Before the clock strikes 2014, we wanted to give you a brief update from the Mockingworld. 2013 was quite a year for our little organization. To name just a few milestones, we hosted our largest conference, produced our most substantial publication, The Mockingbird Devotional, launched The Mockingpulpit Podcast, and overhauled the Resources section on our website. Moreover, our online audience grew by more than 30%, from roughly 380,000 unique visitors in 2012 to over 500,000 in 2013.
We have some great projects on tap for 2014: In addition to our annual Spring in New York City (4/3-5), the Texas conference we postponed this past Fall has officially been rescheduled for 10/17-18, 2014 at St Thomas Episcopal Church in Houston. February is also shaping up to be a busy month, as we help lead the What Would Jesus Tweet? mini-conference in Louisville, KY (2/7-8), and play a significant role again at the Liberate gathering in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (2/20-23).
We could not be more excited about our publications slate for this coming year:
- First and most importantly, late January sees the launch of our brand new print magazine, The Mockingbird! An outlet for longer-form writing and interviews, The Mockingbird will feature the same mix of personal, theological, and cultural reflection (and playfulness) you find on our site. We are so excited about how it’s come together that we are planning on sending free copies of the first issue to everyone on our physical mailing list.
- In time for our April conference, we hope to have both The Fundamentals by Jacob Smith and The Mockingbird Companion to Genesis out. If all goes swimmingly, the summer may even see the release of a companion to Romans as well.
- For real this time: David Zahl is hard at work on an expanded collection of his Mbird pop-culture work, entitled These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty, that should make its debut at the Houston conference in October.
- Finally, stay tuned for an announcement about Kindle versions of Grace in Addiction and The Mockingbird Devotional.
As for our website, aside from keeping the daily content coming, we will be giving the homepage a significant facelift and creating an inviting section for “newcomers.” Suffice it to say, 2014 will not be boring!
How You Can Help
Like any non-profit or ministry, Mockingbird relies on the generosity of individual donors and churches to fund its operations. Our budget for 2014 is $195,000–for info about where the money goes, go here–and two easy ways to help might be:
- Mbird currently has about 55 supporters who give automatically every month, anywhere from $10 to $1000/per month. We would love to see that number increase! To that end, anyone who signs up for monthly giving (any amount) by Jan 10th will receive a complimentary copy of the Mbird publication of their choice. If everyone who reads our site gave even $5/month, we wouldn’t have to think about money ever again!
- Right now there are a handful of churches that support us every year with money from their mission/outreach budgets. Others give via discretionary accounts. If you attend or work at a church that is benefiting from our ministry but maybe hasn’t considered getting behind Mbird “officially” yet, please be our advocate! We’re happy to fill out applications, make presentations, phone calls, offers that can’t be refused, etc – just email us at info@mbird.com if you have any leads.
To donate to Mockingbird, or to sign up for monthly giving, visit our Support page.
P.S. Earlybird rates for the NYC Conference expire on January 1st!
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