Reaching a Milestone!

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Reaching a Milestone!

June 30, 2020

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Transcript

Welcome back! Today I reached the halfway mark on my Daily Biblical Reflections on Morning Prayer Project. This is the halfway mark of the morning prayer. Lord willing, next year I'll get into the evening prayer.

However, as about half the readings for the evening prayer have already been covered in the morning prayer, it's about a third way mark for the entire project. It's incredible to think that I'm about a third of the way to a complete audio commentary on the entire Bible, and I hope to fill in the gaps that have been left in the lecture at certain points, and then also to do a complete commentary on the Psalms. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me in prayer, in encouragement, in sending stimulating questions and ideas, and in publicising and sharing with friends, and in those who have supported me in financial ways, and also in buying books for the project.

One of the things that I've been trying to do through this project is to build a substantial library of commentaries for my present and my future work. This is something I've always enjoyed doing. I enjoy getting into commentaries.

I'm a bit strange that way, I guess, but it's been a great blessing to have a project like this that gives me the excuse to spend a lot of time reading commentaries, and also to have many people who have supported by buying me commentaries. It's been an immense time commitment. Every single day I have to spend hours in the text and in commentaries, and then I write up far fuller notes now than I ever did in the past.

One of the things that I want to ensure is that I don't waffle and waste people's time. The most daunting stage of the entire project is the next three months, because there's so much to do in the Pauline Epistles, and doing those alongside some of the material in Ruth, in 1 Samuel, in 2 Samuel, and these books, which are so dense with material themselves, is going to be quite a challenge. The whole project is produced on a shoestring.

Without getting into too many numbers, I'm working at well under half hourly minimum wage for this project, and a fair amount of the money that I receive is ploughed back into the project in various ways. I've not wanted to cut any corners on the research front, so I've invested a lot in commentaries and in the time that I take for research. Many supporters have generously supported me on this front too, and so I have annual costs as well for things like WordPress and SoundCloud, but labour and equipment costs have been kept to a minimum.

Beyond producing the daily biblical reflections, in the last few months I've produced a number of audiobooks, I've interviewed a number of people, I have a couple more exciting interviews lined up in the next week, and have produced other material along the way. It is an immense and costly commitment. Every single day I have to give a number of hours to this project, and I can't skip anything.

Every single day I have to do something, and I have had to prioritise it over much else, because this is not something that I can miss. However, it is something that I find incredibly and immensely rewarding. It's the sort of thing that I've always wanted to do.

I believe it can be of great benefit to the Church, and for that reason, if it succeeds in getting people to spend more time reading and meditating upon the scriptures, from my perspective it will have been worth it. If you have supported my work in prayer or financially, thank you so much. Thank you to everyone who has told friends about this.

The project largely depends upon word of mouth. I have largely avoided the controversial subjects that would make me go viral. On my blog in the past I used to get 10,000 hits on a regular basis for certain posts, and now I'm lucky to get a thousand people listening to a single episode.

But I've wanted to focus upon quietly producing work that matters and that will last. None of this is something that I could have done alone, and so it's very much an achievement that is a shared achievement, something that depends upon a highly committed audience which you have been. So thank you so much for that.

It makes it possible for me to consider a longer-term project when there are people who are supporting, encouraging, and financially providing for me in these sorts of ways. Thank you for that. In part as a way of thanking supporters and increasing communication, over the last week I've set up a new Discord group.

This is exclusively for active Patreon supporters who have supported me at more than five dollars a month, and for people who have donated over fifty dollars in PayPal and other ways over the past year. If you fall into that category please contact me using the form of my blog and I can send you the details and you can join the group. I'm hoping that the Discord group will be a place of lively discussion and conversation where people with an interest in biblical theology and theology more generally can get to know each other better and sharpen each other in friendly conversation.

I'll be pretty ruthless with people who are troublemakers but I would love to have people join and enjoy a conversation there. I plan to be fairly active as a participant in the discussions there. I also intend to be available on the video channel for conversation for an hour or so at least every month.

If you would like to support my work please consider doing so using my Patreon or my PayPal accounts and the details for both of those are in the show notes. If you already do so, thank you so much. To get to this milestone means a lot for me but it's also your achievement.

It's something that you have made possible. I would not have considered this without my supporters and the various people who send me notes of encouragement, the people who pray for me on a daily and regular basis. Please continue to pray for this project.

It really does depend upon people's prayer. There are so many variables that could go wrong and so I really feel a dependence upon people who pray. So please if you've enjoyed listening to these reflections please spend time in prayer from time to time as well that this project will be able to be brought to its conclusion well.

The next three months as I've said are especially daunting given the quantity of the material that I'll have to work through so please pray for that especially. Thank you so much and Lord willing I am going to enjoy the rest of this journey with you all. God bless.