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How everything here works — reading, writing, publishing, and the money in between.

Reading and feeds

Reading needs no account. The home feed, Latest, Trending, Featured, Scripture, article pages and writer profiles all open to anyone; signing in is what unlocks liking, commenting, saving, following and supporting a writer.

For you

The home tab showing the newest articles from writers you don't follow — the discovery half of the feed. Follow someone and their work moves over to Following.

Following

The home tab showing the newest articles from writers you follow. It fills up as you follow people; until then, For you is the busier tab.

Trending ranks published articles by their all-time like count. There's no time window and no read counter behind it — likes are the only popularity signal the platform has.

Featured articles are hand-picked by an admin. Drafts can't be featured, and you'll get a notification if one of yours is chosen. Nothing you can do earns it — it isn't a request you can make.

Topics

A topic is a filter, not a place. Picking one narrows the feed you're already looking at; there's no page per topic. The list is owned by the admins, so you tag your article from the existing topics rather than inventing your own — and at least one is required to publish.

Scripture

Scripture is the whole platform indexed by the passage each article is grounded in. Because a standard article can't publish without two sources, this covers everything written here rather than a tagged corner of it — pick a book, pick a chapter, read what has been written on it.

The unit is a chapter, not a verse: “John 3” gathers every article citing anything in it. Only chapters with published work appear, so a chapter nobody has written on has no page. Each source listed under an article links to its chapter, and an article ends with the other work on the same ground.

Search matches published articles on the text you can already see in a result: title, excerpt and topic label. It deliberately does not search article bodies, so every match is visible in the row that carries it. Every word of your query has to hit at least one of those three fields. Articles only — not writers, not publications, not prayer requests.

One exception in kind: if your query reads as a Scripture reference — “Romans 8”, “1 Cor 13”, “Ps 46” — a card for that chapter appears above the results, linking to its Scripture page. That card answers a different question — what has been written on the passage — so it appears only when something has been, and the text matches still follow underneath.

RSS feeds

Every writer has a feed at their profile, and every publication has its own. Both are linked by the RSS icon in the header of those pages — or paste the profile URL into a feed reader and it will find the feed by itself.

A feed carries the title, excerpt and link for the 50 most recent published articles, never the article body — including for subscriber-only posts, which appear in the feed exactly as they appear on a card, with the body still behind the subscribe prompt. A feed can't ask who is reading it, so it's built to hold nothing that depends on the answer.

Writing and publishing

Writing needs creator access, which an admin grants after you ask for it. Once you have it, Write opens a blank editor; your article is created the first time it saves, and you keep editing in place from then on.

Title

The headline, and the only field required before anything saves — the editor won't autosave an untitled draft. It's also what the article's permanent URL is built from, so give it a real title before you get attached to the link.

Excerpt

One sentence, shown under the title on feed cards, in search results and in previews. Required to publish. Treat it as the pitch rather than a summary — it's often the only thing a reader sees before deciding.

Markdown formatting

The editor is Markdown-based: plain text formatted with simple syntax, no toolbar of buttons. Toggle Preview at any time to see the finished page. Supported formatting:

  • # Heading through #### Heading for section titles
  • **bold** and *italic*
  • > quote for blockquotes
  • - item for bullet lists, 1. item for numbered lists
  • [link text](https://…) for links
  • `code` inline, or fenced blocks with triple backticks
  • --- for a horizontal divider

Cover image

The image at the top of your article and on every card that links to it. Required to publish — a draft can go without one, a published article can't. Two ways to set it: upload your own (PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF up to 5 MB, resized and optimized automatically), or pick from Unsplash, which carries the photographer's credit onto your published page for you.

Inline images work the same way — the "Upload inline image" button takes a file or a URL and drops the Markdown into your text.

Scripture sources

The Scripture your article is grounded in. A standard article needs at least two to publish; an Editorial needs none. You attach references, not text: verses are fetched live when a reader opens the page, so a source never goes stale in your draft.

Sources are also how your article is found. Each one files it under that chapter's Scripture page, where a reader looking for work on the passage will meet it — so cite the passage you actually wrote about.

Editorial

A kind of article — an opinion piece — that's exempt from the two-source rule. You can't set it yourself: request it from the editor and an admin decides. That's deliberate, because a self-assigned exemption would make the Scripture requirement meaningless. While a request is pending the article still publishes under the normal rules.

Publications

A named collection of your own articles, with its own page under your handle. It isn't a magazine: there's no roster, no submissions and no editors, and readers follow, subscribe to and tip you, never a publication. Assigning an article is presentation only — it still appears everywhere it already did, and it earns no exemption from the publish rules.

Co-writers

Writing something with someone else? Invite them from the editor — start typing a name or handle and pick them from the suggestions. A co-writer can edit the article and is credited in its byline — and that's the whole of it. The article stays yours: you publish it, you unpublish or delete it, you set whether it's free or subscriber-only, you file it in a publication, and anything it earns in tips or subscriptions is yours. Sort out any arrangement between yourselves.

They have to be a creator here, and they have to accept — you'll both see the invitation and its answer in your notifications, and it's answered from your drafts, where the shared article then lives alongside your own. Either of you can end it at any time, before or after publishing; the byline credit ends with it. Being a co-writer doesn't put the article on your profile or send it to your followers — that side stays with the author.

If you're both editing at once, the last save wins, so it's worth agreeing who's in it.

Writing check

A spelling and grammar check built into the editor, covering your title, excerpt and body with one-click fixes in a panel underneath. It runs entirely in your browser — your draft is never sent anywhere to be checked. Markdown syntax and code are skipped rather than flagged. Toggle it off any time; your browser's own spellcheck stays on regardless.

Drafts and autosave

Once your article has a title, the editor autosaves a couple of seconds after you stop typing — watch the status line near the editor, or save manually whenever you like. Everything in progress lives under your drafts.

Drafts are visible only to you and any co-writer you've invited, and you can delete one outright — there's no trash to recover it from. Published articles can't be deleted at all; if something has to come down, it goes back to draft instead.

What publishing requires

Publishing checks all of the following, and names the first thing missing:

Publishing calculates a reading-time estimate for you and emails the article out: a free post goes to the people who follow you, a subscriber-only post goes to the people subscribed to you. Either way it's the title, excerpt and a link — the body stays on the site. Changed your mind later? You can unpublish back to a draft.

Exporting your work

From your drafts you can download one article as a Markdown file, or a whole shelf — drafts, or everything published — as a zip. What you get is the Markdown source the editor holds, not the rendered page, so it's re-editable anywhere else, with the article's own details (topics, publication, access, sources, co-writers, cover and its credit) carried along at the top of the file.

Bringing files back in creates drafts and grants nothing: unknown topics are dropped, an editorial marking becomes a request, and any co-writers named in a file are dropped too — an invitation has to be accepted, so it's made from the editor and never from a file. Whatever was left behind is listed for you when the import finishes.

Images stay as links rather than being bundled in, so an export is portable text and not a self-contained archive. Exporting changes nothing and publishes nothing.

Your writing at a glance

Your own numbers, in the account menu under Your writing: followers, subscribers, total likes and comments, tips received, and every published article with its own like and comment counts. It's the writer's side of what readers already see.

There are no view counts, no email open rates and no traffic sources here, because nothing on the platform records them — the numbers shown are the ones readers create by acting. The tips figure is the gross amount sent, before fees; payment settings breaks it down tip by tip.

Money

Readers can support you in two ways, and they're independent: a one-off tip, or a recurring subscription. Both pay out to your own Stripe account — you are the merchant of record, and the platform takes a fee on top of Stripe's.

Tip Jar

A one-time contribution from a reader to a writer. It buys nothing: it unlocks no articles and starts no ongoing relationship — it's a thank-you. Readers can tip without an account, so some tips arrive anonymously. A tip given from an article page is recorded against that article, so you can see which piece earned it.

Subscriptions

A recurring payment from a reader to one writer, which unlocks that writer's subscriber-only articles. It's per writer, not a site-wide membership, and it's entirely separate from following.

Subscribing sends you a welcome email with the writer's page and where to manage the subscription, and from then on each subscriber-only post arrives by email as it publishes — the same way followers are emailed free ones, and muted by the same setting. The writer is told when you subscribe, by a notification rather than by email.

Prices are grandfathered: raising yours affects new subscribers only, and everyone already subscribed keeps the price they signed up at for as long as they stay.

As a reader, your subscriptions is where you cancel, change a card or find invoices. Cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you've paid for — you keep access until then.

Subscriber-only posts

An article you've marked as paid. It still appears in every feed like any other — title, cover and excerpt included — with a "Subscribers only" badge on its card. The body is what's held back, behind the subscribe prompt on the article page.

Fees and payouts

When a reader subscribes to you or tips you, two fees come out before the money reaches you:

  • Stripe processing — the payment processor's cut, currently 2.9% + $0.30 per payment (Stripe's standard US pricing).
  • Platform fee — The Context Gospel keeps 10% of each payment.

Everything left is yours. On a $5 tip: Stripe takes about $0.45, the platform takes $0.50, you keep $4.05. On a $50 payment you keep about $43.25 ($50 − $1.75 Stripe − $5.00 platform). The percentages don't change with the amount; Stripe's flat $0.30 just weighs more on small ones.

Payments reach your own connected Stripe account, which you set up under payment settings — until that's connected there's nothing for a reader to pay into.

Community

Following a writer

Free, and never a payment. Following a writer puts their new articles in your Following feed and, unless you opt out, emails you when they publish something free. Paying a writer is a subscription, which is a separate thing entirely.

Comments

Public replies on an article, and they need an account. Threads are one level deep: replying to a reply attaches it to the same top-level comment, so a conversation never becomes a tree.

You can edit your own comment — it's then marked as edited — and delete it, but not once someone has replied to it, because deleting it would take their words with it.

Prayer Wall

One site-wide stream of prayer requests at the Prayer Wall, attached to no writer and no article. Anyone can post, including signed-out visitors — a request from someone signed out is held for an admin to approve first, while a signed-in one appears immediately, and only its author can remove it. You can post under your name or hide it and show as Anonymous.

A request is short plain text: no title, no topic, no replies. Marking "I prayed for this" needs an account. The wall is deliberately left out of search.

Find a Church

Find a Church searches Google Places live, by your location or a city or ZIP you type. The platform keeps no directory of its own: it stores nothing, takes no submissions and moderates nothing — results link straight out to Google Maps.

Your account

Your handle

Your @name — the public identity in the URL of your profile and every publication page. It's yours to set and unique across the site. Changing it moves all of those URLs at once and leaves the old ones dead, so anywhere your profile was linked stops working. Article links are permanent; handles aren't.

Saved

Your private shelf, toggled from any card or article page and kept at saved. Nobody else sees it — a writer can't tell who saved their work, and there's no count anywhere. It's per article, unlike following, which is per writer.

Likes

One per account per article, and you can take it back. The total is public — it shows on cards and article pages to everyone, signed in or not — and it's the only thing feeding Trending.

The verified badge

The mark beside a writer's name meaning the platform vouches for who they are. An admin sets it by hand. It is not the same as having confirmed an email address, which every account does and no reader ever sees.

Two-factor

A second step at sign-in: either an authenticator app or a code emailed to you, plus one-time recovery codes for when you lose the device. Optional for everyone — set it up under security. It's separate from verifying your email address, which proves the address rather than the sign-in.

Notifications

The in-app list at notifications, marked read when you look at it. It covers a writer you follow publishing, a new follower, a new subscriber, an article of yours being featured or unpublished, an editorial request being granted, a tip arriving, a co-writer invitation and its acceptance, and — for admins — creator requests and contact messages.

Email is a separate channel: a new post also goes out by email — free posts to your followers, subscriber-only posts to your subscribers — unless the recipient has opted out, which isn't the same as this list. That opt-out is one switch covering both, so muting a writer's free posts mutes their paid ones too; the articles themselves stay where they are, on the site.