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Why Post Streaming Audio Sermons, Bible Teaching, & Preaching on
LCM
Why we post audio messages on LCM
I assure you, I post these messages not because I believe that I am
some great preacher or teacher. I post them because ...
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So shall my word be that
goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall
accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)
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For after that in the
wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21)
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For I am not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that
believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)
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So then faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
This is the Biblical command on getting the word of God out. Even
though I walk by faith and not by pragmatism, there are some true practical
reasons for posting messages on a website. For example...
Hearing as opposed to reading
If you had your choice, which would you rather do?
Listen to something being explained to you, or read to gain understanding about
something totally new and foreign to you? Perhaps this is why the Lord had the
Apostle Paul to write:
What my tracking statistics show
The tracking stats provided by my
server, and those provided by others I use, gives me a pretty good idea of how
many people visit LCM, for what they are looking for when they visit, and from
what part of the WORLD they come. The stats indicate the following:
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Over
4,000 people ‘visit’ each month. A ‘visit’
is a person that remains longer than 30 seconds.
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On
average each true ‘visit’ lasts about two minutes,
while some remain an hour and even longer.
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~ 9,000 pages are viewed each month. (Again, this is a
conservative estimate. Other stats show this figure could be three times
larger!)
Literally reaching the
world with the Gospel
One stat I reserved to share here. It is one of the most important...
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Since
October 15, 2001, people from nearly 150 different countries, including
many Muslim ones and
Israel, have visited LCM!
Christians are commanded
to reach the 'world'
Most of Biblical Christians would agree that the Bible
teaches that believe
we are supposed to reach out to the world with the gospel. This is in effect what Jesus
commanded when he said;
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Go ye therefore, and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost: Teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew
28:19–20)
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“And he said
unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15)
Most believers accept that it is a
Biblical responsibility to take the ‘good news’ to the lost. The good
news, i.e., the ‘gospel’ is the proclamation of salvation by grace
through faith (apart from all work) in Jesus Christ and His
finished work. Some -- but not enough -- are involved in some kind of visitation
or outward effort to make contact with the lost.
The lost are everywhere. In our families. In our communities. In
our schools. At our places of work. In the stores and businesses we visit each
day in one way or another. Thus, many -- but not enough -- take Bible tracts
with them to pass out throughout the course of their day.
This is One
way to do it
Those that do pass out tracts and
try to witness usually find people in a hurry that are often polite -- but
not always. Yet, even many of the polite show no real interest in the
message of the greatest news proclaimed to man. A few listen and show some
interest, but because of the increasingly maddening rush of our world that is
moving at light speed, few take time to ask questions and seek more information.
And sadly, too many that do pass out tracts have the same demand of time upon
their shoulders.
Posting the Gospel and other Bible teaching on the World Wide Web does not have
such time limitations and demands. LCM is at the 'e-tract table' 24 & 7 &
365. It never gets tired, hungry, bored, or needs to take a restroom brake.
Those who find LCM while surfing usually have some time available, otherwise
they would be doing something else.
Lastly, there is the privacy matter. Some people do not mind listening to or
discussing spiritual issues -- as long as no one else is around to hear them
doing so. There is something about people feeling that matters of faith are
truly personally and personal on the most intimate levels.
Thus, posting the Gospel and other and Bible teaching in audio format is an
ideal way of reaching out to the world.
How much time and how much would it
cost to get tracts to each of our visitors
Though most tracts are not that expensive, there is
some cost involved that too few are willing to spend for the marvelous chance of
leading a precious soul to the Lord Jesus.
Just for fun, let’s figure how much time it would take to pass
out 5,000 tracts to 2500 people and spend two minutes with each one. Ah -- some
of you have jumped ahead with the math and your eyes are wide open in amazement.
For the rest of us I will use my handy dandy Atari calculator to figure
it out. To contact and visit 2,500 people and spend at least two minutes with each would
take 5,000 minutes, or 83 hours, or 3.5 days! The time it would take to
follow up for those truly interested would take ..., well you figure that one
out.
There are a few organizations that offer tracts for
free and will even pay for the shipping as ‘the Lord provides.’ However, most
must charge something at least for the cost of making and shipping them. If you
found a truly good deal, maybe you could get 1,000 tracts delivered to your door
for $3.00. If you had 83 hours a month to pass out 5,000 a month, it would cost
around $15.00. I suspect that most are not able, or will not spend that much
money and time getting tracts out to the lost -- let along taking much more time
to answer many questions and providing more information for those who desire to
know more.
Lastly, how much time and how much would it cost to
copy and ship out sermons on cassette tapes or CDs to all those that wanted to
get more in-dept information on how to be born-again or how to live for the Lord
Jesus?
How much does it Cost me to get the Gospel and other Bible Teaching to each of
our visitors
Believe it or not, (as of April, 2006)
it currently cost me $7.00 (US)
per month for my server which provides me 50,000 megabytes (or fifty gigabytes) of storage and
500
gigabytes of data transfer to visitors. In additions, each of my four domains
cost $8.00 to $10.00 to renew per year. (Click here to
learn more about our server costs and capabilities.)
To put the above in better
prospective, the increased space and bandwidth is enough to post my entire site of over two hundred pages,
hundreds of photos, and special documents dealing with all types of topics. Less the MP3 audio messages,
LCM takes about 50
megs of storage. That leaves about 49.5 gigs to post around 90,000 audio messages of 40 to 50
minutes in length that deal with all sorts of topics, including clearly
presenting the gospel. 500 gigs of transfer data would enable nearly 100,000
messages to be listened to (i.e., streamed) or downloaded. (Currently,
and as best as I can figure, 350 - 400 messages are
being downloaded or listened to each month.) This also includes
presenting the gospel to people around the world in 30
different languages to thousands of people each year. This all costs
about $120.00 per year or $10.00 per month (including domain renewals).
Lastly, I am currently planning to make the entire Bible in MP3 format available
for download in the near future. This will likely use a considerable amount of
the available bandwidth I have described above. Pray that I will be able to work
out the details soon.
I am praying that the Lord will lay it on
someone’s heart to help support our operating costs. I am also praying about
removing the ads from LCM when it is self-supporting through contributions.
How much time it takes me to prepare
and post the messages here on LCM
As it is currently set up, I do not need to spend
anywhere near 83 hours a month
to maintain my site and update it with the audio messages and other documents.
The messages are taped in real time with a little digital recorder that dumps
them to my computer’s hard drive in seconds. (I hope to get a better one in the
future.) For my own sake I like to review each message in preparing the one for
the following week. I can review in real time or at two times the normal rate (I
can go at various rates up to nearly three times faster than normal.)
While reviewing, I make notations of
any thing that needs editing and the time of that part of the message.
Afterwards, I import the file into a handy-dandy audio editor and correct any
bloopers and delete any thing that is not needed to shorten the message as much
as possible. Total editing time for each message typically takes about one hour
-- including the review. It then takes about another hour to upload four
messages to my site and update my page that links to those files. Thus, four to
six hours is typical for each week of maintenance of this area of my site -- now
that the Lord has taught me how to do it. However, two to four hours of this
time is actually beneficial toward my message preparation for the following
week. I have been amazed to see how each message can often be enhanced by a
brief review or expansion in the following message, which is greatly aided by my
actually reviewing what I said previously.
Have you ever wanted to
'speed up' the preacher?
Most up to date versions of the Windows Media Player
(as well as some other MP3 players) also allows each listener to play each
message in real time or 1.4x time, 2x time, 5x time, and fast forward. Due to
the technology used, speeding them up does not make them sound like some squeaky
chipmunk, the voices sound completely normal, but much faster. So, for those
that can understand me at twice my normal speed, they can cut a 45 minute
message down to 22.5 minutes or 33 minutes depending upon the rate they select.
(Wouldn’t it be nice if the people in the pews could speed their preacher up in
each service like that?!)
Share and Spread Them Around!
Shortly after someone receives a tract from a
stranger, people often throw them a trash can as soon as they can -- without
reading them. People who click on the links to either listen to or download the
MP3 files actually wanted to hear them, and are less likely to trash them
without listening first.
Even better, each message can be downloaded and shared with any and
all that want a copy. Increasing numbers of CD and DVD players, including
portable CD and MP3 players, can play the audio files. Thus, the messages can
literally end up any and everywhere, where only God knows who hears them.
An ever present table
with e-Tracts available
Each page on my site has links in the left shared border that point
people to the person of Jesus Christ. I not only post the MP3 messages, but have
also posted one of
the most popular and widely distributed tracts in the world,
God's Simple Plan of Salvation (Used
by the gracious permission of Robert Ford Porter).
It is currently available here on LCM in 18 languages,
and they get hits every day from all over the world!
The tracts and MP3 messages proclaim the
marvelous good news of Jesus' great gift that has been made available to every man,
woman, and child anywhere in the world. It does so 24 hours a day and on
holidays. This website never sleeps and is never
impatient. Please pray daily for the use of the messages and tracts in the
lives of the many lost that are looking for answers and hope that can only be
found in Jesus Christ. In the mean time, I am endeavoring to heed the following:
Looking up for Him,
Webmaster of LCM
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Visitors have viewed this page since
April 1, 2004
(NOTE: All preexisting page counters were
reset to
zero when my server crashed in March of 2004.
It took until April 1, 2004 to get them working again.)
Copyright © 2000 Last Chance Ministries. All rights reserved.
Revised: May 27, 2006.
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