Post No. 1 - Reading Time:

Welcome to the new year. What a struggle it has been to get this new site up and running. I have been learning a new program to replace the SandVox App we have used for year’s. At first it seemed like a blessing to not have to put up with the quirks of the old App, but this new one has its own quirks also.

The App I’ve purchased is called EverWeb. It does allow for much more sophistication than SandVox, but it lacks some of the things I got used to in using the old App. My hope is that I will be able to get up to speed quickly in EverWeb and be diligent in posting my weekly blog for 2024.

I used to post every week years ago, but since social media seems to drive everything these days our website fell into disuse. I’d only go on there from time to time to update the initial events page and post a link to the current events calendar.

I guess if people were desperate, they could still glean our phone number and address off of our site, but other than that, there wasn’t much to see.

Even before the web, we used to publish a monthly newsletter which went out in the mail. At one time we had several hundred of them being mailed and distributed each month. However, postage rates increased and readership decreased, so we finally made the decision to end publication a few years back.

Our hope was that the website we had then would be our newsletter’s replacement. It wasn’t as well used, but it could convey much of what we needed to get out there and keep our members and visitors informed.

Then everything went to Facebook. Initially I hoped Facebook would be the end all of this constant progression to new platforms, but then a new issue arose—compliance!

It seemed Facebook guidelines did not square with certain things we were presenting on our live stream of our service each week, so Facebook began to restrict its reach. Many did not even see our posts any longer through the Calvary Assemblies of God page attached to my personal account.

Week after week we were hit with copyright infringement, even though everything musical we post  is covered under our CCLI license. Then came the censorship. Certain things I said during my message were silenced on the feed. They stated that these blank portions did not comply with their Community Standards, but would not inform me of how I violated them. Finally, they blocked the page completely from our viewership and said I could no longer post live streams.

We had left posting on YouTube in favor of live streams on Facebook a few years back. but blocking our Facebook page forced us to return to YouTube. There is seems “anything goes.”

This necessitated a return to publishing a website of our own, where those who want our messages can see them there. So far we can still post a link on our website (and my Facebook page) to our service video postings on YouTube, but we are no longer live. Really doesn’t matter to me, because you can see the videos anytime after they are posted on YouTube Sunday afternoon, and you can use my Facebook link or go directly to YouTube and view our channel.

Of course everything we did for the past few years is now lost on Facebook. I appealed, but they did not respond other than to delete Calvary’s page entirely.

So that’s where we are today as far as getting our messages outside the walls of our church. You might say it’s a stopgap measure to have a website, but at least we can say what we want to say for now. We’ll get better at it as things go along. We will invest in our website more and more as response grows. For now, it’s a learning a new process with this new software, but at least you can read my blog each week and view our service videos if you couldn’t make it to church on a given Sunday.

Until next Monday, may the Lord bless you! Pray for us!

Pastor Brian Jenkins

Calvary Assemblies of God