O.K., like it or not, every house needs to do some "house keeping" now & then. So, this is one of those times. But just to keep you from getting overly bored, I have included a new quote in the heading from one of my favorite authors, A.W. Tozer. As expected, it is both insightful and convicting. Also, don't miss the link below to excellent articles by author & house church pioneer Jim Rutz. In case you weren't aware, Jim writes a regular column for WorldNetDaily (www.worldnetdaily.com). Put his name in the site search engine & prepare to be challenged (and if you have any sense of humor at all you simply MUST read two of his articles: "Eating Rocks May Lead To Broken Teeth" and "My Sins Have Finally Caught Up With Me"!).

Newsletter Change Coming

 

In the next couple of weeks the format of this letter is going to change. We've been working behind the scenes to bring what we are doing into the 21st Century (since it is now well underway and shows no signs of abating, despite its less-than-encouraging beginning). When we make the switch you will no longer receive the complete newsletter. Instead you will receive a one-page abbreviated version and a link to our website where the full version will be posted. In this way we will be able to include photos and other formatting which some e-mail programs reject. We are also preparing pages with the coding necessary to offer RSS Subscriptions to our letters. Once this is operational, you will be able to click on an icon on our website and a "live feed" will appear in your browser tool bar. As letters are posted they will automatically be added to the menu on your tool bar. You will then be able to "click & read" at your convenience.

 

I am also planning within the next couple of weeks to begin offering the weekly e-letters as weekly "podcasts" to which you will also be able to subscribe. If you are an "iTunes" subscriber and have "iTunes" loaded on your computer, you can already listen to our "sample feed" which we have been experimenting with by posting 30 radio programs I produced last year featuring excerpts from Wolfgang Simson when he was in Spokane in 2005. If you have "iTunes" installed, click here for the sample feed: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=201581998

 

This leads me to my next house keeping item . . .

 

House Church Podcasting Project

 

As many of you may be aware, I have been doing radio, most of it focusing on house church, for some 5 years now. I have produced weekly programs and daily programs and am painfully aware of some of the challenges involved. Not the smallest challenge is the challenge of NOT boring people to death with warmed over or second rate material. I actually cancelled a daily program a couple of years ago because I was beginning to bore myself, and suddenly realized that I was probably on the verge of boring my listeners (although input from listeners continued to be positive and favorable). I am in the process of writing a book on the Kingdom of God, and one of my introductory observations is, "We have reduced the Kingdom of God to a trinket for sale, and in the process we have bored our Post Modern culture with the greatest story ever told. And that should be (if it isn’t already) an unforgivable sin."

 

This is all background to say that I have been working and talking behind the scenes with house church people over the past couple of months about establishing a consistent and on-going platform for telling the story of "simple church" and making it as widely available as possible in a format that is simple and easy (and free) to access by anyone, anywhere. The vehicle I am going to use is the "podcast" which is simply an MP3 audio file posted on the internet and registered with aggregators and syndicators such as "iTunes," Podcast Alley, Podcast Planet, Podcast.net and others. Individuals can access these either by free subscription(so they are delivered automatically to your computer when posted) or by logging onto one of the syndication sites and simply clicking and listening.

 

The goal of these podcasts will be to produce weekly programs which feature the best of what simple church and house church have to offer: interviews with house church leaders & practitioners who have a story to tell about what God is doing RIGHT NOW in their house church. We'll do individual interviews, conference call group interviews and more. The programs will be oriented toward the practical as opposed to the theoretical; how to answer questions, how to handle money & giving, how to lead neighborhood or community outreaches that are creative and effective, what new resources are coming available & more. In short, we need an up-to-date method of communicating with one another about what God is doing TODAY in simple church, sharing ideas, solving problems and placing the "best material" we have to offer out where anyone and everyone can access it and benefit by it. In addition, if you and your house church would like to begin your own podcast about what God is doing in your midst, we want to be able to help you produce it and publish it (yep, you read that right).

 

O.K., as you can probably guess, such a project could use some help. We are already underway, but there is more to do. Jim Rutz (whom you can probably tell I am shamelessly schmoozing in this letter) is not only a house church pioneer, but a friend of our ministry. When I presented this concept to Jim he caught the vision and made a generous gift of seed money to help get it off the ground. That enabled us to upgrade our computer & digital editing capability and helped us with some essential basics. Our goal is to create a modest but professional production studio which can produce and deliver quality podcast programs, and that requires some basic equipment:

 

1. A Telephone Interface ($200 or $750) - this is a unit that cleans up an ordinary phone line and turns it into broadcast quality. Older (but very functional) analog models such as the Symetrix TI-101 are available and show up frequently on e-Bay for between $150 & $200. The newer digital models such as the DI-2000 or the Telos "One" go for $600-$750. This unit would enable us to call anyone anywhere and produce a broadcast quality signal (yes, I know about Skype, but it has limitations & is not consistently broadcast quality).

 

2. A Tascam CD-A500 ($375) - This is a studio quality Cassette tape and CD combo unit for playing recorded material into a mixer board. Trust me, you need one for post-production work.

 

3. A Behringer XENYX 1222FX ($225) - This is a digital 16-input mixer board with a USB/Audio interface. (That's fancy talk for a mixer board that will feed out into a USB port which connects directly to a computer so you can record digitally and directly onto software).

 

4. A Tascam MD-350 ($470) - This is a studio quality Mini Disk recorder/player, an industry standard for hard back-ups & playbacks. Yep, you really need one.

 

O.K., do the math on this and you can see that the next step in this project will cost us between $1,300 and $1,800. You'll just have to trust me when I say that this is "cheap" when it comes to creating a professional studio (and I have no doubt that there will be some "unplanned" expenses along the way - that's life!). I want to encourage you to participate in this. I am sending this out to my small portion of the House Church community because I would like to see the "free range chickens" in our movement come together and be involved in a project that has the potential to bless and benefit the House Church/Simple Church community at large. Remember, "Many hands make for light work."

O.K., I promised you some articles by Jim Rutz to wet your appetite. Here they are:

 

"Don't-Get-Bored-to-Death Christianity"

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52582

 

"Eating Rocks May Lead To Broken Teeth"

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51933

 

"My Sins Have Finally Caught Up With Me"

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52034

 

Here's Your Chance To Escape (Unsubscribe - Although Why In The World You Would Want To Is Beyond Me!)

 

One of the "side effects" of our recent computer upgrades, etc, is that all of our e-mail addresses got combined into one mondo list. Yep, that includes people who had previously unsubscribed from the e-letter but were still being carried in our "general" contact list. So, thanks for your patience (no irate e-mails threatening to contact our ISP, please) and now is your big opportunity to rid yourself of this weekly source of conviction and irritation. To UNSUBSCRIBE please type UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject line of a blank e-mail (without any nasty & disparaging comments about my dog's pedigree) and send it to: newsletter@parousianetwork.org. We will forward your request to the Klingon high command who have agreed to arrange for your incineration on our behalf (which is actually easier than trying to find you in our antiquated database!). Conversely, you can SUBSCRIBE by typing SUBSCRIBE in the Subject line of a blank e-mail and sending it to newsletter@parousianetwork.org. Your reward will be a personal invitation to come over to the house some time and help me watch "Shore Leave," my 2nd all-time favorite Star Trek episode (my all-time favorite being "City On The Edge of Forever" - sorry, but "The Trouble With Tribbles" is third on my list!).

 

Click Here Just For Fun!

 

If you have a fast connection then click here just for laughs!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hJhyOQ_eA