I’m planning the 4th Quarter writing and want to give you a heads-up. Advent starts December 3rd, 2023. For paid subscribers or members on the Patreon site, I will post the Advent lessons for December sometime in October. As I write that, it will likely be in early October. Everyone else will get the lessons the Friday before the Sunday they apply. If you are a small group leader looking for Advent material and want prep time, you must be subscribed to my Substack (annual subscriptions are just $30) or on Patreon.
Additionally, I am playing around with adding Hot Topics to my weekly writing roster. I will likely release this on Tuesdays ahead of Wednesday for paid subscribers and Wednesdays for everyone else. This gives anyone in the Methodist tradition or those who host a mid-week meal a day to consider the piece for use in a discussion small group. Hot Topic was always designed to be something pulled from the week’s headlines tied into scripture as I see it. In my home church, this sparked great discussion amongst the attendees because we all had a high level of respect for one another.
I wanted to post this to you all because I think it is important to give you some time to consider the financial aspect with enough time to make decisions.
Let me clarify a point here. If you just want to read what I write here, it will always be available free of charge. I believe I am obligated to provide some level of value to those who have decided what I do here is worth some of their hard-earned treasure. To that end, the early releases for those who have decided to subscribe monetarily are that value. It offers the ability to prepare ahead of a class or other gathering if they want to use my material in that setting. Subscribing is also a nice way to say thank you and give back.
If this sparks you to investigate Patreon, you can find that page HERE. There are various levels there that are not on Substack. However, some folks would rather participate over here than over there. I will say that Patreon has a greater level of variety in was to connect, plus I send you stuff like some of my books at certain levels of membership. If this grows larger, there might be patron only content over there such as videos, Zoom chats, and even Discord discussion groups, but I’m lousy at Discord.
I won’t lie to you. When someone decides to subscribe and commit some of their finite money to the cause, it reinforces that what I do has value to someone. For those in my class or those I know personally who subscribe, your in-person comments do this as well. You will never know how much energy and strength I draw to produce this material from those contacts. Thank you very much. God bless and Godspeed.