Coming Out of the Silent Period
Hello friends. You’ve heard nothing from me on this channel for a couple of years! So it might be a surprise hearing from me now. If you’re seeing this in email, it’s because you subscribed at some point that you may have forgotten. (Don’t worry, the subscription is free.) But if you’re reading this and thinking, “Who is this guy?” and you don’t want to hear from me, no hard feelings if you hit the unsubscribe button.
Before you do, though, you might have an interest in an update (and if you’re reading this on the web, this will stitch things together).
It’s not an update about what I’ve been up to the last couple of years, but an update regarding how I will use this space in the future.
Combining lists
I have the privilege of pastoring a small urban United Methodist Church. This Substack newsletter began as more of a personal blog focused around pastoral work (you can see the About page, which remains accurate). I also wrote a newsletter for the members of the church. Under the pressure of life, I wound up ceasing to produce either Thriving in Exile (the publication you’re reading right now) or the church newsletter. (If you’re wondering, we still did a church bulletin, but that was more of a worship agenda than any sort of message.)
In recent weeks, though, I’ve realized that a single newsletter could serve both communities. Because it’s a combined community, I won’t use this to send information that only interests the church folks, but to share material that (I hope) supports us all. However, one reason for reviving this newsletter is the benefit that Substack provides beyond the mere email list function.
Honestly, for pure email there are probably better solutions than Substack. However, Substack is fantastic for managing a publication. It will host it for free. It is easily accessible for pretty much everybody. And (here’s the deciding factor right now) it will host audio podcasts for free.
Sermon podcast
If “podcast” isn’t a familiar term, don’t worry. It’s just an audio recording. The church has been posting audio recordings of sermons from our services for many years on SoundCloud, and those will remain. But it takes a bit more tech knowledge than many people have to get to the SoundCloud recordings, so I’m not sure how well those are serving the people we want to reach.
So for the next several months, I will post the sermons both here and on SoundCloud. We’ll look at how people are using it, and then determine how to move forward. Remember that just because we post a sermon here doesn’t mean you have to listen to it. ☺️ We have put the podcast in its own section, so if you don’t want to get notices about it, you can unsubscribe just to that section without having to leave the entire publication.
We’re still figuring all this stuff out, so bear with us and let us know what we can do to improve your experience. You can always reach out to me at pastor.donn.king@gmail.com.
Another slight advantage
It’s not the primary reason for going with this platform, but it does provide an easy way for people who want to financially support the work of the church to do so. All the content in this newsletter will remain free and accessible to everyone. We can turn on “paid subscribers,” and anyone who subscribes will know their contribution is going through me straight to the church. The only “content” available only to subscribers will be a “thank you” post.
If you’d like to provide such financial support, I encourage you to reach out to me to help you set up a direct donation to the church, since only 90% of contributions here will go through (the rest go to processing fees). But convenience matters, so if this is the best way to contribute, you will be welcome to do so, and I will make certain anything that comes through this channel gets passed on to the church.
If you see later that “paid subscriptions” become available, let me reassure you that you will never be shut out of any content just because you are a free subscriber.
Same mission
We set out in this publication to provide resources and support for followers of Jesus in post-everything America. That remains our mission. I hope you’ll find this publication to be a useful support in your walk with Jesus.
Peace.