Core Community Church of Omaha

Our HTML5 video player has launched.
You can now watch and listen to Core sermons on your iphone or on your laptop.
We are posting the EXODUS sermons and more is to follow soon.

Get the video.

http://corecommunity.org/resources/sermons/

Coming soon, Core Community Church will be vodcasting.

We have recorded the Exodus sermon series on HD video and will be releasing it soon.

Stay tuned.

Usually, when you look for mentors, you have to look a long way off. The voices that influence us the most seem to be of a distant era. They’re from a different time and often, a distant place. Not entirely so with one of mine.

In the early 1920‘s R.R. Brown was a revivalist who preached from the pulpit of a portable tent in the streets of downtown Omaha. Sawdust covered the ground for the floors and incandescent lights hung from wires in the canopy above. Hundreds came to hear him preach on Sunday nights from across the city and across denominational lines.

As Dr. Brown died in 1964, I never had the pleasure of hearing him preach. I have, however, experienced the lingering effects of his ministry from the older saints in Omaha as they described sitting under his preaching. “He preached with unction,” they would tell me. Apparently, he would dictate with clarity and a tactful theological conviction – that was until he felt ‘a spell coming on’. He would then speak of the finished work of Christ with a zeal that was unparalleled in its compulsion. No one knows how many for sure, but Reverend Brown is responsible for hundreds if not thousands meeting Jesus in his lifetime.

It wasn’t just his oratory work that was compelling. Older brothers in the faith who knew him would tell me, “He would linger in the prayer closet for hours at a time. We would just hear the sound of his groaning.” His zeal and unction came from an indelible commitment to the gospel born in the incubator of intimacy with his savior.

In 1921 Dr. Brown established the Omaha Gospel Tabernacle at 20th & Douglas Streets.
The ministry grew rapidly. By 1923, Brown began the first ever nondenominational religious service broadcast in the world. By 1933, “Radio Chapel Service” had a weekly, national audience of more than half a million. Its hearers bore fruit far and wide. Darlene Rose, a missionary to Papua, New Guinea and concentration camp prisoner of the Japanese during WWII, remembers first hearing and responding to the gospel as preached by Dr. Brown while a young girl in front of her family’s radio in Boone, Iowa. The effects of his ministry across the world are incalculable.

R.R. Brown’s broadcast continued for the next 53 years, becoming the longest continuous radio program on any one station in the world. His messages were sent from a radio antennae atop the Woodman of the World skyscraper in downtown Omaha.

The new technology was untested in his time. Initially skeptical of this new medium, Brown warmed to the possibilities when he learned that a listener had been converted upon hearing his first radio sermon. “Hallelujah!” Brown exclaimed, “Unction can be transmitted!” His program continued on the air even after his death, until 1977. Brown was commonly referred to as the, ”Billy Sunday of the air.” R.R. Brown is among the greatest of the early evangelists who pioneered a new medium to extend the gospel into areas he could never visit personally.

I’m fascinated by history and technology. As a preacher, I’m also interested in how to disseminate the gospel through new means and mediums. Street preaching and radio audiences have expanded to include multi-site video venues and world wide audiences streamed through the internet to the ends of the earth.

As I reflect upon R. R. Brown’s ministry in my own city- I’m asking questions like:

-In our day, why would we limit the message to only in ‘2D’ forms?
-Why do we remain content with only a few hearing the Good News each week?
-Why should we settle for a meager and self-contented appreciation of what we have been given?

How soon we forget our history. Is Omaha known for the radical & innovative spiritual and technological nature in which the gospel went out 80-90 years ago? It should be. It should also be known by and examined for how we’ve kept that flame lit in our own day.

As we think about our time as a church and the opportunity before us, what means are we employing to disseminate the gospel? What tools have we been given in new forms and in new mediums?

At Core, for $6,000 we could easily invest in a HD camera, video mixing software, and an internet vodcast link. With a few volunteers to put some hands to it, we could innovate like our predecessors. Why wouldn’t we do so when greater tools and opportunities are at our disposal?

I’m asking for your prayers at Core as we put together a video team and try to purchase the equipment needed. We’d like to launch a new distribution vehicle for our Sunday sermons, conference teachings, announcements, and ministry opportunities.

With some money, prayers, and people to make this happen, imagine the doors that God could open as we take up the spirit of Dr. Brown in our day.

If you are interested in giving, serving, or praying, we’d love to hear from you. May the gospel flow through us like it did through our fathers in the last generation who engendered a pioneer spirit in this, our own city. Like those who settled this place, may we honor the legacy of R.R. Brown. Let’s humbly ask God to continue to pioneer opportunities through us for the purpose of the gospel.

Our sermon podcasts make it easier for you to download our weekly sermon audio files. Instead of coming to the site and manually downloading MP3  files, you can set your podcast software to copy new files to your computer automatically as they’re posted each week. You can then listen to the sermon on your iPod, iPad, or computer; burn a CD; or copy the file to an MP3 player.

If you use iTunes, you may use this link: Add to iTunes

In a changing world, what does technology have to do with the church and the gospel?