Speaking of anniversaries, along with our article on our One Year Anniversary, many members are asking about the automatic renewal of their membership. Many of you signed up using paypal using a subscription, where your dues were set up to automatically renew each year. Since it HAS been a year since this was set up, a few of you are questioning this charge on your paypal accounts as your year’s anniversary comes up.

I know that several years ago I subscribed to a web hosting feature where you set up such a subscription payment — a year after I signed up there was this strange charge on my paypal account and I had no clue what it was. It took me a bit of digging (fortunately I save ALL emails, so I was able to finally find that it was a charge that I authorized!) It’s easy to forget a year later what you did a year ago, and frankly our “donation” page was not clear a year ago that you were setting up a subscription. (We have since corrected that, and given people the option to set it up for automatic renewal or one-time payment)

For those who don’t understand paypal’s subscription service, you can check your paypal account to see all subscriptions that you signed up for by following the directions below:

• Login to your paypal account
• Select: My Account -> History -> Basic Search
• Click on Subscriptions
• Set the starting time to May 2008
• There will be a “subscription creation to” to “The Brothers of John the Steadfast”
• Click on “Details” on that line; you can find out information on that subscription.

If you want, on that “details” page, there is the option to cancel the subscription. Brothers of John the Steadfast would of course appreciate it if you would continue your dues for 2009, and we will be contacting members who are not set up on subscription service reminding you that of the dues for 2009. Read about our membership classes and what you get for your membership in our organization.

For those who joined a year ago and let your membership lapse, please renew your membership. Note that many joined after the origanization’s creation date, so your renewal date is on the anniversary of when you joined. You may check your renewal date at the bottom of the “Join Now” page.

To make it simpler to renew your membership, I’ve added a location at the bottom of the “Join Now” page to submit payment for your 2009 membership. Just click the Join Now button at the top of any page on the site and scroll down past the membership application form.