasn’t quite sure how this thing would turn out. Do people even read this? Will they keep reading? What are they looking for? How can we do better?

And I believe we have done better. We’ve tried to listen and improve and build on the suggestions we’ve received. We’re here today because of all of you: the author, reader, critic, and champion.  Thank you.

Throughout the weekend we’d like to take a look back on these three years and highlight some of the authors and pieces that helped us get where we are today!

Today we begin with those first few articles that brought in the readers. All of these pieces were published in the first 6 months of our existence and began to let people know we existed. They are listed in no particular order:

• The R Word, the N Word, and the Book that Should be Burned – by Margot Starbuck
• The Christian Industrial Complex – by Shane Claiborne
• Love Wins: Rob Bell and the New Calvinists – by Jarrod McKenna (thank you Rob Bell for writing Love Wins – the many articles surrounding it pumped our daily readership from 75 people to 650 people overnight in March 2011).
• Love Wins: A New Split in Protestant Evangelicalism – by Jimmy Spencer Jr.
• Beer at Church – by Tony Campolo

Tomorrow we’ll highlight those authors whose work has carried us these three years!