SilasPartners.com -

Sponsorships

Mission Statement:

The purpose of this article is to communicate a vision for the Christianity.com network, and specifically for the Christianity.com site itself. While we offer robust technology solutions to the organizations we work with, we see ourselves as much more than a technology company. We exist to make the message of Christianity more widely available to people around the world.

The mission of Christianity.com is to connect people around the world with ministries, with ministry resources, and with each other, so that the body of Christ may be strengthened worldwide.

Our desire is to create one site that answers any question anyone has about Christianity, no matter who they are. For someone who has never heard about Christianity, there will be a section explaining the basics of the faith, and there will be a comprehensive “Reasons to Believe” section for skeptics. For a mature Christian or a church leader, there will be a depth of resources, addressing every topic and every section of the Bible. As people connect with these resources, we will also help them connect with ministries that can address their needs. In this way, we are a conduit, connecting individuals who have very real spiritual needs with ministries that are equipped to minister to them.

The new Christianity.com will become the comprehensive directory of Christian organizations on the Internet, the central clearinghouse of Christian resources, and the online community that is formed around these resources. In accomplishing this, we aim to become the premier destination site for Christians on the Internet.

What will the new Christianity. com be like?

In creating the new Christianity.com, our job is not to create the resources that will go on it.  You have already created them!  We will work to organize them and make them available in a variety of formats, so that people can find them, benefit from them, and connect with the ministry that created them. In this way, we are a “megaphone” for your ministry, giving you broader reach for your teaching, and helping you connect with a global audience.

As a demonstration of what's to come, we wanted to give you a sneak preview of what we are building.  As we develop our organization directory, our resource database, and our community-building features, such as forums and Bible study tools, we expect that all of our partner ministries will benefit.

Organization Directory

Many of the organizations that we work with are currently listed on Christianity.com, just one click away from the front page. To see your organization listed on Christianity.com, please visit sites.silaspartners.com/ministries

Soon, each organization that is part of the Christianity.com network will have its own access page on Christianity.com. As a Christianity.com partner, you will be able to control your own access page through web-based forms. Each access page will contain general information about your ministry, contact information for your organization, a search engine for all resources created by your organization, and a link back to your home page. To the extent you take advantage of our list serve application and our online giving service, individuals visiting Christianity.com will have an opportunity to sign up for a mailing list, or to donate to your ministry from the Christianity.com site.

You can view examples of access pages on resources.silaspartners.com. We expect that Christianity.com access pages for all of our partner ministries will be implemented by the end of the summer.

 

Resource Database

Central to the Christianity.com site will be a comprehensive database of resources, organized under a consistent taxonomy. Every resource added to the Christianity.com site will be associated with a wealth of meta-data, so that individuals visiting the site can easily find what they’re looking for. There are many ways an individual might search for a particular resource, and our content database will support searches across a broad range of criteria.

Think of all the resources your ministry creates. You may have sermon tapes gathering dust on a shelf, or years’ worth of Sunday school lessons stuck in a file cabinet. Maybe you have text articles or Bible studies that are lost on the hard drive of your computer.

We are busy working on a new content management interface, which will make it very easy to upload all the resources your ministry creates onto your Christianity.com access page (as well as onto your own website). These resources will also be show up as search results on the larger Christianity.com site.

In addition to showing up in search results, these resources will be featured on different channels that we will introduce over time. A channel might be created around a particular book of the Bible (such as Genesis, or Isaiah, or John), a topic category (such as leadership, or loving God, or evangelism), or a particular community of people (such as skeptics, or church leaders, or missionaries, or college students). This channel structure will allow people to easily find what they’re looking for, and to the extent your resources are tagged with meta-data, there’s a good chance they will come across your resources and have opportunity to contact your ministry.

We expect that we will begin to launch our new channels in the Fall of 2002. Over time, we hope to have hundreds of channels on the Christianity.com site, each containing hundreds of helpful resources.

Community

The final step is create an online community around our ministry partners and our database of resources. To this end, we will introduce a number of community-building tools, such as online forums and Bible study tools. For a sneak preview of what these might look like, please check the following links:

Online Forums - conline.net/ccom_demo.htm

We have an existing community of tens of thousands of people that regularly visit our network of sites, which include Christianity.com, Lightsource.com, and Christians Online (www.conline.net). Over the next six months, we will merge these communities into one, just as we will merge all of our organizations and resources onto one site, the new Christianity.com!

The Opportunity:

There is an unprecedented opportunity for Christian organizations to communicate the message of Christianity to a global audience. Today, we find ourselves on the cusp of a communication revolution. It is an understatement to say that the Internet is a revolutionary communication tool.

While many individual ministries have great websites, and while increasingly there are real examples of authentic ministry taking place online, as a general rule the online Christian witness is lagging behind the secular world. As Christians, we have a message we want to proclaim, but as a rule our communication efforts to date have been subscale. Despite the fact that Christians are the largest identifiable community in the world, only two Christian web sites crack the top 1,000 worldwide addresses.

At the same time, there is a great demand for Christian resources on the web. In December of 1995, there were 16 million people on the Internet; today there are 560 million people worldwide who use the Internet, and this growth will only continue. Not only are there a lot of people online, but there are a lot of people online who are looking for spiritual resources. According to USA Today, over 25% of people who have been on the Internet have searched for religious content. The Barna Research Group estimates that by the year 2010, 10-20% of Americans will rely on the Internet for their religious experiences.

As one of the original groups on the Christianity.com network, you have a unique opportunity. Over the next six months, you can help us shape the Christianity.com site, as we work to build it into the premier site for Christians on the Internet. As one of the original groups on the Christianity.com network, you will be the flagship organizations for many of the Christianity.com channels, as they are developed.

What can I do to help?

We pray for our partner ministries regularly, and we would covet your prayers during this time. We know that God does not need human beings to accomplish His purposes. At the same time, in His grace, He condescends to allow us to play a part in reaching people with the Gospel. He’s used each of you in your respective ministries, and we pray that He will continue to use Christianity.com to reach people with the truth about Himself.

Second, we would appreciate your continued patience. It is going to take time to implement this vision, but I think you will see spectacular progress over the next six months. As we make progress on the Christianity.com site, this will benefit all the ministries in the Christianity.com network.

Finally, we would value your feedback. Do you have ideas for channels on the site? Are there other features that you’d like to see introduced? Do you have any other ideas you’d like to share with us? If you have feedback, please email us at feedback@silaspartners.com.

We sincerely appreciate your partnership in the Gospel.

The Team at Christianity.com