2024 has been a remarkable year for the Blog.  We have set a record for the amount of money we raised and donated to our charities; we have hired a highly skilled CEO who has taken charge and already made vast improvements, and we have chosen a design company to come up with a whole new platform (Blog 3) that will revolutionize how we do things.

Details to follow.  But first let me say I am especially pleased that we have succeeded in pursuing the original goals of the blog (in some ways, better than ever).    Namely:

(1) To spread and propagate real knowledge about the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and the history and literature of Christianity over its first four centuries or so, and in doing so to generate more interest, dispel more ignorance, and encourage more thinking on religious, historical, and literary issues that are of particularly keen interest to the two billion Christians in the world and also of keen interest to the billions of others who are not believers but who recognize how important such matters are to our history, culture, and understandings of the world; and

(2) To raise funds for charity in doing so.

With respect to the first goal:  This past year I have continued to post 5-6 times a week; we have also had a number of very interesting guest posts from other scholars.  The total comes to over 300 posts this past year; for the life of the blog (since April 2012) we have just over 3900 posts.  Since each post is normally 1200-1400 words, well, them’s a lot of words.

All these posts are in our archives for all blog members to see (whether you are Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum level).

In addition, as you know, blog members at the Silver tier or higher are allowed to make comments on the blog. This past year we have had about 16,000 comments.  Over the life of the blog we have had over 156,000.  About a third of those have involved questions to me, and I have responded to 51,342 of them (not that I’m counting).  I have tried, or at least meant, to answer every question I have received – even when I have to admit I have no idea what the answer is…  So keep the zingers comin’!

The second goal, raising funds for charity, is especially near and dear to my heart, and is what keeps us going at it.  I am incredibly pleased that we have significantly crushed our record for charitable giving, with an annual total of $588,000.

To put that in perspective, last year (2023) we raised $480,000.   In our first full year of operation (2013), we raised $54,000.  Whoa.  From $54,000 to $585,000 in eleven years.  Who would-a thought?  For the life of the blog we have given nearly $3,000,000 to our charities.

That vast majority of those funds have always come from our membership fees, which, as you know, are not exorbitant.  The Bronze Level membership is $29.95 / year – that is, roughly 58 cents a week!   If you feel like investing a bit more this coming year and getting increasingly more perks, think about moving up to Silver.  Or Gold!  Or go for it all, and shift to PLATINUM!  You can’t get higher without reaching the Pearly Gates.

All of the membership fees, as well as any donations you have made, are tax exempt. Even better, NONE of them go to our operating expenses. (We have a separate fundraising mechanism for that.)  And, of course, I don’t receive a dime for the Blog – just the satisfaction of knowing we are dispensing important and potentially transformative knowledge to whomever wants it, and helping those in need at the same time.

In case you need a reminder: we principally support five charities, two international (Doctor’s without Borders and CARE) and three more local to me (Urban Ministries of Durham, Food Bank of Eastern Carolina, and the Durham Literacy Center).  For more information about them, just go here:  https://ehrmanblog.org/charities-we-support/

One major reason we are doing much better at what we do is our new (and first ever) blog CEO, Jen Olmos, who has been onboard since August. Jen came to us deeply experienced in every aspect of what we do on the blog: she started out in the corporate world of financial technology, where she gained a deep understanding of business realities, software development, and technical project management; she also worked in publishing and has long had a deep passion for the study of the New Testament and the origins of Christianity.  Jen is highly skilled, pro-active, full of ideas, and a real pleasure to work with – as many of you have discovered.

Among the many other things she is doing for us, Jen is overseeing the rebuild of by DesignHammer, a web-development and design company we hired for the task a couple of months ago.  With Jen leading, we solicited proposals from a number of companies, interviewed teams from a short list, and chose DesignHammer as the one most attuned to our needs and skilled at meeting them.  You will be hearing more about them and the new blog design anon.  For now I’ll just say we are in very good hands, and the main goals we have and format we use (blog posts!  comments!  Etc.) will remain intact.

In closing I would like to thank two of our 2024 blog employees who have now moved on to other pastures, Diane Pittman our COO who skillfully ran the show for years and will still be with us in volunteer mode, and Ben Porter, our CTO, who miraculously kept the blog itself held together with baling wire and duct tape while dealing with all the technical issues.  We not only survived but thrived through their work, and I’m deeply appreciative.

In addition, I would like to thank the 2024 volunteers who have all put in generous amounts of time and effort purely as a labor of love to make the entire blog experience happen:

• Robert Gilbert: Director of the Blog Forum
• John Paul Middlesworth: Reader of Gold audio posts
• Ken Teutsch: Reader of Gold audio posts
• Michael Johnson: Reader of Gold audio posts
• Steve McCabe: Reader of Gold audio posts
• Glenn Siepert: Graphic designer & Guru of social media
• Doug Wadeson: Structural organization of the site
• Anthony Dominello: Audio post engineer
• Lance Boyer: Blog community volunteer
• Troy Burrus: Accounting consultant
• Cheryl Pletcher: Blog 3 volunteer
• Kevin Grant: Blog 3 volunteer

In sum, 2024 was a terrific year for the blog, and I very much appreciate you being involved with it. We are looking forward to even better things in the year(s!) to come.

• Bart