Be it far from us to ever agree with Dr. Michael Brown, chief enabler of all that is theologically weird and always eager to platform, promote, and advance every crazy-as-a-rat-in-a-coffee-can charismatic leader not named Todd Bentley, but it seems that even a morally and theologically bankrupt blind squirrel can find a nut on occasion.
In this case, Brown shared that in the last 6 months, some of his posts which would have gotten 100,000k shares, likes and reactions on Facebook are now only getting 100-200. This is an astronomical drop in traffic, meaning he’s only getting a tenth of 1% of his previous exposure.
While on one hand, this is a good thing, as any efforts to have his whacked out beliefs muzzled are generally met with approval, it also does not bode well for the rest of us, who have likewise seen our exposure shrink and numbers drop. We’ve gone from a million page views a month, to something like half a million, and some months less. Posts that would have previously gotten 5 or 10k shares are down to a couple hundred, and our ability to output viral posts is stymied by Facebook’s totalitarian algorithms—seen recently when they temporarily unpublished all our pages, along with our personal pages.
The fact that we have ceased in-page ads altogether, a blessed mercy and gift to our long-suffering readers has likewise impacted our ability to raise funds to pay for expenses like bandwidth and bills.
Of course, you all know where this is going, but we didn’t want to be so crass as to just straight up ask for cash, but take you all along for the ride so you could enjoy the token money-grab more.
If you’re a Patron or do one-time gifts, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you dig the perks, but you should know that half the time when we’re writing posts we want to shout your names from the rooftops at how grateful we are that we get to engage in this ministry with you folks holding our proverbial arms up.
Seriously.
I’m bouncing in my chair at 3:00 am and I’m amped up because I’m reporting on Andy Stanley and I know someone’s going to read that and the scriptures will come alive and together it will just click for them. What a gift! You all made it possible, and I love it so much.
The content also isn’t just for you, but for your neighbor you’ll never meet. Even Pulpit and Pen, where we haven’t posted anything in a year other than something by Seth because he’s stuck in his ways, still gets between 2000-8000 views a day, all from people reading the archives or coming across in their search.
We get a lot of mail from grateful souls thanking us for this or that article we did, telling us what they learned and how it impacted them and their family. I wanted to share a brief portion of one here, to drive the point home.
…We felt so lost in our church. Our pastor had us do an exercise during our small group where we had to confess to each other incidences of privilege we experienced that week, and how us having proviledge [sic] was hurting minorities around us and taking advantage of them. Something about that practice seemed so wrong, but he was the pastor so we went along with it, but my wife and I were miserable until we found your site and we finally understood what was happening…
If you’re not a Patron—see the links below and pick whichever one suits you.
If you’re giving to us instead of your local church, take your finger off that mouse, and don’t you dare do it. Give to your congregation sacrificially what you can. If you’ve nothing left over, be blessed, enjoy the content, and may God be with you. If You have some leftover, we’d love for you to hook us up.
That’s it. See you next month for more of the same!
Soli Deo Gloria
