2024 in Review: Year Four

It’s Epiphany today, Christmas is over, the new year doesn’t start today but it’s as good a day as any for reflecting on the last twelve months.

It’s become my tradition to celebrate the anniversary of nuakh with a review of the previous year of reading and writing on Epiphany. Below are a bunch of lists, including my books of the year, but right at the top I’d like to say thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting my work.

2024 was my fourth year writing at nuakh. This lockdown project of trying to build a writing rhythm has become a notable part of my life. I’ve continued to publish twice a week—though I repeated some content over the summer and in Advent—and I’ve been able to publish a couple of articles elsewhere.

I’ve continued to break even on financial support, so the hosting is entirely paid for by a small band of supporters, which is greatly appreciated. Do consider joining them. I thought last year’s growth was considerable, but this year my readership has doubled. I have no idea what good numbers look like on the internet these days, but I’m really pleased. Thanks for engaging, emailing, arguing, and considering what I’ve written about.

It’s been a year of significant growth and change for me (again!), but more of that below. We all love a year end list, so here are a few for you:

My 5 most read blog posts

My favourite blog posts

If you have a favourite that wasn’t in those lists, do please let me know! My favourite ever post remains Learning From The Hours from my first year of writing.

My books of the year

I read 95 books last year, you can see the whole list here if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Intriguingly, again, I feel like I didn’t read many books; perhaps my self-perception is terrible, though this is partly because so much of my reading was taken up by reading for my MA that I didn’t make much of a dent in my ‘to be read’ pile.

Ranking the best is always difficult task, so I won’t try, but here are the ten that stayed with me:

Winters in the World. Eleanor Parker. This book is about the way the Anglo-Saxons thought about the calendar. It doesn’t sound interesting but the enchanted beauty of their view of the world, and Parker’s writing, has stayed with me all year.
On Earth as in Heaven. Peter Leithart. An overview of Leithart’s ‘Theopolitan’ thinking, at its best when it’s exegeting the Bible. Deeply influential on me in how I both agree and disagree with it.
A History of the Island. Eugene Vodolazkin. A beautiful novel. It’s not Laurus but that’s a high bar to meet.
Hospitality. Mark Brians & Drew Knowles. The best of many books I read about food and hospitality this year. Worth your time.
The Drama of Doctrine. Kevin Vanhoozer. An academic book that few reading this would read, but it’s been stewing in my head since I read it.
Bulwarks of Unbelief. Joseph Minich. Another difficult book but with paradigm-breaking ideas about the development of ‘the secular’ and the connections with changes in labour conditions and new technologies. Fascinating.
Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls. Coleman Ford & Shawn Wilhite. My book of the year. A compelling antidote to a lot of the ‘leadership’ books that float around for Pastors, clearly stating what a Pastor is supposed to be doing, through the eyes of the Church Fathers.
Wolf Hall. Hilary Mantel. I know I’m behind the curve here, but I really enjoyed this novel. I hope to read the rest of the series soon.
A Failure of Nerve. Edwin Friedman. Poorly written, often disagreed with, but genuinely ‘important’ in the science of leadership. His ideas have been applied in seemingly contradictory directions by Christians whose work has picked them up, but I’ve been thinking along with him for months now.
Trinitarian Formation. J. Chase Davis. This little book, which is essentially a critique of some of James K. A. Smith’s ideas that I’ve found so compelling over the years, and a proposal to think in Framean Triads instead has challenged my thinking. Some of the fruit of it can be seen in my writing on the discipleship crisis.

The best articles I read this year

The four that my mind calls back to are Ian Harber’s insistence that we’re all either (digital) monks or missionaries now; Brad Littlejohn’s forensic examination of the fruits of the digital revolution; and then two personal accounts: Sophia Lee’s story of loneliness and James Wood’s story of his Father and commitment.

Articles and Projects

I published two articles this year, one on Jonah’s Exodus Motif and the other on what Jesus meant by ‘Blessed are those who mourn.’ Both were written in 2023 and the thinking was done before I started my MA. I suspect as a result I won’t really publish much writing, if any, in 2025 as I haven’t done any significant work on anything this year.

I find that a little sad, as I like working on a variety of things, but hopefully I can get back to it in 2026. My brain space has been taken by two things instead: first, my MA-by-Research (a thesis with the PhD requirement for originality without the PhD requirement for mastery of the entire field). I hope to finish this by the end of 2025; I had originally intended to carry on and complete a PhD, but significant life changes make that unlikely.

Secondly, this year I launched the journal Eucharisma as one of its founding editors. We’ve launched two issues, the second coming in just before Christmas so you may have missed it. This has been a labour of love, including significantly more labour than I anticipated! We hope to publish two more issues in 2025, but finding more sustainable ways to manage the journal will be part of that.

Developing as a writer

This year I’ve written two long running-series. One on Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians collaborating with Adsum Try Ravenhill, and the other my own exploration of what I’ve called the ‘discipleship crisis’ which ended up strung over about half the year. That theme has dominated my writing and thinking.

I’ve found the discipline of writing in series helpful. You need to write the next installation rather than write as whim takes you. Writing is art, and following your whim is part of that, but discipline is vital too. It’s been good for me, especially because I sometimes feel like my blogging is repeating itself or the ideas I have are two big to be explored in 800-1200 words but without the time to really let them breathe elsewhere.

I think that feeling, of struggling a little for ideas, is the same reason I didn’t feel like I read much. My ideas spring from what I’m reading, but so much of my reading has been devoted to my thesis that I have a few less of them whirling around. And yes, if you wondered, the thesis is about tables (commensality, in academic parlance).

Last year I wrote here about starting the MA, my aspirations towards the PhD, and the financial challenges that this would give Helen & I. The Lord was kind, things have occasionally been reasonably tight, but money has appeared when we needed it. We’ve (just) found ourselves with the money we need to move south to a much more expensive place for my new job. We’re grateful, even if we did wish it were a little less stressful. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

Developing nuakh

One of this year’s big shifts is that not one of those five most read posts at the top of this page was written this year. Two were published this year but both were reposts (one of which went viral enough the Gospel Coalition wrote about it) that attracted more attention the second time around because I gave them clickbait titles. I’m not sure that I love that. The one that went viral attracted more attention to the title than the content. Such is the internet.

The other three, as best I can tell, get traction on Google. Certainly my most well read posts gets hits every day from people googling what counts as a sin. Which isn’t really what it’s about, but is a strange thing. I don’t know why it happened, and it may not last, but it seems to be a feature of being ‘established,’ which apparently four years is enough to do.

I’ve done no real development work this year, I just wrote two posts a week as much as I could. My buffer isn’t as long as I’d like. Nevertheless, a (to me) mind-boggling number of people seem to have read something I’ve written, and a small dedicated band read all of it. I’m grateful.

Thank you for reading

Beyond that: thank you for reading. If you’d like to keep supporting nuakh then there are three ways you can do that.

The first is the easiest: you can sign up for my mailing list. Scroll all the way to the bottom of this post to do that. A lot of my readers find me via my social media feeds, which is great but fragile. Those websites may or may not exist in a year’s time. It helps me as a writer to have a direct connection to you by having your email address. Currently all you’ll receive is an email about a new blog post every time it goes up.

The second is the hardest: you can give financially. Most Christians expect good content to be free. I think that’s probably always been the case, but it means that all theological reflection runs on patronage rather than a commercial model. If you like the way I think and would like to help me develop further, do prayerfully consider becoming a patron at a level you can afford. If we want to encourage reflection we’ll need to financially free pastors and others to do this. Your money goes towards my hosting.

The third is… the Goldilocks zone? When you like my writing, share it. Text or email the piece to your friends, like or share or retweet the post on Xwitter, Bluesky, or Facebook, put the post in your story on Instagram. We all know how the algorithms work by now, your ‘like’ makes a significant difference. If you mostly come here via Facebook consider adding my pages to your ‘favourites’ so it actually shows up in your newsfeed.

If you don’t want to do any of that, you’re still welcome, friends. I hope what I write here and elsewhere is helpful in forming you towards Jesus.

It’s been another big year for me, the one to come looks full of change too. However you’re feeling as we enter a new year pregnant with possibility and pain, know this: Jesus is on the throne, and he will not cast out his people.

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