With this post I would like to request that everyone on the blog consider making a donation, above and beyond your membership fee.   I know that some of you simply cannot afford to do so, and that, of course, is absolutely fine.   Others of you simply do not want to do so, and that also is absolutely fine.   But if you have the means and the will, I would very much like you to consider my request.

My proposed amount is $20.   If everyone were to make a donation of that amount, we would stand a very good chance of reaching my desired fund raising goal of $100,000 for the year.   As you know, every penny that comes into the blog goes out to charities supporting hunger and homelessness.  I don’t keep a dime for myself, and I pay for all of the expenses of the blog out of my own pocket.

For some of you, $20 will be more than you can afford, but you’d like to give something.   So give $5.   For others of you, $20 is not a huge deal, and you can afford that.  For yet others, $50, or $100, or even much more (or much much more) would not really even be felt.  And so I would suggest that if you can give more, you do so, in order to make up for those who cannot afford anything; that in effect makes it a united effort with those who have filling in for those who do not.

My view is that this blog is unusually good value for the membership fees.   An annual membership is $24.95.   For that amount, you get 5-6 posts a week, almost always around 1000 words per post.   So, say the average weekly input that I create is 5500 words.   On average, that costs you less than 50 cents.  That happens every week of the year.

The topics are varied, so you are not reading the same thing all the time.  They range over a wide array of topics involving early Christianity and related areas, from the historical Jesus, to the apocryphal Gospels, to the manuscripts of the New Testament, to the writings of Paul, to the problem of suffering, to the development of Christian theology, to the Hebrew Bible, to … to lots of other things.

I often respond directly to your questions by posting on the most intriguing ones – sometimes an entire series of posts responding to one question or another.

In addition, there are over 8000 comments each year that come in from all of you, and I read each and every one and, if requested, make a brief response to it.

There is not another blog available anywhere, to my knowledge, where you get so much.   And all of that for roughly $2 a month.   I think it’s a fantastic value.

It is not only the privilege of communicating with you my thoughts, ideas, research, and responses that keeps me going.   That indeed a privilege — to be able to share these things with you and to entertain your questions and comments in response.   But that is not mainly why I do the blog.  I do it in order to raise money for charity.   That’s my ultimate goal.  Without that goal, I simply wouldn’t do it.   There are other ways that I can communicate my views and scholarship to the world at large apart from setting side time virtually every day of the year to work on the blog.   I could, for example, simply write books.   But the blog is a way for me also o try to achieve some good in the world.  And I cannot do it without your support.

I appreciate the fact that you have had to pay your hard-earned money to have access to my posts on the blog.   Now I’m simply asking that, if you’ve found that the blog really beneficial, and have the means to do so, you make an additional a donation, of any amount.  The charities we support, and I myself, would be deeply in your debt.

To make a donation, simply click the Donate tag at the bottom of the page, and go from there.   Thank you ever so much.