We're Moving the Conversation to Patreon

For a long time, we've had two separate threads of conversation running; with one here and another over at Reddit, and neither getting a ton of traction. It's time to do something about that, so I've decided to move the whole conversation over here for a few very honest reasons:

1) I'm tired of Reddit. For those who don't know, reddit.com is a free conversation hub that has been popular for the last ten or twelve years. There are good things about it, but increasingly it'd developed a culture that tilts more and more negative all the time. Now don't get me wrong; our little corner of Reddit has been great, but reddit in general isn't my favorite part of the Internet, and I don't want to make people be a part of it in order to participate in the conversation here.
We're not going to close down the TMBH reddit, but we'll put a post at the top of the page that points everyone here.

2) I don't go to Reddit much at all anymore, so having the conversation here (where I check in more often) makes it more likely we will get to interact.

3) I'd like to have everyone in the same room, because I think the discussion will be more fun and more robust. Patreon has recently made itself much more user friendly as a place to host conversations for the whole community (regardless of whether someone supports or not), and I'd like to take advantage of that.

4) From the beginning, I've tried to build this Patreon page as a good-will engine and not as a transactional deal between us. The stickers and the notebooks and maps and little music files from Jeff and whatever else we send out have always been meant as an under-promise and then over-deliver kind of thing as a way to go above and beyond as a way of saying thank you for making the podcast happen (you quite literally are the reason this can exist). I've never had an interest in having an exclusive conversation behind a paywall; rather, when it comes to talking about Bible stuff together, I think it's a the-more-the-merrier kind of thing. When it comes to sending out stuff to those of you who support the program as a way of saying thanks, that will always have to be limited to those who are currently patrons (or supporters over on planning center), but I think it'll be great to allow free Patreon memberships for anyone who wants to check and be a part of the conversation over here as we move away from Reddit.

5) I like the idea of people who enjoy the podcast getting a good sense of how Patreon works which could make it easier to jump in on the support side here in case they might like to do that someday in the future.

For now, the plan will be usually to have one discussion thread per week that gets posted late on Sundays or early on Mondays where we can talk about the text, dumb things I said, music Jeff made, or whatever is interesting to you. If other, more specific, topics come up during the week, I might open some more (uncharged) threads for discussion.

Nothing will change regarding the one charge per week of podcast setup we've been doing since forever. Again, nothing at all will change on the support/economic side of this Patreon page. Also, nothing at all will change in terms of me mailing out special thank you stuff from time to time exclusively to those who financially support the podcast. The only change will be hopefully more discussion and more people involved in that.

Finally, please make sure to thank/laugh with/congratulate/make requests of Jeff in these threads so we can encourage him to keep doing music stuff that makes this more fun for all of us.

I'll probably cover all or most of this on the podcast as well, but wanted to get you in the loop first. You're awesome and I'm grateful.