Hello friends of Study The Great Books!
I have lots of exciting things to share with you. To start, by God’s good providence, STGB will indeed be having a booth this summer at the Repairing The Ruins conference! I was originally put on a waitlist for a spot as a vendor and wasn’t sure it would be possible to get in this year. Thankfully I received an email saying that someone had canceled and there was an opening. The next hurdle was funding! For various reasons my previous expectation for how I planned to fund the trip fell through. Not wanting to give up hope I reached out to all of you to see if anyone wanted to partner with me to get STGB to Atlanta this summer. You all answered big!
Through the generosity of numerous supporters like yourself the trip is now about 2/3 funded and I have paid for the booth registration and reserved a hotel room and flight! There are still ways to be involved if you’d like to make a donation to help cover the cost of the trip or if you’d like to help with covering some of our printing costs as we hand out sample study guides and other information about our curriculum project. If you are interested you can contact me via email at Jacob.allee84@gmail.com.
I am so moved by the fact that so many have reached out and offered your support for this work. It is a testament to the fact that many people see the need for Classical Christian Education to be made available and affordable to everyone who wants one. Just this past week STGB has hit 1,000+ free subscribers. That list of subscribers is made of homeschooling families, teachers at classical schools, and many others who are just seeking to encounter the Great Books for themselves and to think Christianly about it all. I could not be more encouraged about the momentum we have gained since launching this project almost two years ago. The number of free online study guides has grown immensely during this time and more are on the way.
Athanasius’ On The Incarnation and Eusebius’ Church History were recently completed and are now available online for free. For paid subscribers I have just linked the PDF version of the Athanasius Student Study Guide on our Paid Resources page for easy printing and use and with the usual extras. I am starting work this week on Augustine’s Confessions and work continues on G. A. Henty’s exciting historical novel about the Third Crusade called Winning His Spurs. The projects as outlined on our Directory of Resources page have a long way to go still, but very visible (and immediately usable) progress is being made weekly. Reminder, if you want to see the questions being posted for each section of the study guides as they’re being made you’ll need to manage your subscriptions from the STGB home page and toggle on “STGB Curriculum Development.” Otherwise you will just see when a new study guide has started but will not be updated about individual sections as they are being posted.
In addition to progress being made on Study Guides and getting to Repairing the Ruins, we are also getting ready to go to the Arizona Families for Home Education conference here in Phoenix this July. I will also be speaking again at the Give Them An Answer youth apologetics conference this summer in conjunction with Desert Palms Church (PCA) and Caritas Academy. It’s going to be a busy summer! I trust it will be equally profitable as the good news of Jesus is lifted up and people get connected to affordable access to the greatest kind of education in the world!
Last but not least, STGB is looking into next steps when it comes to officially creating our own publishing label, purchasing the right software to design layouts for curriculum and other types of literature, and legally incorporating as an LLC. This is all new territory for me, a lowly teacher, but it definitely seems necessary for where we are heading. Your prayers are much appreciated and I would be very open to hearing from those of you who have knowledge and insight into any of these areas.
One of the things that really excites me, as I contemplate where this is all going, is that I really believe that this project is going to be a success (because in many ways it already is). I think we are going to get it done and produce a completely integrated 7-12th grade classical humanities curriculum. We are going to be able to offer it to families and teachers around the world at a very affordable price. Even as we make print editions available in the future we will continue to offer free versions and very low cost PDF options for accessing the material online as well. All of this is possible because of you. When the work is done I will not be able to say “look what I have accomplished,” but I will absolutely be compelled to say “look what we have accomplished together!” Thank you for your encouragement, prayers, and support!
Soli Deo Gloria,
Jacob Allee
Founder of Study The Great Books