A little over a week ago, I told you about my new project, OnePeterFive.
This morning, I launched the new site. I’d say it was a rousing success.
To the best of my knowledge, we weren’t covered by a single Catholic media outlet, traditional or otherwise. Our single biggest referrer was Facebook, where our fan page has reached 355 “likes” in just two weeks. Propagated entirely by word of mouth over social media, OnePeterFive has already had 3,442 pageviews today. Not too shabby for something that has been merely passed along from person to person.
And I’m proud of what we’ve done. With essays from science fiction novelist John C. Wright, author and priest Fr. Thomas Kocik, senior correspondent for TheWeek.com Michael Brendan Dougherty, Professors of theology (at Wyoming Catholic and Franciscan University, respectively) Dr. Peter Kwansiewski and Dr. Michael Sirilla, and Islamic scholar Andrew Bieszad, we had an absolutely stunning lineup of commentary at launch.
And we’re just getting started.
We’re building this thing, as Fr. Z would say, “brick by brick”. And the bricks are big, and bold, and beautiful. We’re not whining or complaining. We’re teaching, exhorting, and encouraging each other.
With the exception of marrying my beautiful wife and welcoming my children into the world, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud — or felt more blessed — by anything I’ve done.
I hope you’ll join us on the site. Share it with your friends. By God’s grace and your support, we’re going to knock this one out of the park.
Enough of the crumbling faith. Let’s build something for God and for His children. Let’s do it together.
It looks great, Steve. 1P5 will be in my prayers. God bless.
Looks wonderful. Will pass the link on to friends. Looking forward to reading the content. Thank you for loving Christ and His Church.
Pope Francis apologized to Pentecostal leaders for Catholics who obstructed the growth of their churches. So if you ever tried to dissuade a fellow Catholic from joining a Pentecostal or Evangelical church, apparently you were doing something wrong.
I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!
I like 1Peter5 very much. We NEED Catholic sites like yours to give us the truth about what’s really going on. I’m so confused as of late, in church and out!
Steve, just to let you know, I subscribed last week here to be notified of new posts and didn’t receive any notification. Something about my computer and WordPress that doesn’t see eye to eye.
I’m having a bit of trouble understanding what is going on I guess…
Is the new site now replacing this one? I haven’t seen any new material here since the announcement–which is a little disappointing but understandable–seeing that it is your website and you can do with it what you want.
Also, the new site seems to be a lot of links to other sites and doesn’t really have any new content at least that I can see. Perhaps I just need to spend more time on it? Not sure.
The fact is, I miss the posts I used to find here and am sort of lost on the new site…
Hi John,
1P5 isn’t meant to replace this site, per se, although now that I’m publishing it (which means obtaining content from writers, editing, advertising, site maintenance, comment moderation, etc.) I don’t have much extra time.
But it’s a different sort of site. And the content over there is definitely not just outgoing links. You’ll see those in the “News Feed” and “From the Blogs” sections. Everything at the top of the page is either original, or reprinted with permission. Most is exclusive content.
Thanks Steve and understood.
Yeah, I have to say that I share John’s sentiments. I guess I don’t understand why you just recently revamped your personal blog here, but then seemingly abandoned it shortly after doing so. The community of commenters had grown quite rapidly prior to your making changes to it, so I kind of thought you were creating a nice new home for us all…right here. And I miss “Joseph Dreamcoat”, wherever you are. 🙂
Anyway, I am a follower of 1P5 (I receive notifications via FB), so I am happy to keep up with what you’ve got going on over there. I guess I just felt more ‘fired up’ and connected to the content that you provided when you were writing your own personal blog posts.
The easiest way I can explain it is this: I was preaching to the choir.
Very few people were reading what I was writing here who didn’t already agree with me. We saw the problems. We felt that something worse was coming. And we didn’t know what to do about it.
OnePeterFive is, for me at least, the answer to “what do we do”? We innoculate people against error. We rediscover what it meant to be Catholic. We rebuild what we can and focus on the permanent things and give people something to hold onto for when the storm hits. Because it *will* hit.
I can’t do that alone. My vision for what is needed is way bigger than what I can write about here. And to be honest, I kind of felt like God was pushing me to take another step. To not just be another voice crying out that something was rotten, but to try to help people find what was good. Because no matter what happens, He won’t abandon us. But it might feel like it, unless we dig deep.
I don’t know what comes next. I’m working a lot of hours to get 1P5 humming. And it’s already surpassed what I can do here. Our traffic is shockingly high for a brand new site with nothing other than word of mouth marketing. The interest from contributors is equally stunning. God has blessed this effort, and who am I to say no?
It also presents me the opportunity I’ve been looking for: to do this work full time. Build a site that garners enough attention, and it can be turned into a business. When I’m working on any other job, the fact that I think about this all the time is a distraction. When this is my job, the passion comes through, and I can move mountains.
So that’s where I am. Lots of prayer, lots of discernment, one day at a time.
I don’t think any of you need me to tell you what’s wrong with the Church. You already know. If I can tell you what we can do to fix it, isn’t that worth something?
I hope so. I’m betting an awful lot on it.
This is probably now in the category of “beating a dead horse” but here goes nothin’:
I don’t think the only thing your site did was communicate to those who are/were already convinced. My story is a long one but suffice it to say I left the Catholic Church 30 years ago due to a number of factors that I won’t go into here and now.
Suffice it to say your blog seemed to be a place that voiced some of the concerns many of us have–albeit not all of them fully articulated in our hearts–and seemed to be a place the Lord was bringing many people in order to hear Catholics share some of their deep concerns about the Church in a way that was deepening their faith–not crushing it. I’ve seen a transcendence in it that has been helpful to everyone involved.
I know you took some hits recently from some of the mainstream Catholic bloggers over some of your blogs and perhaps you have wisely taken pause over some of them, but I have seen it as a form a persecution taking place that Scripture promises for those who are truly following Him.
Maybe I’m off base on this, but I saw the heat get turned up a little bit and perhaps you might want to reconsider the emphasis of the new site versus the old one.
John, I’d also recommend Louie Verrecchio’s blog, harvestingthefruit.com
God Bless.
I should also add that I don’t plan to abandon this site. I updated it because I thought (at first) I was supposed to take the next step here. I only realized later that it was supposed to take a different shape altogether.
This is still home base for me. Where I can share the thoughts I have that have nowhere else to go. But for a while, at least, I’m not going to have much time.