Frequently Asked Questions About
The Pastor's Weekly Briefing®
and
The Shepherd's Covenant® Encourager
Questions:
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then click BACK to return to the top)
What is The Pastor's Weekly Briefing?
The Pastor's Weekly Briefing is a current events e-mail newsletter
published each Thursday evening for pastors and other Christian leaders by
the Pastoral Ministries department of Focus on the Family.
Created to keep busy pastors up-to-date on the latest issues affecting the family,
this weekly newsletter contains current event summaries for use in church bulletins,
sermons, newsletters and personal discussions. It also includes brotherly encouragement
from H.B. London, challenging commentaries by several experts, suggested resources and
a variety of informative features to assist you in being the cultural leader God expects.
As a non-profit organization, Focus on the Family relies entirely upon donations to sustain
its various ministries, including The Pastor's Weeking Briefing. If you would like
to make a contribution, please call 1-800-A-FAMILY (1-800-232-6459) and mention the code
at the bottom of your newsletter (e.g., PE07XEM) or visit this page.
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What is The Shepherd's Covenant Encourager?
The Shepherd's Covenant
is an integrity and accountability commitment that
Focus on the Family offers to pastors. At its heart is a covenant between the pastor
and God, his family, his congregation and an accountability partner. It is based on the acronym G-R-A-C-E.
Among
the numerous features of this covenant program is a weekly
e-mail newsletter of encouragement from H.B. London for all
Shepherd's Covenant members. The Shepherd's Covenant Encourager is
published each Monday morning by the Pastoral Ministries
department of Focus on the Family.
As a non-profit organization, Focus on the Family relies entirely upon donations to sustain
its various ministries, including The Shepherd's Covenant Encourager. If you would like
to make a contribution, please call 1-800-A-FAMILY (1-800-232-6459) and mention the code
at the bottom of your newsletter (e.g., PI07XENS) or visit this page.
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How can I have my name removed from the PWB or SCE subscription list?
At the bottom of every issue of PWB and SCE, there is a well-marked link to
our subscription update form for that e-newsletter (PWB or SCE).
This form makes it very easy to remove your name from our subscription
list by simply entering your e-mail address in the appropriate section
to Unsubscribe.
You may also unsubscribe by visiting the Focus on the Family e-Newsletters page, signing in with your e-mail address, and unchecking the box beside either PWB or SCE.
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How can I change the e-mail address at which I receive PWB or SCE?
At the bottom of every issue of PWB and SCE, there is a well-marked link to
our subscription update form for that e-newsletter (PWB or SCE).
This form makes it very easy to change the e-mail address you wish to use for your subscription
by simply entering the requested information in the appropriate section to Change Address.
For PWB, you may also change your e-mail address by visiting the Focus
on the Family e-Newsletters page. You will first need to sign in with
your new e-mail address and check the box beside PWB to subscribe with
that address. You will then need to sign in with your old e-mail address
and uncheck the box beside PWB to unsubscribe that address.
Please note that, since those who receive SCE must first sign and
return a Shepherd's Covenant covenant card, the Focus on the Family
e-Newsletters page cannot be used to sign up for SCE and, therefore,
cannot be used to unsubscribe one e-mail address and subscribe a
new one. Thus, you must use the subscription update form mentioned
above or call 800-A-FAMILY (232-6459).
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Why don't I receive PWB or SCE at my wireless e-mail address (or other restricted
domains)?
Federal Communications Commission
regulations do not permit unauthorized e-mail newsletters
to be sent to wireless e-mail domains. This is partly because
there is often a cost to the user for each such download.
Our distribution service is, therefore, required by law to
suppress them. While there is a way of personally authorizing
our distributor to send messages to your address, it is very
complex and we do not recommend using it. If you use a wireless
domain, your easiest solution would be to create a second e-mail address
at a free non-wireless domain. You may even be able to forward
all incoming messages at that domain to your wireless site.
Our distribution service, SilverPop, currently suppresses all e-mail
broadcasts being sent to certain restricted
domains and restricted prefixes. Here is the legal explanation of this complex situation that has been provided
by SilverPop:
As you probably know, CAN-SPAM required the FCC to create regulations regarding
wireless device (e.g., cell phone) messaging. In August 2004, the FCC issued
regulations requiring "Express Prior Authorization" to be obtained before commercial
messages can be sent to wireless device domains, and made provisions for establishment
of a wireless device domain registry.
On February 7, 2005, the FCC released the wireless device domain
registry with a surprisingly large number of domains, and mandated
30-day compliance with what amounts to new — and very strict — opt-in
rules for those domains. A list of these domains can be found at www.fcc.gov/cgb/policy/DomainNameDownload.html.
According to the ruling, "Express Prior Authorization" may
be obtained by oral, written or electronic means. Written authorization
must contain the subscriber’s physical signature.
Electronic authorization must include a formal, full electronic
signature as defined by the Federal E-Sign Act. For all practical
purposes, since most individuals do not know how to set up
or use a formal electronic signature, this means having the prospective
recipient sign and fax in an opt-in.
As a result of this ruling, unless we had received "Express Prior Authorization"
from recipients with email addresses in the designated wireless
domains, we had to cease all commercial mailings to them
by March 9, 2005, or risk substantial fines from the FCC.
Therefore, Silverpop began automatically suppressing all
email addresses based at the wireless device domains
in the FCC registry as of March 8, 2005. This disables
all outbound emails to these domains.
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Why am I being advised to add "family@mail-family.org" to my personal address
book to authorize delivery?
There are numerous new standards being adopted by the e-mail industry. Many are being
established to protect e-mail recipients from spam and other undesired messages. Some are
intended to improve and standardize industry efficiency.
It will soon be necessary for anyone receiving repeated or bulk e-mail
messages (such as newsletters or any message sent to many
recipients at the same time) to include in his personal address
book the e-mail address of the sender of each regular message
he wants to receive. This will be implemented to place the
control of what is authorized and received into the hands
of the individual and to block spam. For example, to continue
receiving any regular e-mails from Focus on the Family (such as PWB or SCE),
it will eventually be necessary to add "Focus on
the Family <family@mail-family.org>"
to your address book. To do so now will help prevent any
future blockage of newsletter deliveries.
Please also note that if you use a spam-protection service that sends
an automatic reply to any "unauthorized" e-mail message requesting a response
in order to authorize the sending e-mail address, our site
and staff are not able to respond to such messages since
the subscription process for our e-newsletters is automated.
If you use such a service, you will need
to authorize our sending address yourself by manually adding "Focus
on the Family <family@mail-family.org>" to
your address book or white list.
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I have noticed that PWB often includes links to the Web sites of other organizations, usually as a source for a story itself or for further information on a story. Can I assume that all of these links go to safe, unoffensive Web pages?
No. Such an assumption should not be made. We sometimes provide referrals to and links to other World Wide Web sites from our PWB stories or other Focus on the Family Web sites. Such a link should not be seen as an endorsement, approval or agreement with any information or resources offered at other sites. If in doubt, always check the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address provided in your WWW browser to see if you are on a Focus on the Family-operated site or have moved to another site.
When Focus on the Family provides links or references to other Web sites, no inference or assumption should be made and no representation should be inferred that Focus on the Family is connected with, operates or controls these Web sites. Further, Focus on the Family is not responsible for the content or practices of third party sites that may be linked to our sites.
For more information on Focus on the Family's privacy policies and terms of use, visit http://www.focusonthefamily.com/privacy/.
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Can I reproduce and redistribute material in PWB or SCE?
PWB subscribers are authorized to reproduce and redistribute this newsletter
in whole or in part without any changes and with full credit
citation for non-commercial purposes only. Excerpt credit
lines should read, "Taken
from the Pastor's Weekly Briefing, [issue date]. Copyright
© 2007, Focus on the Family."
Mass electronic re-transmissions are prohibited without prior written permission, although
forwarding as e-mail to a few friends or colleagues is authorized. Instead of redistributing
this newsletter yourself, we recommend encouraging your friends and colleagues to sign up
for their own free subscription at www.parsonage.org/forms/subscriptions.cfm.
"From My Perspective" commentaries may not be excerpted, reproduced or redistributed without
the permission of the individual author. Our permission to use these commentaries does not
extend to our subscribers.
SCE subscribers are not authorized to reproduce or redistribute this
newsletter without prior written permission. These messages of encouragement
are one of the benefits of joining the Shepherd's Covenant and are
intended for members only.
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How can I receive PWB or SCE in a plain-text format instead of HTML?
Those wishing to receive either of these e-newsletters only in a plain-text format may do so by configuring their
receiving e-mail software account with this preference. Most modern e-mail software allows the user
to designate whether to display HTML or plain text. Instructions for setting up user preferences can
be found either under the Help area of the application or by contacting the support department of the Web
service provider. This new e-mail industry standard will soon place the responsibility for setting
such preferences solely on the e-mail receiving software service. Unfortunately, at present, many free
software services do not yet have this capability.
As a result, e-mail distribution service providers (including ours) no longer allow individual subscribers to
indicate a format preference (HTML or plain text) that is configured and maintained at the provider. Thus,
we are unable to offer this customization on our end. We do send both an HTML and plain-text version
of each newsletter through our distribution service each week. Their service then automatically "detects"
which version each recipient can or desires to receive.
Microsoft Outlook, one of the most popular e-mail softwares, does allow the user to indicate
that they wish to view all messages in plain text. The Help text basically says ...
On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Preferences. Click E-mail
Options, and then select the Read all standard mail in plain text check box.
To include messages signed with a digital signature, select the Read
all digitally signed mail in plain text check box.
Even Outlook, however, does not yet allow the user to assign a specific text format to mail coming
from individual address book accounts.
For what it's worth, many email systems do add a link at the top of each HTML message that reads, "If you are unable to see
the message below, click here to view." We have found that clicking on this link will often fix the appearance
and allow the HTML version to display properly.
Finally, to help as much as possible, we do offer a printer-friendly text version of the PWB newsletter each week.
In order to retain its format, this version is stored on our Web site as an Adobe PDF file. To display
one of our printer-friendly versions, click on the appropriate link in the left column of each e-mail issue.
Unfortunately, no similar version is available for SCE.
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Why is my plain-text formatted e-newsletter double-spaced?
Unfortunately, we are unable to control when an e-mail service provider
inserts double spaces into our newsletter messages. When
the plain-text copy is submitted to our e-mail distributor,
it is single spaced with double spaces (double paragraph
marks/hard returns) between paragraphs. The copy remains
single spaced at this point and as it is broadcast to our subscribers.
However, some e-mail service providers insert a hard return
(paragraph mark) at the end of each line as they receive
and format a message, and sometimes these hard returns apparently
get converted into double spaces (double hard returns). Sometimes
this can be quickly resolved by copying the message into
a word processor and making adjustments.
Also, we do offer a plain-text printer-friendly version of each week's PWB newsletter on our Web site. To retain formatting, we create this as a PDF file that can be viewed using Adobe's free Adobe Reader software. Every version of each week's issue can be found at http://www.parsonage.org/pwb/index.cfm, using the issue selector in the middle of the page.
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Since color ink cartridges cost so much, is there a way to print a graphical version of these e-newsletters in black and
white?
Over the past five years color printing has become extremely popular. Even though the cost
of printing in color has dropped greatly, however, printing in color can prove expensive.
With this in mind, 90% of all color printer drivers allow the user the option of printing in
grayscale (black and white). To select this option for printing our newsletters, follow these steps:
(These are standards for Microsoft Windows. Steps for other operating systems will be similar.)
- Click on Start.
- Select Printers and Faxes.
- Right click on the printer you wish to reconfigure, then select Printing
Preferences
(Properties for older versions of Windows) from the drop-down menu.
- Within the dialog box, select the tab which allows Color, or Quality, or
a similar option.
- Select the Grayscale or Black and White option, then click on OK. (You may
need to click on OK again to close the window.)
- Your printer should now print in shades of gray.
These settings may also be accessed through the Window's Print Screen, by selecting the
appropriate printer in the drop-down, then clicking on the Preferences (or Settings)
button. Changes to printer settings using this method are often temporary, with the printer
settings returning to their original (previous) settings once the current application is
closed.
Because there are so many different ways that the e-mail industry handles printing, we
provide three "Printer Friendly Versions" of every issue of PWB on our Web site —
a full-color version without e-mail headers, a black-and-white version,
and a plain-text version. These can be accessed by clicking on the links in the left column
of the newsletter itself directly under the index box or by visiting our PWB Web page and
using the issue selector in the center of the page.
(Please note that, to view or print the plain-text version, you must have Adobe Reader
installed on your computer.
A free copy of this software is available from Adobe.)
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Why don't any of the links work on my e-mail newsletter in Outlook?
There are a number of possibilities that would cause a
problem link this. Our experts have noted the following
information:
Microsoft® Outlook has the ability to turn off links on HTML e-mail.
Recently, Microsoft delivered a security update which made this option automatic.
This means users receiving e-mail which Outlook thinks might be spam, initially
view the e-mail with most links turned off. In order to turn links back
on, please do the following:
Adding a Specific E-mail Address to the Safe List:
- Right-click on a link.
- When the context sensitive menu appears, select “Add
this e-mail to the safe senders list.”
- You may also select “turn on links” for a one-time,
single e-mail use.
Turning Off Automatic Link Suppression:
- From the Outlook 2003 main screen, select Tools è Options from
the Menu Bar.
- From the Options pop-up window, select the Junk E-mail button.
- From the Junk E-mail pop-up window, uncheck the “Don’t
turn on links …” box – usually located at
the bottom of the screen.
- Select OK.
- Select OK.
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My e-mail message fonts do not appear to be formatted properly. What would cause this to happen?
Some free e-mail services (Yahoo, Juno, Hotmail, Gmail, etc.) do not completely recognize
cascading stylesheets (CSS) when they display messages. Since our newsletters are constructed and
formatted using a CSS, they will often display awkwardly in some of these free e-mail services.
The good new is that this is becoming less and less true as even these services become more sophisticated.
With some of these services, there is an instruction inserted above the newsletter message
that reads something like, "If you are unable to see the message below, click here to view."
By clicking on this link, a fully formatted version of the newsletter may be displayed. If
this option is not available, one of their more deluxe versions should properly recognize stylesheets.
You might also consider switching to another e-mail service if the display is too difficult to read.
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My e-mail newsletter has a lot of blank boxes with little Xs in the upper left corner. Is there a way to fix this?
The problem sounds like there is no active Internet connection
when the e-mail message is opened. The boxes
with the Xs indicate where images are supposed to appear.
However, to keep the size of the e-mail message file as small
as possible, the image locations contain links to where the
actual image files exist on the Internet. As the message
is loaded on the screen, the images are found on the Internet
and displayed in the document. Therefore, if there is not
a current Internet connection active when the message is
opened, the link to the image will not work and the box with
the X is displayed instead. The solution is to connect to
the Internet first, then open the message.
This is also why e-mail services that allow you to download your messages to your local computer, then disconnect from the
e-mail site for offline processing (i.e., review, printing and response), will have similar troubles. Without that active
Internet connection at the time the message is opened, the software cannot follow the links in an HTML-formatted message (with color,
pictures, font variations) to the intended images. The best solution is to use the online or Web mail version of these software
services in which the message is viewed and processed while signed on to the Internet. (The standardization of HTML as the normal
format used for e-mail today and its subsequent need for an active Internet connection is why nearly all of these download
services have been phased out.)
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Why do I not receive my e-mail newsletter some weeks?
• The most common reason that an e-mail newsletter occasionally fails to deliver to your mailbox is that the mailbox is full. When your mailbox exceeds the maximum megabytes of storage to which you are allotted, your e-mail service provider will not deliver any additional mail.
• Another major reason that a particular e-newsletter fails to be delivered is that your e-mail service provider may be blocking it because it thinks it is spam. This typically occurs when one message is being received for numerous users of the e-mail service. It can usually be quickly resolved by contacting your e-mail service provider and explaining the problem and expressing your desire to receive this newsletter. We usually try to help in this endeavor by contacting the larger providers and requesting to be "white listed" among those sending messages to their inboxes. To learn more about what you can do, read the information above for the question, "Why am I being advised to add "family@mail-family.org" to my personal address book to authorize delivery?"
• Please note that, if your e-mail service provider blocks delivery for several weeks in a row for any reason, our distribution service will assume the e-mail address is no longer valid and will automatically remove or inactivate your address in our list. This can be corrected by visiting our subscription form (www.parsonage.org/forms/subscriptions.cfm) and using the section to Subscribe once again.
(Return to questions)
What new e-mail industry standards are on the horizon?
There are numerous new standards being adopted by the e-mail industry. Many are being
established to protect e-mail recipients from spam and other undesired messages. Some are
intended to improve and standardize industry efficiency. Here are a few of these new
standards:
-
As mentioned above, e-mail distribution service providers will no longer be allowing
subscribers to indicate whether they prefer to receive newsletters, etc. in HTML or plain
text format. These preferences will be configured by the user for his own account with the
receiving e-mail service software.
-
It will soon be necessary for anyone receiving regular e-mail messages
(such as newsletters) to include the sending e-mail address
of each regular message in his personal address book. This
will be implemented to block spam and to place the control
of what is received into the hands of the individual. For
example, to continue receiving PWB,
it will eventually be necessary to add "Focus on the Family <family@mail-family.org>" to your address book. To do so now will help prevent any future
blockage of newsletter deliveries.
(Return to questions)
What are the Pastoral Care Line and the Parsonage (mentioned in the footer of PWB)?
The Pastoral Care Line (1-877-233-4455) is a toll-free crisis line for members of pastoral
families. Our staff of pastors offer a listening ear, a word of understanding advice, a
supportive prayer and pertinent referrals and resources.
The Parsonage (www.parsonage.org)
is our Pastoral Ministries Web site, our "Internet home for ministers
and their families." It
provides lots of material, information and encouragement in support
of the personal and family lives of pastors, with even some assistance
for their professional and ministerial lives. It is the most complete
description of our entire Pastoral Ministries effort.
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