1 Year of Redeeming God

RedeemingGod.com is One Year old today! Yay!

And over the past year, do you know what I have realized?

This:

You are the BEST readers in the theology blogging world!

Seriously. I love you! Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for supporting this site. Thank you. You are great.

I wish I could sit down over a cup of coffee to get to know each and every one of you.

Of course, that would take quite a bit of time since RedeemingGod.com had over 2,000,000 pageviews this past year from 1,279,414 readers.

That’s right, over 2,000,000 articles were read on RedeemingGod.com in the last 12 months.

I don’t say this to boast in the blog, but to boast in you. I am extremely grateful to have you as a reader of this blog. Whatever success this blog has, YOU have a big part in making it happen. So thank you!

But you know what I appreciate about you even more? That this isn’t a site for you to just read articles, but it is also a place where you share your own ideas and interact with each other. We have a growing and vibrant and diverse online community here.

I mean, there are over 26,000 comments on the blog.

While we don’t always agree on everything, we still discuss it and learn from each other. That’s why I love you!

So I am humbled and grateful. Thank you again!

I think that what this shows is that people are hungry for insights into the character of God and how to understand Scripture which do not chain them ever more tightly to religion.

If you are like most people in the community here, you love God, love Scripture, love theology, and love to follow Jesus in loving others, but are tired of the rules and lies and manipulation of religion.

Thank you for being part of this growing movement of God in the world, and for joining me on this journey out of religion and into a closer relationship with Jesus in which we learn to love others as we have been loved.

Some highlights from this past year

I actually reduced the frequency of my blog posts.

For several years I was publishing 7 days a week. Then I reduced it to 5. When I started this blog, I dropped down to 2 per week. Recently I have been averaging only 1.

The reason for this is some of you mentioned that I was writing too much for you to keep up. I know you are busy, and it was too much to read 5-7 posts per week. Since I know you don’t want to miss anything, I reduced my publishing frequency.

But this enabled me to do other things.

Reducing my blogging frequency also gave me more time for writing books. In the past year, I wrote 4 full-length books. I hope to publish all 4 this year… My book on the atonement is coming out next week…

I also started a podcast. Actually, two podcasts. One is the One Verse Podcast, in which we are studying through Scripture one verse at a time. We are currently in Genesis 2, and I have over 500 years to go before we finish with the Bible. The other podcast is on Theology.fm. One of the Theology.fm episodes last week received 129 comments. Of course, about 120 of those were from one person…

Things to look for in this coming year

I want to publish several books:
–The Atonement of God (Coming out next week!)
-Genesis 1 (100% written)
-The Unforgivable Sin (Revised and Expanded, 80% written)
-The Gospel According to Scripture (80% written)
-Pastoral Leadership (100% written)
-Close Your Church for Good (100% written)
-The Bible Mirror (20% written)
-Commentary on Esther (100% written)
-Jesus among Other Religions (10% written)
-A “Redeeming God” book series on the topic of divine violence (30% written)

I will not be able to publish all these in one year. I wish I could, but I simply don’t have the time or resources. Hopefully I can get out the 100% written books as they just need to be edited, typeset, and published.

I am also going to making some online theology courses available. Teaching is something I love to do and I want to share with you some of the things I have learned over the past 30 years of reading, studying, and teaching. I am going to start with a course on the Gospel. I am about half way through recording this course. So far, it includes 10 classes that average about 45 minutes each.

To get notified of these books and online theology courses, make sure you have signed up to receive my email newsletter.

Thanks for a great first year of RedeemingGod.com. I am looking forward to whatever God has for all of us in the year ahead.