Celebrating 2023, Looking Toward 2024

Happy New Year Friends!

I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the past year and look ahead.

So, to celebrate… It was just after Christmas that I started thinking pretty seriously about writing a weekday scripture reflection. I wanted to practice closely observing the biblical text and drawing out what insights I could based on those observations. I decided to give the discipline a try and here we are.

I published 293 posts. The great majority of those were weekday reflections on Paul’s Letter to the Colossians and on Matthew’s Gospel. About 48 of those were weekend “your turn” posts, sharing a psalm (or section of a psalm) as a prompt for practice observing, reflecting, applying, and praying. And I took about 4 weeks (20 days) off while at summer camp, on spiritual renewal retreat, and for vacation and reflection over the last week of the year.

Seeds of Faith had 11,773 views. Eighty-nine percent of those view were via email. I like how easily Substack manages this as an email newsletter even though it can be viewed in their app or website. The remaining 11% of views came via the Substack app, Facebook, internet search engines, and various other social media. `

Seeds of Faith closed 2023 with 172 subscribers. It started with around 125-130 subscribers in the first week and gradually added another 35-45 subscribers over the next eleven months.

A few of you offered to contribute financial support, which was generous! I have not yet turned on payment processing, so everything remains free (many writers have used Substack as a side-gig or to make a full-time living with a mixture of free and paid content). That said, though the great majority of readers are or have been members of churches I’ve served, or are ministry colleagues, this is something I do outside and on top of my “day job” as pastor of First Methodist Dayton. So that was a lovely affirmation. Here are some wonderful comments that meant a lot to me this year.

I have 3 devotions I read each morning, yours being one of them. I love the format of yours. It is so well written and thought provoking… a real blessing to us all. Thanks be to God!

The daily reading is enjoyable and meaningful.

You dig in and reveal hidden gems in scripture, keeping them contextual and relevant to my walk with Him.

This is an excellent daily devotion with in-depth study of scripture. Well written and thought out! Highly recommend as a start to anyone’s day.

Many, many thanks for your kind encouragement.

The discipline of coming to God’s Word and sticking with a practice of sharing as well-grounded an observation as I can make has been both challenging and rewarding this year and I’m glad to be continuing this discipline again for 2024.

I’m ruminating on potential ideas for add-ons in keeping with and to enhance the core purpose of Seeds of Faith, which can be expressed in the following two quotations, one from Sherlock Holmes, the other from my first biblical studies professor in seminary.

“You see, but you do not observe.” (Sherlock Holmes, in A Scandal in Bohemia, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Some interpretations are more well-grounded than others.” (Dr. David Bauer, Professor of Inductive Biblical Studies and Dean of the School of Biblical Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary, in-class lecture)

I aim to grow my skill in observing and not only seeing, and to offer reflections that are as well-grounded as possible and not simply speculation.

Of course, I’d love to grow the subscriber base and viewing totals—double would be awesome. Above all, I want to continue to establish Seeds of Faith as the best place online for thoughtful Christians to practice reading the Bible well.

Thank you for reading the Bible with me in 2023. I look forward to reading together in 2024. See you back in the Word tomorrow.

Prayer: Lord, grant that your living and active Word may judge the thoughts and attitudes of my heart, so that I may experience your transformation in my life. Shape me by your Word. Amen.

---

“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)

If you liked this post from Seeds of Faith, why not share it and/or subscribe?

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™