http://www.fbcchickamauga.com

This is my home church in Chickamauga, Ga. I know for a fact that this site was designed by a professional. The home page is clean, simple and direct. However, it loads very slowly. The website flows smoothly, and there is plenty of lateral transition. For a small church with a regular attendance of 250, the site is fairly sophisticated. There is plenty of opportunitiy for viewers to learn more about the church and its staff and people.

http://www.burningbushbaptist.net

I attended this church in my hometown until I was in college. This site is a little busier. There is a lot more going on because it is a much bigger church than FBC. There are in depth profiles of every staff member, and the website appears to be in conjunction with Facebook. The site loads slowly because there is so much content being absorbed. A downside is the inability to link back to the homepage.

<http://www.peavine.org

This is one of the largest churches in my hometown. The flash feature in this website is as sophisticated as any I have ever seen. It does a nice job with contrasting the subheadings on this website. This site is informative, yet clean and simple. Without question, this site will draw new visitors to the church.

Jeff and Cherilyn seemed to be coming from the perspective that they are free to worship however they want and therefore everyone else should be as well. The government should in no way advocate adherence to any religion. I also appreciated their saying that there should be religious freedom for all, regardless of the religion. People in this country should be allowed to be openly Buddhist, Jewish or Christian. Or they can be without a religion and openly atheist. I hope the BJC will be able to continue its good work for a long time to come.

The movie Bruce Almighty is not a Christian movie. Nor is it a movie without a message. According to director Tom Shadyac (who is a committed Christian), it is simply a story of an imperfect man on a journey just like the rest of us.

There are countless subliminal messages and symbols in this movie. In an interview with hollywoodJesus.com, this is how Shadyak describes one of my favorite connections in the movie:

I accidentally run into them [subliminal Christian messages], like with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost analogies. Morgan is three guys in the movie. He is the electrician, the janitor, and the boss. Many were intentional and many were just coincidental—which is one of my favorite sayings, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

While some Christian movies (i.e. Fireproof and Facing the Giants) will force the issue of religion, Bruce Almighty appeals to a wider audience while at the same time communicating a message of grace and hope.

Some may argue that Bruce Almighty went too far by having Bruce and his girlfriend living together. But Shadyac replies by pointing out all of the imperfect people in the Bible. He says, “This film is our love story in our dealing with God’s love. It must deal with imperfection.”

After reading the full interview with Shadyak, it was clear that he wanted to get a message across without being dogmatic. I think he succeeded.

Not only was I impressed with the BJC’s cause, but I was also impressed with the communications staff and all that they do. Jeff and Cherilyn have their hands in a little bit of everything when it comes to communicating the BJC’s message. It was interesting to hear about not only their roles as journalists and PR professionals, but also as advocates and lobbyists in the D.C. culture.

Another thing that I thought was interesting is the fact that the BJC outsources its blog posts to a man named Don Byrd. It is Don’s job to stay updated on everything related to the BJC and the fight for religious liberty on Capitol Hill, and he is constantly updating the blog feed. I thought this was a great post in response to Rev. Franklin Graham being disinvited from the military’s National Day of Prayer ceremony:

Letter to Franklin Graham

In the article Welch says of Christians, “I think their attitude toward the gay community—love the sinner, hate the sin—is very disingenuous because what it’s like in practice is that they are both repulsed and amused by gay people…Their prejudice needs confrontation.”

While I agree that probably the majority of Christian media sources are openly bias against homosexuality, not all Christians portrayed in the media oppose homosexuality.

The late televangelist Jerry Falwell very publicly opposed homosexuality, as evident in this clip of him talking about how he thinks homosexuality contributed to 9/11.

Within the realm of Christian media, not all media espouses an  anti- homosexuality message. There is a small percentage of Christian media which serves a niche Christian audience who see nothing wrong with homosexuality. This video from The Gay Christian Network serves as an example.

This is certainly the case for Mr. Martignoni, who has probably been on the defensive as a Catholic apologetic. He has been called to defend his religion in a predominately white, Protestant culture. He does not push his religion on anyone necessarily; he only defends accusations with truth. In return, he presents a rather moderate view on Catholicism and offers outreach to those in need.

I felt most of his subject material was on target, with the exception of his critique of America’s current social climate. His take on how the church should change the culture seems to be a little far-fetched in my personal opinion. Instead, the church should focus on its individual members, starting with a grass roots approach, to begin changing the world. Change begins in the heart, not in political circles.

Haley said the event was a lot of work to put on and that the church PR team pulled out all the stops to bring in as much of a crowd as possible. As a result, Donald Miller’s talk was sold out and he was thrilled. I really admired how a relatively small church such as Trinity United Methodist really went for it to please such a big name and in turn reaped huge benefits.

I love this book because it is so original. Its territories are completely uncharted. The book poses the scenario, “What if God were not an old white man with a wrinkled face and a white beard way up in the sky somewhere but rather a big black woman in a log cabin who wanted to cook you collard greens and called you “Baby?” Thus, in the book our Heavenly Father takes on the form of Papa, as she is called, and whole new depths of a God who loves tenderly and unconditionally are explored.

You never know what is going to happen in this book. It’s sort of like Christian sci-fi ( if there were such a thing and that didn’t sound so tacky) mixed in with a Christian Nicholas Sparks novel. Young makes the Holy Trinity come to life as he personifies the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit into tangible characters who are represented as separate beings in communion with one another rather than as one conglomerate being.

However, the message of a deep, unrelenting love impossible for us to understand is what makes me really love this book. This book is an experience in love from beginning to end, and after reading it I honestly thought of God in a different, brighter light. Because the truth is, why can’t God be a large black woman? Why can’t He be an old white guy? He can be any and all of these things and probably none of them because He is so much more. The Shack serves as a reminder to me that He is so big but makes Himself available to us in new ways again and again because He so desperately wants a relationship with us. This book makes that intangible seem incredibly real.

To me this guiding principle of reporting all beliefs as accurately as possible whether or not you personally believe in them is professional and highly respectable. I wish more people followed this guideline, and I think he explained his reasoning behind it wonderfully. He said a Christian journalist has a “higher mandate” to report beliefs accurately when you disagree with them, so people can better distinguish the real truth from fiction. I love the idea of having a higher mandate to always report the truth, especially when you disagree, because although I always try to be objective, I have never though about reporting in these terms before.

The homepage of Edmond’s First Baptist Church is pretty cluttered, and the viewer has to scroll down, which isn’t ideal. The stream of recent stories is one of the reasons the homepage is so cluttered. There are too many of them. It would help if they would only post the most recent stories. The color combination of grey and beige works well together, though. Also, the graphics are fairly nice quality. However, they are impersonal because they look generic and they all tend to be too small as well.  Other than having to scroll down so far on the “Home” page and the “Pastors” page, the layout isn’t too bad.

Answers to the 5 Ws are answered under the Worship tab at the top, but it was hard to find because I clicked on the “About Us” and “Guests” tabs first. So, the way things are labeled doesn’t make the site very easy to navigate. The news and graphics for each age group listed under the “Age Groups” tab match their respective audience, although there are too many small graphics, which makes the page look cluttered. In general, the site is somewhat difficult to navigate and requires a good bit of scrolling.

http://livingthelife.cc/templates/System/default.asp?id=20978

My first thought upon viewing the homepage of the Abundant Life Church is that it looks incredibly unpolished and unprofessional. The dominant pale teal color which covers the page made me think it was some sort of surfing blog created by someone who doesn’t know much about blogging. It’s just a terrible color, and it’s everywhere.

There are few graphics, but what they do have looks really unprofessional. The color of the text is different on each page, which looks bad. Bronzy red orange on a teal background is a bad idea. The overall layout is not at all pleasing to the eye. Things are thrown together everywhere, fonts right next to each other are different, font sizes are different and the list goes on. It’s a mess.

The 5 Ws are basically impossible to find, and the entire website would be a headache to navigate. No external links are posted.

http://www.ziontemplecooljc.com

The Zion Temple Church website is also definitely not professional-looking. The aesthetics are off the mark. There is way too much white space on the homepage. The biggest problem, however, is that there are several moving animation features. For example, on the homepage alone there is a constantly scrolling vertical news feature, a booklet with the pages turning, a satellite/radio animation and a constantly scrolling horizontal feed feature that says, “Come Worship With Us!” All that movement would be considered pretty annoying by the average viewer.

The color combination of white, purple and beige doesn’t really match well either. All the graphics are too small, and the only photos are small ones of the staff. The 5Ws are not easy to find, and the site is hard to navigate overall as well.