Community should not be worshiped.

I want to be careful in what I say because I don't want to come across as if community isn't vital to us as believers. That said, we need to be careful to not put such an emphasis on community that we make it some sort of spiritual law. At Netcast, community groups are designed to be a family of people who meet so that deeper community can be forged. As a pastor, it is my desire that the people of Netcast are growing in relationship with others, therefore able to be authentic, transparent and stirred on to good things while at times being confronted with their blind areas. I never want Netcast to be a place where if someone is not at a community group every week than they can't be a partner with us or feel that they are not as spiritual as the next person. To me, that seems cultish and overly controlling. I feel that type of commitment is unnecessary to what community groups are trying to accomplish.

In my experience with this movement of community among evangelicalism, we have to be careful. The gospel is our means of justification, redemption and glorification; not community. Don't hear what I'm not saying, my heart is that everyone at Netcast would be plugged into a group and plan on attending as often as able. This way we are able to continue to stay connected with people. This hopefully would allow for deeper relationships to be forged that will go beyond a weekly meeting. Again the goal is never attendance, it's deep relationship. Often times it takes years of work for people to feel like they are building this.

Remember, community should not be worshiped. However, worship should happen in community. Lets press on to see Netcast become a gospel-centered worshipful community.

Netcast 6 Months Update

We are celebrating our 6 month anniversary of being in Greater Boston. As you probably already know, a ton has happened in only 6 months. We have officially planted and launched Netcast Church. We are still way ahead of schedule. That being said, because of the quick growth, I am feeling a little behind schedule. With over 100 people as regular attenders of Netcast, it has been hard to identify leaders and create smaller groups for people to connect outside of a Sunday service. We currently have a plan in place and hope to have these groups established sometime in March.

From March 5th-12th, we will have a missions team joining us from FBC Oviedo which is in the Orlando area. They will be spending about 5 days serving our community and creating awareness on the North Shore. Pray that they make much of Jesus as they serve in Greater Boston.

Thus far we have seen God's hand at work in our ministry in ways we never expected to see so soon. We have seen broken marriages put back together, sin being broken and community being built. Most recently we have heard of a couple who was considering moving away from Beverly, but after connecting with Netcast decided that God was calling them to stay. One of the most exciting things about Netcast is the diversity we are seeing. We have skeptics, openly lost people, retired pastors, missionaries, college students, seminary people, and the list goes on.

Pertaining to our technology ministry, that has been far more effective than we ever thought. Already there have been a grand total of 2,188 vimeo plays, 8,450 downloads and 1,961 embeds (people putting our technology on their websites). To expand on that, we are currently working on a live Internet video stream broadcast which will then be replaced with the edited video version so individuals can also stream the sermon after the live feed ends. This will allow another 24/7 video stream.With all of our stuff online; Globally, we moved into Canada, Ivory Coast (Africa), United Arab Emirates, Romania, Guatemala, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the largest international plays and embeds outside the US are again from the Russian Federation. Netcast videos have been viewed in 28 countries to date. This is exciting to see since our goal has always been to spread teh gospel message as far as we can using technology. Praise Christ for all He is using us for. You can check out http://vimeo.com/netcastchurch for all of our media and for a good Netcast laugh check out http://vimeo.com/20353790

Thank you for making Netcast possible through your support.