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Hallo again to all.

Last week we asked for your help in supporting the many ventures of the Society of Archbishop Justus. We set an ambitious fundraising goal, and then waited hopefully. It felt wrong to pray for money, so we didn't.

Thanks to a very large number of you, we met that ambitious goal in four days, and the amount raised as we write this is £4000 (US $7560)*. We were moved nearly to tears by your rapid generosity.

We weren't sure what to expect. There are a few people who have given regularly and generously to Anglicans Online and SoAJ for many years, and we wondered if we would hear from them in a fundraising drive, given that they had already made a donation not long ago. We did, but we also heard from so many more of you. New names, new places.

We're beyond grateful for all of the money, and we are going to put it to good use. Probably we will buy two new server computers, for our New Jersey and London sites, and buy some spare parts for the older servers so that when they break (as computers always do) we can fix them quickly.

The money is wonderful, but the real joy was in the number and diversity of you who responded, and responded so quickly. We've been producing Anglicans Online for a long time — nearly 12 years — but in all of that time we've not really heard from very many of you. Our Letters to the Editor section has existed for a while, but most of you tend to write a Letter To The Editor only when you believe that you have something to say. Sometimes you send us a note to snap at us or chastise us, or to express disbelief that we do or don't list some resource. But mostly you just read Anglicans Online and then get back to your business. Our server logs show us that you're out there, that more than 300,000 different people looked at one or more pages in Anglicans Online in the last 12 months, from 700,000 different addresses.

But who are you? Beyond the letter writers and the complainers and the steady donors, who was behind all of those clicks, all those visits to our site? Some of you sent lovely get-well cards to Cynthia while she was undergoing cancer treatment this year. But this week we learned from our bank who more of you are. Anthony, Richard, Connie, Vivienne, Frank, Alison, Allyson, Alyson, Roy, Toby, Douglas, Donald, Christopher, Christine, Christos, Kirsten, Raymond, Ruth, Susan, Nancy, Lorinda, Darren, Sally, Phillip, Philip, Mary, Jacque, Jackie, Jack, and so many many more.

Some of you checked the box giving us permission to thank you in public, so you'll see a growth spurt in our 'thank you' page * once we get the new names entered. But all of you touched our hearts. We'd love to sit down and have a spot of tea with each of you, and hear your parish gossip and your worries and passions. But, alas, we can't. We can, however, hope to hear from you by email about absolutely anything. We hope that all of you will work up your courage and submit letters for publication, or tell us about resources that we don't have listed or corrections to those that we do. We really enjoy your company as we all travel together down the via media, and we hope to get to know you better.

Thank you for making our lives so joyful and abundant. We'll see you next week.

All of us here at Anglicans Online

*updated 1430 GMT Tuesday, 3 October. If we have inadvertently left out your name and you wish to be listed, please let us know.

Last updated: 1 October 2006
URL: http://anglicansonline.org