It is with a measure of trepidation

An Apology for This Thing

I used to be on Facebook. I removed myself from it about a dozen years ago.

Then I was on Twitter. Then I wasn’t. Then I was. Then I wasn’t. Then I kind of was (as the operator of the JLG Resources account, a Twitter account dedicated to the life and work of the late Baptist theologian James Leo Garrett Jr.). Then I wasn’t (when I finished a project related to Dr. Garrett’s work that I had been working on for a number of years).

Through it all, I maintained a personal website: Walking Together Ministries. (That site is, for the time being, still active.) Over the years, that website has become essentially a storage house for my weekly sermon manuscripts. It has served me well, but, for a couple of years now, I have been chewing on making a change. (I am going to bring two or three things from WTM over here, posts that continue to receive interactions, but, honestly, my goal is a fresh start, not regurgitation. I’ll still be posting the sermon manuscripts, but largely through our church’s Sermons page, which can be reached through the link by the same name up above.)

It seems to me that Substack can accomplish all that I was trying to do with Walking Together Ministries but in a format that strikes me as fresh and inviting and interesting. Most of all, Substack is a writer’s platform, or seems to lean heavily into the encouragement of that craft.

I am no writer, though I have written a bit. But I would like to be better at the craft. So my goal is to try to write with more precision and effectiveness, to grow a bit in the art of it, if possible. I would like to learn to express myself more clearly, with a bit less dross and bulk (particular maladies of mine). Along the way, I’ll indulge in some of the odd things that interest me and, hopefully, some important things that I think should probably interest us all.

I expect it all to be gloriously idiosyncratic and sometimes esoteric, but, maybe, every now and then, by God’s grace, actually encouraging and thought provoking.

So, there you go.

Let’s do this.