2024: Growth, Impact, and What's Ahead
Looking back at 2024 and forward to 2025.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!
Last year was an overall good one for my work here.
A major milestone was the publication of my book Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture. This was the book length treatment of my “three worlds of evangelicalism” model that went viral when I originally published it in 2017 and then again when an updated version appeared in First Things magazine in 2022.
People have been telling me for over 15 years that I should write a book and I never did it until now. This is my first book with a major publisher. It’s good to have that under my belt.
The book also got great reviews overall - better than I had anticipated - and its impact continues to expand. Believe it or not, people are still encountering this model for the first time, and its impact continues to grow.
This year was also a solid year of growth for my newsletter. I broke the 20,000 barrier in terms of subscribers and have 20,727 as of January 1. This was 29% growth over last year.
My content views here broke 3.2 million, which was up by over a million versus 2023. That’s growth of over a third. I had many more viral articles in 2024 as well. I will list the top 10 articles from last year below.
Those are solid numbers, but more important than the sheer number of readers is who they are. I’m read by a wide range of major media journalists, think tank people, elected officials whose names you would know, pastors, theologians, and other leaders in our society. I’m also regularly cited in the media and other people’s articles.
I wanted to level up my work to match my level of reach and influence, and made progress on that front. I lost about 25 pounds. Let’s be honest, it’s hard to be credible in writing about men’s issues if you are overweight, which I was. I struggled to lose weight consistently to the point that I decided to do a keto diet, which has worked. I still have a bit more weight to lose in 2025. Hopefully by writing that down here, it will give me any extra discipline I need to get that done.
Also, 2024 was the first time I was able to invest money back into what I’m doing. I was able to hire Beck and Stone to create new graphics that are consistent across all of my platforms.
Plans for 2025
Where do I want to go in 2025?
First, I want to continue providing the best, most insightful, constructive, useful, independent, rigorous and fair insight to help conservative and Christian men faithfully flourish in today’s world.
One major piece of work I am researching is solving the “evangelical elite problem.” It’s widely known that evangelicals punch below their weight in supplying leaders and influence in American society. I want to diagnose that problem in new ways and come up with practical ways to improve that. Stay tuned.
I’ve also got a lot of great target guests I’d like to get on my podcast.
I also want to grow my reach significantly. While I don’t want to be a celebrity, I do want to have about three to five times the reach I do today. That’s going to require me getting creative and trying new things.
You can definitely help here. Please spread the word to any friends and colleagues you think would benefit from my work.
Some of you have major platforms in your own right. I have found that direct recommendations to subscribe to my newsletter have done a lot in the past to grow readership. So please do that if you are able.
If you have your own Substack newsletter, you can also add me as a recommended site, and that will help grow my subscriber base through the Substack referral system.
And I want to continue investing back into my work and leveling up. Thanks to a pledge from a generous supporter, I’m planning to upgrade my podcast studio this year. I presently have a great microphone, but most of the rest of my setup is beyond bare bones. I want to change that.
I’m also planning to start using AI more. I’m going to start by trying to use it for spelling and grammar checks, and go from there.
There’s a lot more I could do if I had more money to invest. Once again, if you find my work valuable, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. One thing I am planning to do this year is to make more of my content for paid subscribers only.
I want to strike a careful balance here. I am primarily doing this for mission, to be a positive influence in the world. So I want as much of my work as possible to be as widely available as possible, that is, free. But if there is no money, there is no mission. I have to generate enough income to sustain and grow my work. And the marketplace is a powerful mechanism for telling me whether and how much my work actually is valued. And I need to provide fair value in order for people to step up and subscribe. So that’s what I’m going to do.
But never fear, the majority of my content is going to remain free to everyone.
If you are part of a church, other institution, or someone who is able to support my work at a more significant level, please consider doing so. My Support page has more information, and you can also email me directly about it.
This is an area that is underdeveloped for me, and one I need to be working on next year.
Forecast for 2025
I don’t like to try to predict the future. First off, we can’t do it. I’m very influenced by Nassim Taleb’s ideas of randomness and black swans. There’s just way more uncertainty than we like to think.
At the beginning of 2015, how many people predicted that just two years later Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States? At the beginning of 2020, how many people predicted a pandemic that would turn our world upside down for two years? How many people predicted the Hamas attacks against Israel? How many people predicted a terrorist attack in New Orleans to start the new year?
But of course, all of us have to make decisions with some future in mind. Here are some macrotrends that I see continuing into the future:
The American system is degrading but stable. We will do a “reset” and enter a new configuration at some point, though I don’t know what that will look like. I am not predicting a major social or political collapse in America.
Generational changeover and the emergence of post-Boomer landscape is actually happening, though perhaps still a bit slower than some people think.
Divergence will continue, e.g., inequality in income, inequalities between geographies, etc. The age of average is still over.
Institutional and individual trust (and trustworthiness) will continue to decline
Post-familialism (declining marriage and birth rates) will continue to grow but plateau (similarly to out of wedlock births)
The overproduction of elites and wokeness will subside (related to the new configuration above).
Climate change effects will begin to have an effect on individual and firm decision making. (Not a popular take I know).
There are many other things that will affect our lives, but I don’t necessarily have a strong view on them. For example, geopolitics or what’s going to happen with the new Trump administration.
I know a lot of people like to dump on New Year’s resolutions, but this is a time to reflect on our lives (and institutions) and think about where we need to recalibrate. Here are some questions to ask:
How are you going to personally improve this year?
How can your family situation become healthier and stronger?
What things happened last year that might indicate you need to make some changes?
How are you going to expand your positive influence in the world?
The degree of difficulty dial on life has been turned up in today’s world. So we need to have more focus and intentionality about everything that we do in order to thrive in it.
Top Posts of 2024
As I said, I had quite a number of posts that got viral traction last year. Here are my top 10 posts from 2024 in terms of readership:
How J.D. Vance Rejected Evangelicalism - The Republican vice-presidential candidate was turned off by its low status associations and anti-intellectualism - This one obviously hit a nerve.
Reject Vice - Just Say No - No porn, no pot, no gambling, no video games, no tattoos, no profanity - My call to men to avoid the characteristic vices of our age.
A Change of Age - America and the West stand at a civilizational inflection point - A great guest post from Dr. John Seel that really resonated with people. This one is actually tied for #2.
The Resistance Will Be Organized - Anti-Trump evangelicals are very organized and well-funded - Some of my takeaways from Atlantic reporter Tim Alberta’s book.
Men Need to Start Paying Less Attention to Women - Men should be focused on building their own lives - Men shouldn’t think less of women, but a lot of guys need to be thinking less about them.
What God Is Jordan Peterson Wrestling With? - Jordan Peterson knows something about reaching people in our age that the church can learn from - My report from attending Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God” tour.
Preach for America - Rethinking the pastoral recruitment process in an era of talent shortages
Donald Trump Is the President for Post-Christian America - He could only get elected to the presidency in a Negative World
The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump - Trump speaks to the Evangelical "habitus" - Another great guest post from Dr. John Seel
He Gets Us Takes a Big "L" in the Superbowl - A billionaire funded ad campaign that trashes traditional conservative evangelicals - We’ll see what they do this year.
I’ll endeavor to keep publishing compelling content next year.
All the best to all of you for a healthy, prosperous and high impact 2025.
Cover image credit: New Year’s Eve in Times Square (2012) by Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0
I'm particularly interested in to hear as your thoughts develop that “evangelical elite problem", and practical ways to address that.
I think that's crucial to posit some ways to address that in our current cultural context.
Thanks for all you do - keep up the great work.
Congratulations, Aaron, on a solid 2024. I read a lot of books in parallel, so still haven't quite finished it, but gotta say 'Life in the Negative World' was better than expected, having read your newsletters for years and anticipating a rehash. There was new material and just your putting it all together, in way that was both sobering yet hopeful, broke new ground.
A few points and suggestions that occurred to me after reading this recap:
1. Can't help but love the term "overproduction of elites". I'm guessing it's a symptom of a society in decline, and suspect it's affected too many well-off evangelicals, too.
2. Is there really evidence that the decline in birth rates is anywhere near a plateau? I've become increasingly alarmed this past year by the growing acceptance among young adults of not having children at all. It's a mentality that seems to be spreading rapidly.
3. I found myself referring several times, in conversations this past year, to your articles on vice. It was helpful to have a category, rather than a single moral issue such as gambling or prostitution, to talk about, because most all these moral issues are trending and Christians have lost a language for talking about it.
4. In consideration of #3, there really does seem to be a growing spirit of lawlessness infecting our society, everyone is feeling it, and the Church needs to be pointing it out and preaching against it.
Thanks for your hard work, and wishing you and your family a great 2025!