Announcements

Help us buy a camel

November is here, which means it is time to start breaking out the snow makers and make some snow angels in Los Angeles.

Or, more accurately it is time to start spending lots of money on all of those family members. With how much marketing is put into Christmas it is no wonder that we are so focused on buying each other gifts to fill up the stockings and line the trees with.

But this year try to do something a little different. Give just a little bit of your money to help people in other countries who have almost nothing and will likely get nothing for Christmas.

This year Eternal Truth Ministering is trying to save up to buy a camel.

Yes, you heard me right, a camel.

Gospel for Asia has a donation program allowing you to help buy livestock for villages in need (along with a ton of other cool ministry opportunities). For only $345, the cost of 23 people subscribing to World of Warcraft for a month, or the cost of a single Xbox 360, we can purchase a camel for a village in Rajasthan, India.

Camels can be used to transport up to 330 pounds of goods across the sandy deserts that jeeps have a hard time getting through, and when they get to their destination they are even used for plowing fields.

Camel wool is used to make clothing and camel milk is a staple in that part of the world.

Missionaries from Gospel for Asia go into these villages to bring the gospel, and if they can meet physical needs while they are at it then it provides a great platform to show that those who follow Jesus love them in a very real way.

“Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” – Matthew 25:40

Would you consider giving a small donation to help us make a difference to the lives of villagers in India?

Click here for more information or to donate.

Another season to focus on God!

This summer has been crazy with activities for the staff at ETM. As you have noticed if you are following us on Twitter or Facebook, we had to take the summer off from writing articles, which we were sorry to have to do.

Life is not any less busy during the rest of the year, but most summer activities include a lot of breaks in the normal routine of things, making writing regularly difficult. But that break is now over.

We have some awesome articles and book reviews coming in the next couple of weeks, so subscribe to our feed, follow us on Facebook, and keep an eye out for those.

We are always trying to find ways to improve ETM so we are making a few changes to help move towards that goal.

Staff Down sizing

I hate to start out the announcements on a negative announcement, but that is just the way it goes sometimes. Several of our staff members have too many commitments between family, school, other ministries, and other real life things to be able to focus much on ETM. I commend the effort given by all of our staff members to date and welcome them back at any time if the Lord leads them. Please keep them in your prayers during this busy season of their lives. Also I ask that you would keep ETM in your prayers that we can continue with the shortage of staff, or that the Lord would bring staff members to help fill the shoes that are now left empty.

Article Frequency

With the fewer people writing articles we will now be releasing a new article every four to five days instead of every three to four. We hope this schedule will still bring you plenty of quality, Biblical content and will encourage you in your relationship with God.

New Staff wanted!

Given this information it is obvious that we could use some help on staff. If you have any experience in writing, or want experience in writing articles, we could use your help. Not just writers either. Gamers, editors, forum users, we want you all! Check out the ETM Staff page to view the positions available and what the requirements are, then fill out our staff application to apply for the position.

We do not just want those who are the most experienced or who have the degrees. Our main area of focus for staff members is first and foremost a dedication and love for God. Without a daily relationship with Him this ministry is nothing. Also we want people who are committed to ETM and want to see the ministry survive and thrive.

ETM Christian Gaming

There are several Christians who enjoy playing various online games together in a family-friendly environment that encourages Biblical discussions and pursuing God. We know games are easy to get wrapped up in and sometimes want extra accountability to stay focused on Christ. The Bible says “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31) This includes time spent playing games.

In response to this we want to setup a network of Christian guilds, to provide support and tools needed to run their guilds or servers while maintaining Christian accountability and a family friendly environment.

If you are interested in helping us out in this endeavor, please consider filling out an application. This is a fairly new idea so you can be there and help from the ground up, and take a part in actually shaping how these guilds will work.

A Baby is Born!

The wife of one of our staff members, Sean, is about to give birth to their third child! Congratulate them on their new bundle of joy and keep them in prayer as they make this transition in their life.

That is all of the announcements for now. Stay tuned for some awesome and challenging articles that will be published on the site soon. If you have a Twitter or Facebook account follow us! 🙂

ETM 2.2 Updates

We really do try to be satisfied with the website we have and to leave things alone. Changing things frequently tends to confuse regular visitors and makes an organization seem a little unstable at times. For this reason we take the discussion to change the layout of a site very seriously and try to avoid it when possible.

But sometimes you just can’t help it. We have, once again, changed the look of the website, but we hope it is for the better. We have made the website a lot easier to navigate, bringing the important parts of the website to more prominant positions and making the overal theme look more professional.

So what do you think of these changes? Is there anything you would improve with the site still?

Do not forget to give a big round of applouse to Sean for all the hard work he did in updating the website.

ETM Spring Update

This year has proven to be really busy for just about everybody here at ETM, which led to a few week break from writing articles, but we are back in action! And we have some exciting changes.

Article Schedule

The first thing to note is that we have changed how and when we release new articles. Instead of Media Monday, the Bible article on Thursday, and the podcast on Saturday, we will just be posting a new article, which can be any category, every three days or so.

This gives us a lot more flexability and relaxes the schedule to make writing articles a lot easier to manage.

ETM Gaming

ETM now has a group of gamers that want to enjoy online gaming in a Christian environment. We are working on setting up all of the details still but there are already two guilds setup, one for World of Warcraft, and one for Rift. If you want any more information on them check out the ETM Gaming page.

If you have a guild or online gaming group you want to have affiliated with ETM write an email to Info@EternalTruthMinistry.com and give us the details of your group. We will contact you with details from there.

Guest Articles

We are now allowing articles to be written by guests. Guest articles will allow ETM members to get more involved in this ministry and allow those who do not meet the requirements to be on staff to still have their articles published. We are excited about this change and look forward to seeing what articles everyone writes. For more information check out the Guest Writers page.

Spring Break!

This year has really been exciting so far for ETM. We have some cool announcements coming up that you will enjoy, especially you gamers. Keep on checking the website for that information soon.

We have had some great articles the past two months, but writing those articles takes a lot of time and everything has been pretty busy for all of the ETM staff. Which means we will be taking a two week break from publishing articles to give everyone some time to catch their breath and take their time getting some articles writen.

We will have an announcement or two to make during this break, so you should still stop by and check out the updates.

So anyway, see you in a couple of weeks!

Lots of ways to get involved

ETM has been a great hit so far, thanks to you, our readers. But some of you are not satisfied with just being a reader, you want to do more. For that reason I wanted to take a few minutes to explain some of the ways that you could get plugged into ETM, as well as some of the changes we have made recently.

New Look

As you have probably noticed the website and forums have had a complete makeover. We feel that these changes make the website easier to navigate and read and improves the overall experience of our users. We have future plans to make navigation even easier for mobile users. You can expect those changes to roll out sometime over the next month.

Podcast

ETM now has a podcast! We find great sermons all over the web and we podcast the best of the best. The sermons include great teachers such as Francis Chan and Leonard Ravenhill, as well as other great speakers. We hope that these sermons help encourage you in your faith to become a closer disciple of Christ and encourage you to live like Jesus lived. The podcast has a different feed URL than the normal blog, meaning if you subscribe to our RSS feed or get the articles delivered via email then you will need to subscribe to this separately or else you will miss them. Most audio programs can handle podcast subscriptions easily, such as Windows Media Player or iTunes. All of the information you need, as well as a list of podcast speakers, is available on our podcast page.

Business Cards

The primary means of advertising that we use at ETM is word of mouth. One of the best ways to do that in-person is with business cards. ETM is currently in the process of finalizing a design for business cards. Once I have them ordered I will sell them in packs of 25 or 50 to anybody who wants some. (The price will be at cost, we are not going to make a profit from this.)

Share our Articles

If one of our articles speaks to you please consider leaving a comment to tell us how it spoke to you and share the article with your friends. There are several buttons on the bottom of each article to allow you to share in any way you like to. Email, Facebook, Twitter, and Stumble Upon, as well as other services, are all one click away from you sharing the article with your friends. As I mentioned earlier, our best form of advertising is word of mouth, and that is easily accomplished by each of you who clicks a share link under the article. We do greatly appreciate it.

Online Bible Study

Every other Monday we have an online Bible Study with members of Carriers of the Cross, our sister ministry which is a Christian World of Warcraft guild. You are welcome to join us, just visit our Bible Study page to find all of the information you need to connect. We also add most of these studies to the ETM Podcast mentioned above.

Online Prayer Meeting

Prayer is to a ministry as water is to life. We recognize that without prayer all we are doing here is waisting our time doing the work of man with man’s power. Our goal in this ministry is to be servants of God. This is His ministry, not our own. It only makes since then that we seek the Lord’s will in everything we do. The ETM staff has a semi-monthly prayer meeting, which we have opened up to anybody who would like to join us. All of the information needed can be found on the Prayer Meeting page.

Once again we thank you for taking the time to read our weekly articles and we pray that God has used them to bless your spiritual walk in some way. Please continue reading and consider getting involved in one of the ways mentioned above or remember us in prayer each week.

Jon

Website Maintenance Monday

The ETM website and forums will be going down Monday night, January 17, at 11:59 pm EST for maintenance. Downtime could last anywhere from one to six hours.

You can follow our progress on Twitter by following @EternalTruthMin or join our Facebook group.

We are sorry for any inconvenience that this will cause, but the results will be well worth the down time. Thank you.

Happy New Year, 2011 is here!

Welcome to 2011! As the calendar turns to another year it gives many a feeling of being able to start over, a fresh chance to change what we have failed to change in the past year. We at Eternal Truth Ministry are taking advantage of this chance to start on a fresh page. ETM is officially being brought online, although this time with a different purpose.

In the past we have mostly been about a community, with forums and chat rooms being the primary focus of our ministry. Today we are going to start on a new focus, writing articles that share the uncompromised word of God. We are not going to get rid of the community aspect of the ministry, just chaning our primary focus.

Time is short. There is not much time left for the world and the Christian church, God’s primary and only tool to reach the world is asleep. We see a deep need in the church to wake up and get to the job Jesus set us to do, and we are commited to doing everything we can do to fulfill that purpose.

We invite you to join us as we start this wild roller coaster ride, dedicating ourselves to denying ourselves fully and serving God.

How can you get involved?

Join the email list

The quickest way to keep up with the articles we write at ETM is to join our mailling list. (It is safe, we promise not to sell your information or send you spam.) Every article we write will be emailed to you, about 2 or 3 emails a week. To join all you have to do is enter your email address in the subscription box at the top right of our home page.

Follow us on Twitter

Are you a member of Twitter? Follow @EternalTruthMin on twitter to receive notifications of each article published, and new topics on the forum. We also tweet a random article from the past every few days.

Join the prayer team

The easiest and absolute best way to get involved is to join our prayer team. The prayer team is dedicated to pray for ETM every day, since without the Lord leading us we would not be doing anything except by the power of man, which is useless. The prayer team also prays for prayer requests that people send in.

To join the prayer team all you have to do is Follow the directions on the prayer team page. Instructions on sending a message to the prayer team will be added to that page soon.

Join the forum

The ETM forum community has always been a great way to have Christian fellowship online. Feel free to join our forum community and get involved in the conversations we have there.

Join our Facebook group

ETM has a Facebook group where we share prayer requests and share words of encouragement to the members of the group.

Have a happy New Year!

As you ring in the new year, take tonight to dedicate your life to Jesus, shed off all forms of sin and selfishness, and focus on God. Make it a commitment to read the Bible every day and to spend time in prayer. If you can take a couple of hours to watch a football game, or play video games, can’t you take the time to spend with your savior?!?