A blessed Eastertide to you all, dear friends!
I write with news about the future of Draw Near With Faith. After thinking it over for a few months, I have decided to open up paid subscriptions for this Substack. I am so very pleased to have found a platform here, and am tremendously grateful to all of you for reading my work and discussing it. It truly is such a great gift to have hundreds, even into the thousands, of you reading my musings about the daily office or mainline spiritual renewal or Anglican esoterica – I don’t know what to say except thank you!
Going forward, I would like to increase the regularity with which I write and to spend more time researching, writing, and copy-editing my pieces. Given the demands on my time as a priest and PhD student and freelance writer, this will be very difficult to do unless my writing here brings in some income. I feel some awkwardness about asking for money, but given that some of you have expressed willingness to support this publication were I to write more with a paid option, I decided it was worth exploring.
Now, I do not want you to feel any obligation to sign up for a paid subscription. You will be able to read most of my work here regardless of your subscription level; I do not intend to paywall the bulk of my writing. I have so treasured the conversations that my writing here has sparked, and I want these conversations to continue among as broad a group of interlocutors as possible. And indeed I hope I can be a voice, however small, for renewal in the mainline and beyond, which putting my work behind a paywall will make more difficult. But if you have found my writing here helpful, and have the means and desire to support it financially, it would be a great gift to me!
What concretely would a paid subscription accomplish? Here’s what I would hope to write at different levels of financial support, so that you can get an idea of what your paid subscription would do.
At $100/month, I can commit to at least one article-length piece per month, and should be able to do an additional shorter piece about every other month as well.
At $250/month, I can commit to two pieces, at least one of which is article-length per month, plus a monthly shorter piece for paid subscribers. The paid-subscriber-only pieces will be a bit more personal than my public fare, focusing on what I’ve been reading about lately or experiencing in ministry or academic studies.
At $500/month, I can commit to publishing something on a weekly basis, with at least two article-length pieces and various shorter pieces in a given month. This would include at least one paid-subscriber-only piece per month.
Beyond that? My goodness — we’ll count those chickens if and when they ever hatch!
If you have an existing free subscription, how do you upgrade to paid? Assuming I managed the Substack interface right, you should see buttons on this post inviting you to upgrade to paid (if you don’t, please let me know…). Otherwise, you can click at the top of this post to open it in your web browser. You will then see an ‘upgrade to paid’ option in the top right hand corner. Alternatively, you can go to your account on substack.com and modify your subscription there.
There are three different subscription options. You can sign up for a monthly subscription at $6.50/mo USD, an annual subscription of $65/yr USD, or you can becoming a ‘Founding Member.’ The first two prices are set so that, with Substack’s fees, I will get about $5 per monthly subscription and $50 per annual subscription. This last option is for if you wish to support my writing at a higher level than the general subscription levels. It is set arbitrarily at $150/yr; you can however enter a lower number than that.
If it whets your appetite, here are a few of the pieces I am hoping to write in the next months:
An argument, in conversation with Lesslie Newbigin, that Christian ministers in North America ought to understand their vocation as a missionary one.
A history and annotated bibliography of commentaries on the 1662 prayer book, building on some of my published academic work.
A personal reflection on what praying the daily office has meant for my relationship with God.
A look at the place of the Articles of Religion in the history of the Episcopal Church, including a rather juicy investigation of General Theological Seminary.
An examination of historical Protestant justifications for church-appointed times for fasting.
A discussion of Hooker’s Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist, and why honesty about the Anglican past matters for Anglican theology today.
An exegesis of depictions of the heavenly liturgy in Isaiah and Revelation and some suggestions as to their application to Christian worship on earth.
Whether or not you choose to purchase a paid subscription, please know most of all that I am very thankful that you take the time to read and engage with my writing here. I am really blessed to have an excellent group of subscribers. And I should add that if there are additional features you would like to see here - for example, Substack has a forum-like ‘chat’ function that I haven’t really used yet - or topics you would like me to write on, do feel free to be in touch!