Why I left Substack

My newborn son was in the hospital all weekend with viral meningitis. If you’ve been there, it sucks. He’s better now. At the same time, bombs were falling on Iran, AI is disrupting entire industries, tariffs have slowed the economy, a heat dome buckles asphalt in the eastern US, oh, and our garage door opener quit working.

Moments like these lead many people to look for reasons to hope. I have many, which I’ll explain in future posts. But before I can see through the muddy water to the other side of the pond, I have to let the dust settle to the bottom. I need clarity, simplicity, slowness.

Over the last few months I’ve been developing new rhythms and values that simplify my perspective and bring clarity to the theoretical and the practical aspects of living. That sounds grandiose and will need lots of unpacking, but I feel more determined than ever to write out what God has been teaching me.

I’ve been simplifying and clarifying our work at Snapmarket.co (new website, pricing, tech stack, content engines etc.) as well as my work at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge. There I’ve been meeting with a small research group for the last two years on a theology of capital stewardship. I’m concluding that there’s never been more need during my lifetime for public theology and hope in a God who is redeeming the entire universe than right now. It seems as though an epochal shift is taking place, and we need a way to perceive and respond to it. We need a tree, as it were, on which we can hang our ideas. These thoughts have led me in all kinds of profound directions.

The first of those is a desire to learn more about Dutch Reformed theology à la Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, and Bob Goudzwaard. Kuyper’s Stone Lectures on Calvinism at Princeton coupled with Goudzwaard’s Capitalism and Progress and other works have provided fresh insights into how to interpret the times. I’ve followed that with a working PhD proposal on Goudzwaard’s theological-economic ethic with a placial analysis. More on that later.

All that brings me to Substack, or rather away from it, in a circuitous way: I want a simpler digital presence, something that has as few barriers to my thinking and writing—and thus to my readers like you—as possible.

Though it’s a great product, Substack has too many bells and whistles. Sure, perhaps a newsletter business can grow faster there, but it also takes 10% of your revenue. More importantly, they can also shut you down without warning, as they did to me for a few days last year. When I appealed the “Spam and Phishing” accusation asking for evidence, their support team said, basically, “Oops! Sorry,” and turned me back on.

I want to move more quickly and more freely, so I moved my writing to the independent platform—and one of Substack’s leading competitors—called Ghost. My aim is to write shorter, more frequent posts directly to you. No likes or comments, no podcasts or imagery, no nothin’, except the word, the logos. Maybe I’ll add more media over time, but for now, in the midst of the AI revolution, I want to hone the craft of organic, clear writing directly from one human being to another.

I’d be honored if you continued to read and respond directly to my newsletters. Words from readers mean the world. And to my paid subscribers, thank you. I’ll bring back paid tiers in the future when I achieve a better rhythm of high-quality, consistent writing.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.