Jewish Heritage Revival - One Heritage United by Messiah

The ministry of Jewish Heritage Revival registered for its web site in February 2006. We have now completed four calendar years and now have even more information, enabling us track the progress of the JHR website and ministry in reaching the world with the purpose we have set forth on our home page. Within our statement to you, our congregation, we will cover the following:

Please note that this report is not a financial report, in that we are not a ministry that solicits funds for operations. We do not sell our material or require a donation for you to receive our information.

You are called our congregation because, even though we do not occupy a building, your support through prayer in addition to the reading of our materials and emails, makes you a stake holder in the success of this ministry.

The focus of this ministry is to reach the Jewish People regarding Messiah. The great challenge at hand is presenting what was once a very Jewish picture to the Jewish people. However, this picture of Messiah is not recognizable to the Jewish people because the Jewishness of Messiah has been eliminated, making Him foreign to His own people. JHR is focused on reviving the Jewish Heritage found within Messiah and presenting Him back to the Jewish community. We have some exciting news to share regarding the future of this Ministry that we will share in our goals for 2010.

In addition to our primary focus, we have found that those outside the Jewish community have little understanding of the Jewishness of Messiah. The articles found on this site are created to add insight from a Jewish perspective regarding Yeshua and the heritage He came through. Without a true understanding of the Jewish culture and heritage, leads to a misunderstanding of all that Messiah is about. If you truly believe what we are presenting in a revival of the Jewish Heritage that is missing from the church community, we ask you to pass our information along to others. The more that know and believe that this way of life is not only how our Messiah lived, but also taught how we are to live.

This is now our third year in which we have presented a statement of the ministry, conveying results, progress, challenges and future plans. Previous reports can be viewed in our Article Index section. Here you can read our previous reports and review the progress of this ministry. When we first began, the vision was that of an online ministry, providing information in an article format whereby conveying the truth of Yeshua, from a Jewish perspective, in that He is the promised Messiah of Israel. A shift in our direction began to change at the end of 2008 when we felt an urging to begin a Messianic Jewish Congregation. We spent nearly two years at Congregation Brith Hadoshah, doing an internship, in preparation of establishing a Congregation.

A major step for this ministry occurred in 2010. We have completed our move and have established residency in South Portland, Maine, the place that we have identified as where we will be starting Kehilah Portland (Congregation Portland). Our intention was to begin services with a Passover Seder on April 18th. However, that plan has accelerated in that we have received inquiries even before arriving in Portland. As a result of this interest we had a small Hanukkah dinner. In that we have written this statement after our first official meeting, we can state that our first meeting was January 22, 2011 held in our home. We will continue holding services in our home until we grow beyond our capacity.

Other results in addition to our move that have been accomplished by JHR are:

All in all, it was a year of transition. We were able to get much accomplished, even with the move.

We now have three complete years of empirical data that we can share with you, our supporters. You will notice that we have experienced continued growth in readership and visitors to the JHR web site.

	2007	2008	2009	2010	% Change 09 vs 10
Total Visitors	6561	6826	11,795	16,635	+41.03%
Unique IP Addresses	1,567	3,033	2,432	4,486	+84.46%
Total Time Spent	336 Hours	392 Hours	2,353 Hours	7,470 Hours	+217.46%

Reading the numbers: JHR experienced its fourth year of exceptional growth in the total number of visitors and the hours they spent absorbing our information since the inception of this ministry web site.

	2007	2008	2009	2010	% Change 09 vs 10
Total Page Views	10,110	19,991	26,132	39,075	+49.53%
Data Transferred (MB)	250.21 MB	541.44 MB	684.13 MB	1.51 GB	+126.01%
Article Downloads	565	1,141	1,375	2,530	+84.00%

Simply put, more visitors, more pages viewed, more data transferred and more articles downloaded.

	2007	2008	2009	2010	% Change 09 vs 10
Total Search Engine Inquiries	291	692	779	2,307	+196.15%
Total - Google Results	162	589	670	1,880	+180.60%
Total - Other Search	129	103	109	427	+291.74%

A fourth year of indexing has helped to improve JHR's web ranking. Another factor that can be traced to the increase in search results is the addition of the index for Messianic congregations, mentioned above. By including this information and having it indexed by the search engines, has expanded our reach beyone our articles and to those people searching for Messianic congregations. Please keep in mind that all results are based on what is known as organic search results. To date, we have not invested one dollar in advertising. The gains in search results, even though modest, were positive and generated new visitors to the web site.

We continue to focus on generating organic results, rather then paid results. Not only are we being found through the search engine, but also via word of mouth. We are in the process of considering some advertising through Google's Ad Words program.

This year, I am providing a list of long term plans, that may or may not be accomplished within the calendar year. In that I am bi-vocational (two jobs) with one being the new responsibility of a congregation, I am not certain as to what will be completed during this year.

In addition to our undertaking of a new congregation, we also have the following long term projects:

To date, Kehilah Portland does have a federal Tax ID number. We recently filed articles of incorporation with the State of Maine that will lead to the establishment of a bank account. As a synagogue, we would be tax exempt under IRS section 501(c)(3). JHR will act as a ministry under Kehilah Portland. As such, anyone who is interested in contributing to these ministries, can do so, and will receive a tax deduction for your contributions.

Receiving contributions is something new for us, in that we did not create this ministry for that purpose and will not solicit funds. It will be entirely up to you, if you decide led of Adonai to contribute. As a new congregation, there are many things that will be needed - A Torah, shofar, siddurs, to name just a few things. As membership grows, funds will become available for these needs. I have said this in the past, that if there isn't a congregation within traveling distance and you are desirous to come along side these ministries, we would certainly do our best to support you as a member of the congregation.