Phil and everybody,
I like this list just the way it is.  We can offer suppport to each other, 
laugh and cry together, and that is what I think this list should be.  If we 
are in need of a sermon I think we can get that here as well.  I am sorry 
Kathy left the list and I hope she will return some time in the future.

Virgie and Lady Hoshi
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:08 AM
Subject: List Character


>I told Kathy, and I'll mention it here, that all the lists I have owned 
>over
> the years, and especially this one, I have not tried to govern the
> personality or character of the list.  The ebb and flow of this list 
> swings
> one way, and then the other, based upon where individuals are at any given
> moment in their walk with the Lord.  If it is to play, then people play. 
> If
> it is to teach or share articles relative to daily Christian life, then 
> such
> articles appear.  If it is sadness, need for prayer, or encouragement due 
> to
> present circumstances, that's the direct echurch goes.  I have always
> intended echurch to be a support group rather than a Christian list of
> people trying to be a Christian, if you get my drift, so there is why, to
> some degree, echurch looks as if it has no continuity.  If you want
> structure, steady Bible teaching, rules and regulations, legalism,
> Scriptural interpretation, counsel, Sunday school awards for perfect
> attendance, you should either find such a church to attend or find a 
> mailing
> list with exactly those types of list policies.  Yes, indeed, there are 
> such
> lists out there.  I am, of course, far from being your Christian example 
> but
> I do personally know the One you should follow.  I own other lists and 
> one,
> blind exchange, I owned for about 10 years before giving it up to someone
> else.  That list I did work at keeping to the topic of blind related
> information but, admittedly, it drifted off topic many times.  Echurch has
> never been anything other than a Christian support Group but it, too, 
> drifts
> off topic, as you well know.  I'm not trying to make anybody happy here
> because if Jesus can't do that, I dead sure can't.  Yes, sometimes we get
> into a silly mode where we tell jokes.  Have you ever noticed how a church
> body of believers is quite similar?  Sure, there is the preaching and
> teaching time every Sunday but at least echurch has never taken an 
> offering.
> I have never seen this list over 50 or 55 members and half of those never
> post or have set themselves to no mail.  So, we are a pretty small bunch.
> Oh, sure, I could work at building it to a couple of thousand members.
> Think of the email you'd be getting then every day.  I've been on email
> lists bigger than that.  What a mess.  Anyhow, echurch is you and me being
> Christians.  If Vicki or I ever think things are going astray, like into
> heresy, which one member a long time ago, by the way, tried not only
> proselytizing but tried using list members as targets to adjust their 
> Bible
> theology to his cultish belief, we will speak up.  He was, and is, a nice
> guy but what he believed is heresy and I used Biblical documentation to
> refute what he was trying to promote on the list.  He eventually left
> peacefully.  So, like Bill O'Rilley always says, the spin stops here 
> because
> we are looking out for you.  By the way Rhonda, I think that's what it 
> means
> to be your brother's keeper but Cain used it as an excuse to dodge why he
> didn't know where his murdered brother Able, was whom he had killed.  As 
> if
> he thought God didn't know already.  There I go again, drifting off topic.
> So now you know what echurch is and is not.
>
> Phil.
>