Upcoming Changes to Seeking the Hidden Thing

The results of the survey that went out to my paid subscribers are now in and there will be some changes here.

A big thank you everyone who took the time to respond to my paid subscriber survey, especially those of you who wrote a sentence or two, or more, to offer observations on why you read, the kind of content that interests you most, and to give suggestions on things you would like to see me do.

First. The vast majority of you, almost the entirety of my paid supporters, support me because you value my writing and the podcast conversations that I am having with or without paywalls. I was surprised by this. It was also deeply encouraging and gratifying. You want a penetrating Christian approach to analyzing the world we live in, and you really do want as many people as possible to benefit from this, and are willing to back that up with financial support. That is just awesome. Thank you. There are a few of you who do want paid subscriber only content to feel like you are getting value. I get that.

With that in mind, almost everyone liked the idea that paid subscribers have access to my writing and podcasts in advance of the general public. Most of you thought a two week advance period was about right. What this means going forward is that all my written and podcast discussions will go out first to paid subscribers who will have access to it for two weeks before it is made available to everyone. I am thinking that there will be the occasional subscriber only piece, likely material that is a little spicier — I have a few of those — or is more personal in nature. My fishing trip piece was one of those. As was my discussion of cycling in the Netherlands.

What this means, though, is that I am going to be opening up almost the entirety of the back catalogue to everyone. The welcome emails will have to change, but that is just another to-do on my end. A couple of you specifically encouraged me to do this to give people access to everything. You felt it was important. So all the old Ellul and Schmitt deep dives will be available for everyone now — at least as soon as I can mange it. I will probably start adding articles to threads and Tweets again over on X.com like I used to when I first started out. I won’t be able to update YouTube with all of the paid stuff as my hard drive crashed a while back and I lost all of the original recordings. It is what it is. Downloading a Substack archive is on the to-do list as well, just in case.

Also, most of you asked for paid subscriber live chats and streams. I have been meaning to do this for some time and this will give me an excuse to make it happen. This will be another way to add value for you. The conversations will be me and at most five of you who are paid subscribers. We will get together and do an “ask me anything” type conversation or perhaps there is topic you want discussed and I can do that as well. The other would be a stream. I am going to see if is possible to do subscriber only streams — if any of you have suggestions or know how, hit me up. If not, perhaps a public stream that is only announced to paid subscribers which would hopefully limit how many people are in the chat. The stream is a way to open things up to more than five of you plus me. The long and short of it is that I am planning on creating more interactive opportunities for you as paid subscribers.

As to the amount of content that goes out, the vast majority of you preferred quality over quantity. You would rather read fewer, deeper, better thought out, and well written pieces, or more important podcast conversations, rather than just simply content for content’s sake. Some of you specifically said that you want to avoid anything that moves in the direction of “slop.” Once, maybe twice a week is fine if there is a reason for two drops, but you don’t need content just because. This is good, because it takes some pressure off me and allows a better balance between my business, family, faith cultivation, church and writing and podcasting. Hopefully the actual writing will be better as well.

Again, thank you for your support. To all of you who read, and listen, and subscribe, I find it amazing that you do. It especially means the world to me that many of you find my writing valuable enough to support it financially.