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I know Where all the Bloggers Have Gone: Substack and TikTok

I know Where all the Bloggers Have Gone: Substack and TikTok

Last updated on: June 16, 2026 at 10:25 pm by Adrian Warnock

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I know Where all the Bloggers Have Gone: Substack and TikTok 2026-06-16T22:25:13+01:00 Adrian Warnock

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

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Blogging is old school these days. Like writing an old fashioned diary. Image: Pixabay

Maybe this is the first article of mine which you have read. Or maybe you have been with me for the whole journey since the giddy early days of blogging, when back in 2003 I jumped aboard. Perhaps you have been following along through Crossway publishing my first book, Raised With Christ, and throughout my journey with chronic illness including blood cancer. But it turns out blogging has not disappeared!

Not since those early days have I been as excited about a new platform for my writing as I am right now. I have discovered one of the web’s best-kept secrets, although it is growing very rapidly at the moment, Substack. This is basically the home for blogging as it used to be. Over there, unlike on other social media sites, people are respectful in the comments, and your content is reliably shown to people who want it.

You can meet people who have thought things through and written their careful thoughts and discuss these with them. I’m so excited I feel like an old friend changed their name moved away, we lost contact and suddenly I ran into them almost by chance. I feel like I’ve joined a secret society.

Shh! Don’t tell anyone. Okay. You can tell other old-school bloggers, like me, if you like. Maybe like me you’ve been blogging for more than 20 years. I am still pretending to be young on TikTok but I really am not! But I have just recently discovered Substack, and consider this your official invitation to join me over there!

The above podcast episode is a collection of three videos I filmed over the last two weeks. It includes an explanation of my background, including my medical and scientific training, which brings experience bringing biological insights, my work as a psychiatrist touching psychology and the life of our minds, my own experience of being chronically ill and dealing with blood cancer giving me personal understanding of how our social lives can implode, as well as learning from watching my wife of three years train as a social worker.

I also touch on the spiritual domain which incorporates the thousands of years people have spent searching for meaning, purpose, and asking questions like who are we? Are we alone in the universe? What does this life mean? What happens after death? Why do we suffer? How do we live a good life?

Spirituality is much bigger than religion, but includes faith (which we all have whether we believe in a God or not).

I spent 25 years in a growing multicultural church where, in my spare time, I was part of the leadership team and offered pastoral care. That’s me and my background and among it all I try to write and speak with hope, compassion, and patience towards others.

These perspectives combine to form a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach that drives my writing here, on Substack and in my books.

After all these years and many struggles I really am more and more confident that:

Jesus’ resurrection really does change everything, just not all at once.

I have only been posting over on Substack for just over two weeks as I write this. While I will of course not be leaving Patheos, Substack is providing me a great additional home for my writing and focussed interaction. Patheos will remain the main home of my polished articles, and there is a comment section here, but Substack will be a place for me to explore new ideas, write more informally, and interact with many others.

In the first two weeks on Substack I gained over 100 new subscribers from a standing start. This seems a very small number compared to much larger numbers of followers on my Facebook and Twitter / X pages. But the level and depth of interaction has been remarkable and hugely encouraging, with three people already saying they have bought one of my books as a result.

Although so far my readership over there is much smaller than over here, the environment encourages interaction very much in the way that early blogs did. Somehow, with the frustrations of most social media algorithms promoting outrage and cat videos over sensible well thought out content, most writers have found their views and interactions have plummeted. Thousands of social media followers on Facebook and Instagram can still easily mean that less than a hundred people see your latest post on their platforms.

When you first join Substack you are presented with articles, which is the home for longer content and notes where you can share quotes from articles, reshare (called restack) other people’s notes or articles, and interact. You can also search the site for subjects you are interested in and find content by serious thoughtful authors. Think about how a writer wishes social media would perform, and you have it right there.

Substack is so much more than a new social media platform designed with real writers in mind. It can take over, all of the following, entirely for free:

An email subscription list. I know many of you subscribe to my patheos articles right here, and that will continue. But if you just can’t get enough, then join me over on Substack too. If you host an email mailing list at any other provider, especially if you pay good money for it, then it is definitely worth considering moving that list to this free tool. Your existing readers do not have to do anything, they do not need to create an account at Substack, but can if they choose to.

A place to host multiple newsletter-style publications, and if you want to cooperate with other authors on a multi-author publication you can.
A place to build a more direct relationship with your readers, and potential purchasers of your books or online courses.
A place to host paid-for content behind a paywall. At the moment, I do not intend to take advantage of that system any time soon.
A podcast. Substack can either be your primary podcast hosting site, feeding all the others or just one of many itself being fed by the others. I will continue using Spotify as the source for mine, mainly because it would be too much bother to change all the settings, but from now on Substack is now one more way you can hear me. One secret about podcasts that some of you may not have discovered, is that they are great to listen to if you are struggling to sleep! The number of times I have been lying awake thinking, “well that’s sleep over for the night,” put on a podcast and thought, “this sounds interesting,” only to wake the following morning realizing I only remembered five minutes of it!

A place to create and host videos, including interviews. Recording interviews on Zoom these days looks poor quality due to restrictions on the resolution of video you can capture. Substack will record at a higher resolution, although still not as high as Riverside. But unlike either Riverside or Zoom, it is as I mentioned earlier FREE! Of course, you are likely to want to use their video files for other services also, but from what I have seen it looks very straightforward. I will continue to also create videos and share them via TikTok where it is so much easier to get an audience for your thoughts than other social media sites.
A place to host your own domain rather than paying money for a separate website. For a one-off fee Substack will link your domain to your substack publication.
An alternative to following RSS feeds. In the past feed readers were a great way of keeping up with new content on your favorite websites. Whilst they still exist, and one of them lists this blog as third in the list of the best Evangelical blogs to follow, many people no longer use them. Substack lets you subscribe to authors and actually keep reading their content, something Facebook and Twitter (now X) no longer really allow.

If you have any questions, ask away in the comments here or on Substack.

Adrian Warnock

Medical doctor · Published author · Patheos writer since 2003

I have always lived within sixty miles of London, UK where I studied, worked and worshipped for thirty years. I began writing for this Patheos blog in April 2003, making it one of the longest-running individual columns on the Christian Internet. My writing here, on Substack, and in my books is influenced by my medical training, eight years of working as a psychiatrist in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), eighteen years working in medical research in the pharmaceutical industry, twenty-five years of serving as a pastoral leader in a growing multicultural church, and a difficult decade of lived experience with chronic illness, including blood cancer, and the unexpected losses, including early retirement, that resulted.

Together, these all shape a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach which I first wrote about on Patheos in 2013. This model offers us hope, compassion, and healing in all life’s challenges. This holistic approach is based on the idea that all truth is God’s truth.

At times, since my illness, my faith has been faint. I wondered if this was the end of my story. I was not strong enough to live for Jesus the way I wanted to. I could not change myself. And then hope reminded me: The resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Just not all at once. Healing takes time. Compassion and patience sustain us over a lifetime of change. I aim to approach suffering with hope and compassion, and address tough questions including:

What does Jesus’ resurrection mean for you?

Raised With Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010; 2nd edition, Amazon, 2025)
Why is change so difficult? What causes the resistance?

The Traitor Within: Understanding and Healing Our Deceitful Hearts (Amazon, 2026)
Why is change so slow? How does grace lead us over a lifetime?

Amazing Grace: How Faith Grows in the Human Heart (Amazon, 2026)
How do you become a Christian? Can you know if you really are one?

Hope Reborn: How to Become a Christian and Live for Jesus Co-authored with Tope Koleoso (Christian Focus, 2014)

Qualifications

I qualified with an MB BS from the University of London (equivalent to an MD in the United States), hold postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry (MRCPsych) and pharmaceutical medicine (MFFM, DipPharmMed), and took theological training courses run by Newfrontiers.

Connect With me

Substack: adrianwarnock.substack.com (the best way to ask questions)
Twitter/X: @adrianwarnock
Facebook: Adrian Warnock
Email: [email protected] (I may not be able to respond to every message)

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I know Where all the Bloggers Have Gone: Substack and TikTok

Jesus’ resurrection really does change everything, just not all at once.

If you have any questions, ask away in the comments here or on Substack.

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