The Future is Real.
The Belonging House Friday Email.
Thank you for your prayers, and for taking the time to read my Friday email.
This week I am departing from the normal blank verse, short email.
Persistence is a powerful thing. Each Friday, for nineteen years, I have written an email. I tell the story of all that God is doing in Belonging House. This email began as a prayer update to six people who committed to praying for me. Little did I know that short list, started on a free Gmail account, would become a community. Today my email reaches over thirty-five countries.
Nineteen years ago I was on the cutting edge of blogging. In the first five years of this adventure, this email went viral several times. My book An Army Arising sold roughly 4000 copies because of the Friday email.
I kept showing up, kept telling the story, and things kept growing. Consistently, this email list grows two to five new subscribers a week. This is not a list of email addresses, this is a group of men and women who resonate with what I am saying and doing, and what God is doing through me.
But something changed, and that change was unseen by many people. Social media began to harness and contol the flow of information, and by 2015 things began to slow. My groundbreaking book Bezalel: Redeeming a Renegade Creation sold 400 copies. Very few people back then even knew what an algorithm was, and I was one of the first to begin to figure out that the system changed. I kept showing up. And this Friday email kept growing. The open rate continued to hover between 50-60 percent.
Around 2018 we ran into trouble with Mailchimp, and I began looking at other email services. We have tried everything. In 2019 Constant Contact removed half my subscription list without my permission, and I went from 800 to 400 subscribers in an hour. Email was no longer about communication, it was about commerce. And subscribers were no longer people, they were commodities. Ecommerce has made sending a weekly email more and more difficult. You are not just an email address, a user, a consumer, or a commodity: you are a person. And you matter.
A few years ago I moved to this platform. The Friday email continued to grow two to five new subscribers a week. About two years ago I noticed a troubling pattern. At first I thought it was my imagination. Every time the subscription list grows past 875, it suddenly drops back to just below. If I gain several subscribers on a weekend, and the number goes up to 883, the next day I notice that a few people unsubscribed and I am back to 874. This has happened every week for two years. I know that something odd is happening, because some of my prayer team have been unsubscribed without their knowledge. If you look at the growth chart on my dashboard, there is a straight horizontal line. Some bot is picking winners and losers.
Meanwhile, the culture and tribe I fought to create continues to grow. People send me pictures of my books with hand made tabs to mark places of reference. Married couples read sections of my books to each other at night before bed. Folks make hand-made booklets of key ideas from my books to give to friends. The platform is getting in the way, and I need to change.
Recently this platform made changes to their terms and conditions. If a writer links to an outside website they insert a bit of “kill code” into the link to either send it to a dead page or back to the main platform page. I have had our giving links killed multiple times, and all links to my new book killed. If you do this repeatedly, you can be snuffed out.
This platform can remove your subscriber list and your publication for violation of their policies at any time. When this happens, you are done.
During Lent I specifically made the future of the Friday email part of my focused prayers. The future is real, not virtual. I have made a few decisions about the future.
I will continue posting my Sunday teaching on this platform, and I will periodically write longer pieces here.
The Friday email is going to be sent through another email provider. It will be coming from our domain name belonging.house. When you receive it, whitelist or put it in your “safe list.” As always, we don’t use this for marketing or sales.
I am sending a physical HAND DRAWN prayer update in the mail to those who commit to praying for Belonging House daily. If you want to receive it, email me directly for more information. Folks have graciously given me stamps to get started!
WE ARE GOING TO PUBLISH A NEWSPAPER! I want to capture the essence of the community we have built and reach a those called to army of artists. It will give you an opportunity to hear other voices under the Belonging House Roof who have not spent nineteen years building an audience. This is the time to build something beautiful for God.
Some of you may have seen County Highway. I don’t want to be the Christian version of that, but I do like the sense of it.
This project is in its seed form, and I am going to need practical help. My goal is to be the editor in chief, not the managing editor. And in order to make this a viable project, we need at least 250 subscribers, and ideally, 500. And of course, this will involve a big increase in our budget and will require a staff of people. I am looking at every way possible to keep the cost down, but the quality high. If you feel like you want to help, let me know.
The future is real. Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. He confronted the system of sin and death in the flesh, and he conquered death in the flesh. He sits enthroned in heaven in the flesh, and is returning in the flesh. It’s time to leave the illusion.
Thanks so much for being a part of this story.
He Never Fails,
Christ
The Friday emails are always free. You can support Belonging House at https://belonginghouse.betterworld.org (tax exempt) or buymeacoffee.com/christjohnotto (not tax exempt).
You can also become a paid subscriber.
We have a Mighty Network for artists and creative people who are committed to a lifestyle of discipleship: https://belonging-house.mn.co
The Daily Prayer Furnace meets each weekday at 7 am ET, Midday UK on Zoom.
The House of Artisans is our Sunday church for churchless artists, and meets at 1pm ET, 6pm UK on Zoom.
All of our public meetings use this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8766320130