Which projects would best serve the Kingdom?

I am not going to give an in-depth discussion of this question myself. I will, however, give you a bunch of notes. Mostly, the reason I am posting is to get your feedback on the question in the title.

I would particularly like to hear from people who know me (even if I don’t know them—I know there are some of you out there, because occasionally such people introduce themselves to me) or just people who have read my conversion story, “The Denominational Distinctives” (Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3), or “Why the ACNA.” (Or if I have sent you other writings of mine, and you read them.) If you haven’t read such things, I’m interested in your opinion anyway, but please let me know this in advance.

I have discussed with both my rector and my bishop about how I ought to spend my time to advance the Kingdom. Both left it more or less in my hands.

So, let me just give you some lists and then step back.

Things I am reasonably good at:

• Writing and editing (in certain modes)
• Probing the really hard questions that other people don’t like to talk about
• Architecting and starting internet projects
• Organizing people in groups online
• Designing software systems
• I am very OK at coding

Things I am fairly bad at:

• Leading people face-to-face
• Simplifying things for total beginners (that’s what my old OSU student reviews told me, so I believe them)
• Fundraising (LOL)
• Anything that basically involves lying to people; e.g., sales
• Tact

Projects I have finished, that I liked:

• The above-linked essays
• Various websites, including the one you’re now reading
• ZWIBook flash drives (~70,000 books from Project Gutenberg put on a 128GB flash drive with reader software)
• A 330K-word (~600 page) Q&A style commentary on Genesis, never published, focused on answering all the hard questions I could think of, plus 64 more pages about Matthew. (This project is finished but I did it in 2021-23, so it would need much editing.)
• A very long book building a systematic philosophical and theological case for the existence of God, aimed at an educated, intelligent, critical, nonspecialist audience. (Not finished, but I have worked steadily on it for five years, I am 100% committed to finishing it, it’s in a third draft, and it’s 630+ pages long.)

Things I might like to do, which might actually be useful to the Kingdom (eventually)

• Make a Substack-type subscription version of the blog and start blogging more. Variants and/or post types:
  • Share drafts of writing projects and invite feedback.
  • Post intros to various readings about classics of philosophy of religion and theology (from a philosophical point of view) and lead discussions of them (in comments).
• Make a version of ZWIBook that includes a massive offline compendium of Christian texts, basically collecting all the public domain texts that I can find online in one place. Make them available offline a la ZWIBook. Include a search function for the entire thing. This is basically one variant on the project described here.
• A podcast of some sort (but realistically I don’t think I’d get many followers…and it’s kind of hard work TBH)
• Various other book projects
• Some sort of Christianity, Bible, or theology wiki (probably not, I list the idea only because it comes up)
• A collaborative, ever-expanding commentary on Bible and other key texts; I would gladly organize this for the ACNA, but it would be a full-time job
• An ever-growing outline of theological texts, divided them into chunks, like a very fine-grained version of the old Propaedia. I am 80% sure this would be incredibly useful but would require several years to get the software into shape and a few texts in place enough for others to help much with it.

So, dear readers, I put it to you: How should I use the rest of my time on earth for the Kingdom of God?

Update, September 10

First, I want to thank the dozen of you who offered words of advice and encouragement below, and also privately.

I actually think I may more profitably reduce my decision to the broad type of work I should try to do for the Kingdom:

1. Academic writing, i.e., writing specific for academics in an academic mode. I could, but ultimately, I think I’d rather not.
2. Theological writing. This is different from the foregoing. It involves writing for a wider audience in books and blogs specifically about issues in theology and related issues in philosophy. It would be informed by academic study but not written for “educated non-specialists.”
3. Apologetics, advocacy, and political podcasting and writing. There is a certain thing that goes on under such descriptions that is, I think, of only limited value. But there might be approaches to it that would be potentially very useful.
4. Specific innovative reference projects. There are various projects here that others are unlikely to do, or to do as well as I could. I won’t list the projects now. Maybe in a separate post, later. The aforementioned “outline of theological texts” is an example, though.

I will say this—the following sounds very plausible. I haven’t decided on this, but this sort of narrative of my future life makes more sense than saying, “you should do x” where x is something described in a simple way.

I do want to continue to do theological writing. I will finish God Exists, even if it takes a few more years. This will lead, no doubt, to other, similar writing projects, as well as interviews and speaking engagements (that’s typically what happens when a major book project is launched).

But at the same time, I do want to develop the old Textop idea (Text Outline Project) as applied first to the Bible and then to classic works of theology. I suspect that when this is well developed, it might fetch funding or association with a seminary or established ministry. This is especially the case if I develop it in public, i.e., it can be consulted as a free resource even as I develop it. I would develop the software myself. The software would not be simple to develop, but especially with the use of an LLM, it would be quite feasible. It would not take that long to get into a condition where I could actually use it to develop content.

At some point I would be doing more in the way of “outlining the Bible and theological classics”—which sounds insanely fun to me—than I would be doing software development. Still, I would be able to update and improve the software as I go along. Eventually, once the outline were detailed enough to serve as a clear framework for others to help, I might invite others to help. Regardless, in the long run, I think this outline of theology would be of great value to the Kingdom of God. Then, I would hope, we might continue the same method to outline all of the classics of philosophy and other fields in the same way.

Again, I haven’t decided on this, but it is an example of the vision I want to have of my future life going forward. I think what it comes down to, ultimately, is (a) feasibility of my having the time, talent, and funding to finish a given project (bringing it to a condition in which it would be actually useful, (b) actual usefulness when it reaches that condition, and (c) relative feasibility and usefulness compared to other projects I might do.