July 2014 – Godinterest

July 31, 2014January 15, 2024

Facebook Has More People than Any Major Religion Except Christianity

The number of Facebook monthly users has surpassed the followers of Islam, and is closing in on the most numerous religion, Christianity. The Pew Research Center reports that Christianity counts 2.3 billion people among its adherents, followed by Islam with about 1.8 billion. By comparison, Facebook reports it now has 1.32 billion daily active users and 2.01 billion monthly active users as of June 2017—all supported by a staff of just 20,658 people.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes his platform could fill the void left behind by the decline of religious and civil communities in the US. Americans are becoming less religious, join fewer community groups, and report record low levels of trust in their fellow citizens. “That’s a lot of people who now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else,” he said this June at a Chicago rally for creators of Facebook groups.

Zuckerberg has even approvingly cited religions role in society, perhaps implying a similar goal for Facebook. “People who go to church are more likely to volunteer and give to charity—not just because they’re religious, but because they’re part of a community,” he said in June. “A church doesn’t just come together. It has a pastor who cares for the well-being of their congregation, makes sure they have food and shelter. A little league team has a coach who motivates the kids and helps them hit better. Leaders set the culture, inspire us, give us a safety net, and look out for us.”

Facebook is growing at an order of magnitude faster than any established denomination. No major religion is expected to grow faster than 1.4% per year (Islam) over the next two decades, predicts Pew. Yet Facebook, despite rivaling them in size, has steadily grown its global user base by about 22% each year. Of course, Facebook’s expansion will slow as it increases in size (see the “law of large numbers“), but even a drastic drop in this pace means Facebook users will exceed the number of Christians before the decade is out.

As it grows, Facebook has gone so far as to change its mission statement from its focus on making “the world more open and connected” to “bring[ing] the world closer together,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN Tech this June. The company’s CEO has ramped up his campaign to portray Facebook as a force for harmony, rather than division, in public life after an election season which saw the social network accelerate the spread of inaccurate news and conspiracy theories. The CEO not known for public outreach announced a 50-state US tour in January to “get out and talk to more people about how they’re living, working and thinking about the future.”

Facebook already owns three of the five largest online communities in the world: its own network, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The other two, Chinese services WeChat and TenCent, have about 2 billion users between them. To fuel this growth, Facebook has gone on a relentless acquisition spree of any platform where it sees its future audience heading next. For now, that means Facebook can sustain meteoric growth while counting about a quarter of the world’s population as its users. It shows no signs of stopping.

Godinterest is a work in progress. We do hope we get it right, and we firmly believe that getting it right means using our voice online, even on controversial topics. The Christian voice is important, and silence does no one any good. It’s worth the trouble to figure out how to do this, even if it means stumbling along the way.

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:14-16)

July 19, 2014January 15, 2024

Anti-Christian Bigotry on the Rise, Godinterest Attacked!

LONDON, ENGLAND – Hackers attempted unsuccessfully to disrupt Godinterest.com from April – August 2014 with a series of attacks that continued over a period of 4 months. The hackers used a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack using multiple systems to flood the bandwidth or resources of Godinterest. Flooding our system with traffic and successfully took the website offline for half an hour each time.

The attack, while achieving nothing significant, was the most successful attack against the Godinterest website since being featured in the Huffington Post, Evening Standard, Washington Times, Jezebel and Wikipedia. Previously, the website’s mail system was hacked which resulted in the loss of user data.

Godinterest places a premium on security, which protects the site and its data, but the website is under constant attack. Hackers often attempt to bring down the news, prayers, and Bible portions of Godinterest, presumably because they are opposed to the mission.Among those who work for the organization, the evidence is clear. The forces of evil are hard at work against all those who share the Catholic message. From Pope Francis and the Vatican, to our bishops, to Catholic Online itself, evil works tirelessly to destroy good.

Evil is enjoying some success online as Godinterest faces increasing censorship of its news and Bible readings.

What is happening is deeply upsetting and is a result of the growing trend to suppress Christian speech across the internet and on social media.

Christians who value Godinterest and freedom of speech are encouraged to support religious freedom.

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:14-16)

July 18, 2014January 15, 2024

Teaching Christianity in Christian Schools Is ‘Extremist’?

Updated October 28th 2007 – A Christian organisation has been banned from a church-run primary school following complaints by non Christian parents who claim their children were being “exposed to potentially damaging ideology” and “extremist” views about sin.

Some parents apparently complained that their children were told that if they don’t believe in God, “they would not go to a good place when they died.”

Wayne Harris, national director of the Christian charity Crossteach, denies these allegations and said;

“Wherever possible we work in partnership with local churches and we reflect their teaching, always aiming to be sensitive to the local context, and recognizing that churches vary. We teach mainstream Christianity,” Wayne Harris, national director of the Christian charity Crossteach.”

“In 16 years of Christian schools work no teacher has ever raised a concern that something has been said that could be interpreted as in any way ‘hateful’ or ‘extremist’ and we strongly refute this current parental allegation. On the contrary, schools have consistently expressed appreciation for the contribution that Crossteach has made and for the quality of the work,” Harris added.

As The London Telegraph reported that another parent who wasn’t named said,

“I do know some of the children have been upset by what they have heard. No one minds Nativity plays and Bible stories but considering most of the parents at the school aren’t practicing Christians, I think the feeling is that it’s all too much.”

Furthermore the The Guardian reported:

“We recognize and respect the school’s Christian values but think there is a brand of Christianity that is abusing that respect. The basis of [our] complaint relates purely to concerns over the welfare and safeguarding of children who we believe are being exposed to potentially damaging ideology.”

The headmaster of the school said that he is “deeply saddened” to be cutting ties with the Crossteach Christian group, but that however.

“I do not believe Crossteach has done anything wrong,” Turvey added. “They do not deserve the tarnishing of their good name and allegations of extremism that have taken place over the last few months.”

Although the faith school St. Johns has a mandate to promote the Church of England and Christianity, it’s still has an obligation to follow Department for Education DfE guidelines when it comes to non-discrimination and respect and tolerance for other faiths, The Guardian noted, which in this case presumably superseded the Christian groups biblical bible teachings.

Conservative Christian parents have also clashed with Church of England schools. Nigel and Sally Rowe said last month that they’re considering taking legal actions against a school in Portsmouth after officials dismissed their concerns regarding allowing transgender children.

The Rowes have said that their son was left confused after a boy in his class began wearing a dress to school.

“Our children first said ‘they’re a boy and they’re my friend, and now I’ve got [to] say she instead of he,'” the couple explained.

The school said it must follow guidelines and “acknowledge a transgendered person’s [so-called] true gender”.

The Rowe’s stated that officials “should have provided support for the transgender child in a more discrete way with people who are trained professionals.

July 18, 2014October 7, 2017

Use Your Sense of Style to Launch a Big Fashion Career

Luck Mag | by Paula Neal Mooney

Back in the 1970s, my mother took a sense of pride in being able to use her Singer sewing machine to sew the Tartan plaid school uniform skirts that my sister and I were required to wear for attendance at St. Edmund’s Parochial Elementary School. All these years later, I still remember how she would purchase special labels from Jerome’s – a fabric store on the south side of Chicago – that read special little things like, “Sewn with love for you.”

Mommy obviously had a special knack and talent for selecting fabrics, laying them against precut patterns or even her own designs, pinning and cutting them out and sewing them until they became beautiful clothes that could rival the structure of many garments we see in retail stores today. Yet and still, as many hours as she spent in that back room creating everything from play clothes to school uniforms to our prom dresses, my mother seemed to never reach her apex in terms of that specific styling talent.

How to launch your own fashion career

Therefore, if you are reading this article and something about it piques your interest, perhaps you too embody a specific styling talent or possess designer skills that could be brought to the world at large and help you launch your own successful fashion career.

Even if you don’t sew your own clothes, you might have a knack for sketching designs and could potentially launch a career that allows others to do the dirty sewing work. Or, you may prefer to purchase ready made clothes from various retail locations and put them together in stunning outfits that look great on various body types. If so, thankfully you could become a stylist, and it’s a good thing that celebrity stylists are very popular these days.

The best news is that living in the Information Age is quite the blessing, at least compared to what it could’ve been like as a 1950s-era housewife living in Boise, Idaho. Just imagine trying to launch a fashion career when you only have snail mail or dead tree media or an automobile at your disposal for getting the word out about your fashion. These days, you can use sites like Pinterest or even its Christian cousin, Godinterest, to upload photos of your own fashions or outfits that you styled to try and bring attention to your designs.

The Success of Marketing via Image-Based Websites

First there was MySpace, a fun network that ruled the roost online and captured independent music fans a-plenty. In time, Facebook soon enough came along and blew that old social networking site out of the water and almost off the web. Later, in a near sneak attack, the runaway success of mostly image-based social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest would displace a portion of Facebook’s throne.
The recent major buyouts of various social sites that focused on featuring photos prominently – over and above the words and captions adjacent to them – proved that a picture really is worth 1,000 words, and that loads of pics truly possess the power to draw many eyeballs on the World Wide Web. It is no wonder that many specialized segments of websites using similar layouts and replicated business model designs of these popular image-based sites would also become a hit with users. Take for example Godinterest.com, a website that looks a whole lot like Pinterest, however, the main focus is in providing the type of image-based content that is popular with Christians, from clothing emblazoned with Scripture to inspirational quote memes to sermon videos and beyond.

Marketing via specialized social network sites

It seems natural that like-minded individuals would want to branch off from the free-for-all types of social networking websites into their own specialized interests where they can bond freely with one another over one centralized topic or theme. Expect that momentum to grow, because no one can deny the power of a viral joke, product, or even a story that has been set on fire by web users sharing it with one another.

Even entrepreneurs that appear on popular television shows such as Shark Tank admit that a lot of their marketing success could be directly attributed to social media websites where one photo has been spread of viral nature, which causes even new companies to experience quite an uptick in sales beyond their wildest imaginations. Such was the circuitous path to stardom for a company called “Grace and Lace,” whose photos of their long, thick lacy socks that extended beyond the tops of boots went viral on Pinterest and exploded the startup firm’s sales.

Therefore, taking advantage of the innate desire folks have to share good and pretty things with one another can become s bih part of a viral marketing campaign that might not cost a ton of money – even if it does take time to “pin” or upload various images to your company’s virtual board. Let’s say you’re a maker of faith-based clothing. One good marketing strategy could mean using a site like Godinterest to both gain exposure to your brand and to try and get buzz going for your line of gear for believers. It could take plenty of sharing, re-tweeting and uploading, however it may take only one interesting image or meme to spread like wildfire across the Internet, and make the time well worth the sacrifice.

This is especially a good method for entrepreneurial individuals who have a whole lot more time than money to throw at their marketing strategy.

Sign-up: https://godinterest.com

July 5, 2014January 15, 2024

Author Sees Growing Religious Censorship in U.S.

America’s religious believers are facing a growing government push to censor expressions of faith and should prepare to put up a fight, a prominent Christian leader and author told the Family Research Council Tuesday.

Too often, religious beliefs are now regarded as “toxic waste” — something to be contained and kept at bay or underground by official policy, Dr. James Tonkowich, former president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, told the District-based traditional-values organization.

Recent examples include: Houston city officials seeking subpoenas for pastors’ sermons to scrutinize their stands on sexuality; colleges harassing or ejecting Christian ministries from campus for their faith; and courts and officials forcing Christian business owners to participate in same-sex weddings.

Christians and other believers should “recognize that the world is sinful,” expect problems, and prepare to respond with “holiness, virtue and heroism,” said Mr. Tonkowich, author of “The Liberty Threat: The Assault on Religious Freedom in America Today,” from St. Benedict Press.

Don’t allow “people around us to blow us off as haters or behind the times,” he advised.

But instead be prepared to suffer, even while “taking heart” that God has taken over the world, said Mr. Tonkowich, who worked with the late Chuck Colson and his BreakPoint Radio and leadership-building Centurions Program.

This article was posted on Jan 3 2013 at Washington Times

Godinterest is a work in progress. We do hope we get it right, and we firmly believe that getting it right means using our voice online, even on controversial topics. The Christian voice is important, and silence does no one any good. It’s worth the trouble to figure out how to do this, even if it means stumbling along the way.

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:14-16)