Now playing on GodTube

Here is a great story about GodTube—a Christian response to YouTube—written Stephanie Shapiro for the Baltimore Sun, entitled, “Clicking with Jesus,” (1/13/08).

Stephanie writes:

Spend an hour on GodTube.com and you'll find that God is in the details of thousands of videos. He is benevolent. He is angry. He is forgiving. He is grief-stricken. He is ecstatic. He supports Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, too. He is there for Britney Spears, and He wants to save gay people from unholy desires.

Created in the image of YouTube, the Christian video-sharing site presents a God of unlimited dispositions. "A Letter from Hell," a fire-and-brimstone drama chronicling the fate of a teen drunken driving victim, suggests a judgmental God. "Little Girl and Psalm 23," a home video of a toddler reciting the song's sacred words, argues for a God who meets cute. In "That's My King!" the late preacher S.M. Lockridge's cadenced catalog of deific virtues, God is praised as all of the above - and more.
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The article does a wonderful job exploring the complex nature of an online Christian community where varying ideology and theology mix to create a rich online tapestry of Christ.

But for all the good GodTube.com achieves in encouraging personal expressions of faith in new forms of media, it stands as an example opposite of what the Amy Foundation, through the Amy Writing Awards, is trying to encourage, which is the sharing of one’s Christian faith, reinforced with scripture, in the mainstream media.

How easy is it to stand in front of your church and share your faith when you consider sharing it at a football game or at a work conference or across the street at your neighbor’s house?

Just like the local church, however, we need sites like GodTube to encourage people’s faith. It is my hope that those posting on GodTube, also post on YouTube too, so that their faith with “shine before [all] men” (Matt 5:16).

Stephanie’s interesting and engaging article is exactly the time of Christian journalism, published in the mainstream press, that we celebrate through the annual Amy Writing Awards. Unfortunately, I didn’t see where her writing included a piece of identifiable scripture, so the article doesn’t technically qualify for the 2008 Awards.

Stephanie, great job, keep up the good work, and try to work scripture in next time!