Friends of Ron Helmick, right of center, gather inside his teepee on his property in East Lawrence on Dec. 12, 2010. The group got together for what they call Newspaper Church, where each participant brings a story or an article to share and open for conversation.

Ron Helmick, left, his dog Cheyenne and Karen Frick gather inside Helmick’s teepee.

Carla Craven, Shawnee, left, and Ron Helmick, Lawrence, head to Helmick’s teepee along a path through native grasses on his property in East Lawrence on Dec. 12, 2010.

At far right, Jesse Brubacher reads a story from The New York Times about young entrepreneurs during a gathering of friends at something they call Newspaper Church. The group gathered inside Ron Helmick’s teepee in East Lawrence on Dec. 12, 2010. Participants bring a story or an article to share and open for conversation. From left are Jeff Morrow, Carla Craven, Helmick, Karen Frick, Kate Frick and Brubacher.

Outside it is a pass-the-flask type of cold — about 15 degrees, not factoring in the wind that’s howling like a bad garage band.

But inside, there is a fire to warm up to. Its open flame flickers from the floor where a piece of carpet is supposed to be. Smoke drifts up through an uncovered hole in the roof that allows in rays from the bright sun of a snowy day.

An Italian who loves Native American history places white Mexican tortillas on the stones that ring the fire, and he sprinkles the tortillas with butter and cinnamon. He’s talking about some guy — he knows his name — who he swears is the “Bill Gates of hot air balloons.”

There is no flask to pass.

The room is filled with 10 adults and two kids, who desperately want to play with the leather hide drum that was brought in from the elements. A dog — of course there is a dog — roams the room. Eventually, it finds the stick of butter and carries it in its mouth like a baton. An expletive is yelled. The tortilla-maker scrambles and gets hold of the butter stick. He looks it over, and starts slicing and buttering from the unslobbered end.

For our host, Ron Helmick, all of this is perfect.

• • •

Helmick — a rural Lawrence resident and owner of a company that helps businesses recycle — has a simple theory.

“The conversations we used to have on the front porch have moved to the deck that’s in the backyard, and now the conversations on the deck have moved to the Internet,” Helmick said.

He would like them to move once more — to a teepee.

On his property just outside the city limits where East 15th Street turns into North 1500 Road, Helmick has a teepee on a patch of pasture grass.

Red, white and black flags flutter from atop the teepee’s wooden poles in a way that suggests fun, but Helmick is insistent that this is not some party place for those who can’t forget the cowboy and Indian stories of their youth.

In fact, on this Sunday morning, church is taking place inside. Well, Newspaper Church. Don’t get too hung up on the church part. Unlike most churches, this one is an invitation-only affair. Also missing is the ritual and sacraments, although enough Dunkin Donut coffee was passed around to cause someone to suggest they were partaking in “coffee communion.”

Instead, Newspaper Church involves grabbing a seat on the padded carpet that fills the 20-foot diameter of the teepee, and warming up by the fire. The fellow who sits next to the pile of wood slats is responsible for keeping the flames fed, or else smoke fills the teepee and Newspaper Church becomes “brought to you by Visine.”

Eventually, one by one, participants pull out newspaper articles they’ve brought. They describe them for five or 10 minutes, and then the conversation goes where it goes.

“It is basically,” said Jeff Morrow, a friend of Helmick and an organizer of the idea, “a teepee full of people who don’t necessarily have any background together, which is kind of how society is. It is a great social experiment.”

• • •

For Helmick, a teepee was a natural choice.

First, there’s the beauty of a circle. Everybody is facing each other. With everybody sitting on the floor, everybody also is on the same eye level. And a fire in the middle of it all, Helmick says, “brings out a different part of people.”

“Really, this is about the genius of simplicity, or the simplicity of genius,” Helmick said pointing to the teepee. “It’s one of those two. It is all very elemental.”

Plus, it’s just cool. The wooden poles, which stretch 29 feet into the air, are from an area near Glacier National Park in Montana. The duck canvas that forms the teepee’s covering comes from West Virginia.

Helmick started planning for the teepee about a year ago, but in terms of constructing it, that took about a day. It has been up since the late summer, and thus far Helmick has used it for everything from Newspaper Church to a solitary place to enjoy a cup of morning coffee.

Teepee kits are not that hard to find online. Prices vary considerably depending upon the size. Some one- or two-person teepees can be had for a few hundred dollars, but Helmick said if you wanted to have one of decent quality you should expect to spend anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. If you wanted to splurge, you could get a buffalo hide one for around $50,000, Helmick estimated.

Although the Internet has made the kits easier to find, the idea of a teepee in the yard isn’t new. Carla Craven got her first teepee 15 years ago. She placed it in her yard in Shawnee, in the heart of Johnson County. When she first carried the teepee’s poles — a process that requires finding the balance point so the long supports can rest upon your shoulders — she realized this was right for her.

“It was like I was doing the same thing that people hundreds and hundreds of years ago were doing,” Craven said.

Ever since, Craven has had a simple answer to the question of why she would want a teepee.

“I got mine because I wanted to uncomplicate things,” Craven said.

• • •

Today’s sermon from Newspaper Church:

It begins with natural conversation kindling — politics. Morrow shares an article about Gov.-elect Sam Brownback’s leadership style and what changes may be on the horizon. Another participant, Lawrence resident Karen Frick, takes her turn and talks about Native American medicine wheels and the different “lodges” of life. Next is a review of a satirical piece from The Onion, which on this day was advocating for Tony’s Law — a law requiring marijuana dealers to register much like sex offenders. The intent, of course, is to make sure neighbors don’t have to travel too far for their pot.

Before the next participant can jump in, Morrow brings up the medicine wheel article again. He had been looking it over and noticed that the “women’s lodge” was listed on the chart as a “house of silence.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” he says with a laugh.

Back to the article rotation. There’s a piece from The New York Times about young people creating their own jobs. And then another from The Times about an online seller of designer eyeglasses figuring out that he could boost his Google standing if he was mean enough that his customers wrote nasty online reviews about him.

That led to a discussion about how the word “viral” has become a compliment and how virtually anything can be an online business. That morphed into Craven’s desire to open a food vendor cart, which of course caused Chris, the tortilla flipping, butter inspector, to recall how his son once threw a burrito at a man in Albuquerque.

That’s it. Really. Church dismissed.

So, what has been the point of this nearly two-hour conversation?

Well, maybe it is just that somebody said it all and somebody else listened. Maybe the point was something else. But without question, there was a point.

All you had to do was look up. After all, that’s the surest way to find a point in a teepee.