Hey everyone. This is Steve Webb, and for some of you, it’s been a very long time since you heard from me.

If you are hearing this, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks for hanging in there with me, because if you’re hearing this, it probably means that you have kept this feed in your iTunes podcast listing for a very long time without seeing any updates. My, but you are patient!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

If you are still interested in hearing content from me, I encourage you to listen to this entire message, as there are some important changes I will be making very soon.

Yes, I’m still alive, and believe it or not, I’m producing content on an almost daily basis. The reason you may not be aware of that is that the content I produce is almost exclusively for other people or for commercial purposes, so I, of course, do not release it on my podcast feeds.

Which brings me to the point of this short message. Because it has been so long since I produced a podcast for most of the Lifespring family of podcasts, iTunes has removed every one of my shows from the directory. From my perspective, that’s not a good thing. Problem is, there is not customer service number to call to talk to someone about that.

You may be saying, Steve, what’s the big deal? You’re not producing anyway, so what’s the harm? Why do you need to be listed?

There are several reasons, but I’ll just talk about a couple of them here for the sake of brevity.

1) I do release Lifespring Sunday on a weekly basis. That is the sermon podcast from the church I attend here in southern california. I don’t know why, but they even removed that podcast.

2) I do plan on creating new shows in the near future. I would like them to be represented in the iTunes directory.

3) And here’s a bonus reason. Since Lifespring! was the world’s first Christian podcast not based on repurposed church sermons, it is somewhat historic. I happen to think the show should always be in the directory. But maybe that’s just me.

It would have been great if Apple would have notified me of their intentions before removing the shows. But transparency has never been one of Apple’s strong points.

So here is what I am going to do.

I am going to move all past podcasts to LifespringMedia.com. That means that if you want to continue to be subscribed to any Lifespring! content, you will have to subscribe to the feed from LifespringMedia.com.

***I will no longer be updating or maintaining the individual show websites.***

Again, if you want to continue to have any Lifespring content show up in your iTunes or any podcatcher, you will have to scoot over to LifespringMedia.com and subscribe there.

If you would like to be notified of any other Lifespring Media news via email, there is a sign up form for my mailing list at Lifespring Media as well. I invite you to sign up to that, too. I promise to NEVER share any of your info to any third party! Never, never, never.

So there you have it.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please email me as soon as possible. I will hold off on making this change permanent until August 8, 2012 so as to give you time to respond, in case you think I am making a terrible mistake in doing this, and can convince me why.

Again, thank you so much for your patience and your support!

Go over to lifespringmedia.com and subscribe to the podcast feed there, and sign up for the mailing list.

So, until next time, when I’ll actually have a show for you, may God bless you richly.