Confessions of a Substack writer

Confronting ego and creating more room for community

Italian Dance Party by Francesco Vinea (1880)

First, the confession

One of the most consistent realities of writing a newsletter online is losing subscribers each time I publish a piece. I throw all of myself into this little, precious bundle of words, and—inevitably—when the email lands in inboxes, some people will hit that unsubscribe button with a hard thud of their thumb.

These unsubscriptions happen when I am at my most vulnerable, and they can take over my perspective. Suddenly it doesn’t matter how I feel about the piece I just shared; instead, what matters the most is how many people decided to close the door on me after I hit “send.”

It sucks. And it’s weird and awkward and feels vain to talk about, opening up a window into both my ego and my sensitivity.

I realized this past week that I am overthinking so much of what I write, trying desperately to please everyone and keep all my readers satisfied. Maybe if I just put the perfect words next to the perfect aesthetic, no one will want to click the unsubscribe button.

But here is the reality: sometimes people will unsubscribe, and that does not devalue my—or your—words. There are countless reasons for unsubscriptions: maybe my specific newsletter no longer speaks to their season in life, maybe they feel the need to stop reading more words about God and spend more time with God, maybe they simply shut down that email address. Those unsubscriptions do not need to be a reflection of my worth; if you write or create online, they do not need to be a reflection of your worth either.

Maybe chasing the Spirit’s work in your and my life will create unsubscriptions. No one person can speak perfectly to the human experience. That’s the beauty of diversity. That’s the beauty of the Body of Christ. Maybe you don’t need to listen to my little toe on the Body of Christ—maybe what you need is in fact some time with the ear or the belly button or the elbow. That’s okay! In fact, that’s beautiful!

And, if I really believe in generative writing, then I have to believe that I’m not the only generative writer in existence.

But here’s the other (more precarious) thing I think: Maybe if I just capture everyone’s feelings in the exact way they feel them, they will click the “share” button instead of the “unsubscribe” button, sending my little newsletter to all of their friends who will send it to all of their friends and each and every one of them will click the “subscribe” button and make my little newsletter the hugist hit of all the huge hits on Substack.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Ego, ego, ego.

The ego is a fickle thing, and there is no perfect way of padding one’s ego when writing online. In the days of Twitter and social media, my ego was naturally drawn to how many followers I was gaining or losing. In the days of Substack—although on the whole SO much healthier—my ego is still naturally drawn to how many subscribers I’m gaining or losing. Each and every day that I log onto this thing, I have to give my ego to the Lord. If he wants to loaves and fish this thing, so be it. If he wants to shrink this thing like Gideon’s army, so be it.

So be it, so be it, so be it.

But may I be a humble ambassador to a better way of existing online, not writing for my ego but writing for God’s glory.

What does generous writing look like?

To that end, I want to promote more generative writers and books through my Substack. I’m not quite sure what that looks like, and I don’t want to make a grand proclamation that I can’t back up. But I want this to be a space that is not just dominated by my voice and my thoughts. I think that limits a wide open world and easily convinces me I’m more important than I am.

So, with that said, here are other amazing and generative writers on Substack (with more to come!).

Bitter Scroll

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Sara Billups

Sara somehow walks the tension of lamenting the excesses and contortions of the American faith while still holding to the truth that Jesus is working and moving. Using journalistic insights and narrative writing, she makes sense of what it means to be living in an “already / not yet” reality. Her faith and her courage inspire me.

(She also has an incredible book, Orphaned Believers, that dives deep into the themes of Bitter Scroll.)

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Church Blogmatics

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Beth Felker Jones

A little known fact about me is that I once dropped out of seminary. There were many reasons for this, but one of them was that I was having an impossibly difficult time connecting the heady concepts I was learning with the ministry in front of me. What does substitutional atonement have to do with drug overdoses and deportations?

I wish I had the opportunity to formally learn from Dr. Jones—a professor at Northern Seminary—but I’m grateful she has a Substack I’m able to learn from. She takes theology and applies it to the world around us, rightfully calling out dualism and gnosticism and suggesting God cares about our bodies—both male and female. It was her book Faithful: A Theology of Sex which helped me move past purity culture paradigms.

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The Deep End with Kyle Brooks

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Kyle Brooks

A very well known fact about me: I’m in love with Eugene Peterson. It’s his ability to be pastoral, practical, and poetic that makes me love him so much, and I see the same things in Kyle’s approach to his writing. He’s a pastor of a multiethnic, interdenominational church in Oakland called Tapestry Church, and his newsletters are filled with pastoral insight, intentional faith, and tremendous love. I am edified every time I open one of his emails.

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I pray today is filled with God’s Truth for you. God loves you very, very much.

-drew