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| Creation Gardening: By Him Were All Things Made. Art by Norma A. Boeckler. The cover is her garden. |
Our property is parallel with Joye Street, which is crucial for this narrative. If Sassy and I walk into Almost Eden, a nursery, we are along the backside of Joye property. Our backyard is behind the backyard of a Joye home.
So we saw some men working on all the overgrown brush on Joye as we walked into Almost Eden. I watched and waved at them. On another walk, we saw them again and I congratulated them on how much they cleaned up.
"You did a great job," I said.
" Thank you. It was a lot more work than we expected."
I added helpfully - "I could have told you that."
Like car repair, yard renewal is always more time and energy consuming than imagined.
Sassy and I were walking down Joye yesterday when we came up to the front of that same property. The owner walked over and greeted me, very friendly. He said, "I recognized you from seeing you near the backyard." We talked about him buying the property and fixing it up for rentals.
I told him he could find us easily since we are the ones with a front yard of roses. That really lit him up. Soon his phone was out as we were talking. I thought he was expecting a call or about to make one. I talked about Creation Gardening and some basic principles. He talked at his phone, "Hear that honey? That is what we are doing wrong."
Sassy and I walked home after a detailed discussion, and we drove back in the limo to delivery two copies of Creation Gardening, free, for him to keep.
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| Volume 5 of Luther's Sermons is almost done. |
An Idea for Everyone To Use
Printing from online sources is very easy now, but also inexpensive. Creation Gardening is full color, so the author's (or church price) is about $5.33. Shipping is relatively expensive for one copy, very inexpensive for a bunch of them.
So any church or individual can create a proclamation of the Word, illustrate it, and print paperback, full-color copies for $4 - $5. Making Disciples is only $2.15 in black and white, $4 in color. The big difference is in large volumes (300 pages and up) where every page is charged as if printed full color. Either way, the cover is always in full color, front and back.
Luther's Sermons are typically (author's price) $5, about $25 for the same volume in color. So, without being a CPA, anyone can figure that a large volume of Luther (public domain) is very inexpensive to obtain and easy to give away.
By the way, Luther's Sermons are just that. I let Luther speak for himself, without my usual synodical observations. The same is true for Creation Gardening.
Of course, cost comparisons are a good argument for printing smaller works in full color, because most people are used to colorful eye-pleasing graphics.
Congregations are destroying themselves (here I go again) by playing the role of temple prostitute before the Church Growth altars of Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek. Sure, the gimmick word is "missional" now, so the parishes and sects are engaged in harlotry by another name. WELS and the LCMS assure us that they are practicing safe sects, so no one should be alarmed.
The Word of God is effective, accomplishing God's will. And false doctrine is also powerful, spreading the toxins of Satan and accomplishing his. The question is not whether we broadcast - but what we broadcast.
Many areas are neglected today -
- Those whose primary language is German.
- Laity who want courses in church history, Hebrew, Greek, and Biblical exegesis.
- Traditional Lutherans who remember pre-Fuller JBFA doctrine.
- Those who hunger and thirst for spiritual peace and the righteousness of faith.
