Community Chat
the technicalities...
A practical one today - I’m still familiarising myself with this platform, thank you so much for your patience!
As I’ve said before, one of the main reasons I felt God led me to Substack was because it is my heart’s desire that this is not just another platform for a self-appointed expert to spout forth (shudder), but hopefully somewhere to build a community of people all sharing a faith journey and supporting each other on it. I felt Substack was perfect for this because of the chat function.
Of course, that does depend on people taking part, which feels risky, but I have been really encouraged that so many of you are already joining in and getting to know each other!
It’s the reason why I close posts to comments (sorry to those of you who miss being able to respond that way), and have put a chat button at the end of every post - to encourage you all to head to the app and join in the conversation there. Even though it’s early days, it seems to be working. So thank you for taking part! I love hearing from you, and am hopeful that by the time we start the official journey in January, we will all be a bit more confident in using the app to connect and communicate.
But of course, as with all technology, nothing is perfect. The biggest struggle I have with the chat function is that it is not possible to schedule a new question/ discussion thread in the same way I can schedule the posts. And I think separate threads are going to be important in helping us all keep track of what day we are on.
The observant among you will have noticed that so far my posts have been going out at 9am every Saturday. However for the chat threads related to each post I have to either post a comment/ question late the previous night, risking some of you answering questions about articles that haven’t been published yet - or I have to try and remember to post at the right time on Saturday morning (not always possible), risking some of you heading to the chat room to answer my questions with no obvious place to do so. To my mind this is worse/ more confusing than the former option.
It’s a minor inconvenience, but is a little frustrating nonetheless.
So, I’m praying for wisdom, particularly for how to manage it in January when our adventure begins in earnest.
And I just wanted to let you know that unless Substack somehow introduces a function where I can schedule chat threads, please be aware that if a question or comment from me appears on the app late at night, it will probably be in relation to ‘tomorrow’s’ post, so you may want to wait until the next day to respond…
Oh, and if you haven’t yet found the chat room, and have no idea what I’m talking about, you will need to download the app. Please do join us there if you can? We’d love to welcome you!
Thanks for joining me on this adventure!