Hey Guys,

You need to hear this. On our increasingly frequent travels to America Belinda and Bethany and I are staying more and more with Steve and Sandra Atkerson and their lovely children in Atlanta. We love being there and they are a really great family. And though somewhat inconsistent with their love of ice cream and fast food, Sandra actually cooks a great deal with texturised vegetable protein.

Now this, as the more dietary minded among you will know, is a soya bean replacement for meat, and is meant to be considerably more healthy (though I don’t believe a word of it) than animal flesh. And of course those of you who have stayed with them will know what it is to bite into that delicious looking bit of chicken they have served you only to discover that it is, in fact, the aforesaid texturised vegetable protein cunningly prepared and seasoned by Sandra to give the appearance of being meat.

Indeed, her ‘steaks’ are now legendary in this regard, and a continuing cause of otherwise mature believers coming close to being put under church discipline because of almost uncontrollable outbursts of disappointment and frustration when that brown thing covering their plate was discovered to be, not the tasty cow it’s appearance promised, but merely a reworked and cunningly prepared soya bean.

However, and now I come to the main point of this correspondence. Imagine my amazement when, a few weeks ago, late one night at their house, during a trip to the little boys room, and thinking everyone was asleep, I came upon Sandra laying Steve out on the kitchen table and adding some seasoning and herbs for increased colouring and texture. Yes, it’s true! I can still hardly believe it myself, but I have seen the awful proof with my own eyes: Steve Atkerson is not actually human. He is, instead, a carefully shaped mass of texturised vegetable protein. The New Testament Restoration Foundation is being run by a giant soya bean, and it’s time that someone spoke out.

Brothers and sisters! Your biblical churches are a by-product of a hideous conspiracy in the vegetable kingdom, and it is beginning with apostolic assemblies of Christians. You must immediately, and carefully, establish how many of your numbers are actually soya beans merely pretending, like Steve, to be a human being.

So be afraid my friends! Be very afraid! Steve Atkerson is not a biblical church planter at all - he is merely a plant in a biblical church!