ETC App Update

Hello ETC fam, Pastor Mantei here. For those of you who have taken advantage of our Endtime Church APP as it has evolved over the past few years, a big THANK YOU! It is a true pioneering move that nobody has ever tried before - having a worldwide church 24/7 on an App?! Needless to say, it has been a constant challenge to find partners to build, maintain and support this endeavor. As you may know, we do incur a cost each year to provide and maintain the App, and several of us answer the call generously each time to the best of our ability. As you also may know, earlier this year, we had to make the hard choice to adjust our strategy in that regard and implemented a fee of $10 per month to use the App. Let's just say that has not worked out as planned. Some people saw this new cost appear and agreed it was worthwhile, others saw it (and told me pointedly) it was not worth it and left. Most folks however, never saw the cost at all, because (sparing you the technical details) it never appeared for them. Some features just stopped working correctly, and new updates just stopped appearing in their App stores. For Apple devices, the App has not been updated properly since OCTOBER. Naturally, I have been doing my best to figure this all out and get it rectified now going on several months of back and forth. The first conclusion our developers (Wix) have come to is, we can no longer collect any money through our App for any reason. This is their rule now. No donation buttons, no links to books by myself or Dr Anderson or Taryn's music, and definitely no charging people for the App. So now the $10 per month is gone and it's free again for everyone! However, there is no guarantee that this will solve the wider technical issues with the Apple or Google App stores, and the issues some people are now having in the App will likely continue and even get worse and there is nothing I will be able to do about it. Even if all of the technical issues are somehow fixed in the near future, the absolute ban on all mentioning of raising of funds in the App will still be in effect. This is not tenable for Endtime Church going forward as we just aren't receiving enough financial support from folks to offset the costs and so we are actively testing contingency plans right now. That includes re-evaluating our entire relationship with Wix (we pay them to host our App, our Website and our Email marketing system) as their business model has never included helping small non-profits/churches and there is clearly no interest in doing so now. So that may mean very soon a very different looking App, or no ETC App at all per se, but instead using an existing encrypted multimedia group messaging app like Signal or WhatsApp. Either way, we will of course be in constant open communication with you, as that is a core principle of ETC. Thank you for all of your prayers and continued support in whatever form, we know the Father has us in the palm of His hand and He hasn't brought us this far for nothing. We are ready for whatever is next.

In Yeshua...

Mantei

The App