Paul Baloche
Desperation Band
Brian Doerksen
Don Moen
Desiring God
The Practice of the Presence of God 
With the new year now well under way it is time to present the awards for the best free Christian resource websites for 2007. The number of awards have been limited to four, meaning many high quality Christian websites that would be worthy winners have not been mentioned. However, it is so exciting to write this blog and see so many superb Christian resources available on the internet. It is cheesy and Oscar-like to say it, but without them this website would not exist!
So without further ado, and with a drum roll in the background lets see who has won…
Best free Christian website : Desiring God
This award is for the website that has made the top contribution to free Christian resources in the year. The size of backing is taken into account, so if a small one-person website is punching above its weight it could well win!
Desiring God is the proud winner of the prestigious ‘Best free Christian website’ award from free Christian resources this year. Desiring God is an example to everyone in the distribution of Christian resources. Firstly all of John Pipers sermons and books from the last twenty five are available online free. Desiring God is presented superbly with most content available in in several different formats within a well structured website.
They are also very clear about why they feel content should be provided free when possible. This also makes them worthy winners of the main award as they are 100% committed to providing high quality free Christian resources. The main reasons they give are:
- It demonstrates God’s grace
- It serves others most effectively
- Far more of your content will spread, and it will spread to far more people
Top newcomer : YouVersion
This award goes to a Christian website that has only begun in the year - or only really started to make a big impression in the year.
Whilst YouVersion is still in its Beta stage it is well advanced and is rapidly improving each month. YouVersion is a bible study package that allows videos, sermons, pictures and basically anything to be linked to bible verses and studies.
Before it gets even close to its full potential it will need both time and further tweaking. However I think the opportunity for YouVersion is huge. It will be exciting to see how this project grows in 2008.
Special contribution : All About God
This award goes to a Christian website that has made a particularly good contribution to the Christian community. It could be anything from a well written blog to a website stuffed full of sermons!
All About God is an apologetics website, so it aims to answer any questions about Christianity. It does this is a clear and understandable way, and often a good first port of call whenever you have a query. However, the award has been given to All About God because of the way they keep the focus on Jesus. It is easy as Christians on the internet to forget that many non Christians will look at our websites. All About God give a great example of how to keep the gospel prominent on any website. This is certainly an area I’ll be looking to develop on free Christian resources in 2008.
Most popular : iBibleSpace
This award is for the website that has been the most popular amongst the readers of free Christian resources. It has been awarded based on the website that most people had clicked through to visit from this blog.
The clear winner was the iBibleSpace by AcroDesign Technologies, with 6% of all website visits from free Christian resources having gone to their website. This was no doubt in part due to the popularity of the best free iPhone bible post that I wrote. However,
iBibleSpace is a worthy winner having brought the bible to the iPhone in such a superb fashion. All iPhone users should check out their website!
Tags: all-about-God, best, christian, desiring-God, free, general, iBibleSpace, resources, youversion
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The vision of this site is “to equip the typical church-goer with a personalized two-sided Business Card that will make it POSSIBLE for them to be a MISSIONary”. There is not much else to add on what you can get from this website, so the question is just how good is it?
You can download a pdf which has images on them already, much like the example you can see to the right. You can easily change the contact details (which are generic initially) to whatever you want so that they are personalised. A big positive of these cards is that they link back to the All About God website. This is a fantastic website to put on evangelistic materials as not only does it answer a lot of questions people may have about Christianity, but it is very focused on getting people to respond to gospel.
The main drawback of the cards is that the free ones are relatively similar and there is not much you can do it make them unique. However if you want to do this you may as well create your own from scratch, and presumably if you had the skills to do that you would do it yourself anyway!
Also of course you will need to print them out in colour which can invariably be quite expensive if you print out lots and may not be the highest quality. For a charge the website will professionally print the cards for you. You can also access more designs if you are willing to pay.
Summary
If you want a card to hand out that links back to a fantastic website then this should help.
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Strengths
- Easy to add your details
- Links back to All About God, which is a fantastic website
Weaknesses
- Not loads of free designs
- You still need to print them in colour, which could end up being expensive!
Links
Website: http://www.missionpossiblecards.com/pages/
All About God website: http://www.freechristianresources.org/2007-08/all-about-god-review
Tags: all-about-God, christian, evangelism, free, resources Related posts on this site:
All About God is site dedicated to “reach out to skeptics, seekers, believers, and a hurting world with powerful evidence for God and the Good News of Jesus”. In essence, for the majority of their key content, this means it is focused towards answering questions to prove the existence of God, or importance of Jesus. They consider themselves followers of Jesus rather than “Christians”, and whilst not formally affiliated with any churches they do work closely with several (e.g. Saddleback Church, where Rick Warren is the pastor).
AllAboutGOD.com gets it right: The best of technology mixed with the best of answers and information — combined to communicate the message of Christ to an online culture.”
Mark Mittelberg, Willow Creek Associates;
Author, Building a Contagious Church
According to some statics provided they are a very powerful ministry. Last year there were 20 million page views, and 30,000 people either coming to Christ for the first time, or rededicating their lives. And those numbers are rising faster all the time.
Main content
- Apologetic questions (God, bible, other religions etc.)
- Other questions (e.g. worship, ministry, evangelism etc.)
- MP3 bible software
- Daily Devotion
Apologetic questions (God, bible, other religions etc.)
This section covers many areas including:
- Does God exist scientifically
- The beliefs of all major religions, cults and strands of Christianity
- Is the Bible true
All of the questions are answered in a clear and easy to understand language. If you wanted to do a really detailed study on an area then you would need to look at other places too. However, All about God is a superb starting point as it covers off all the key points for any questions you have.
It also gives really good summaries of different religions or cults and what they believe.
Other questions (e.g. worship, ministry, evangelism etc.)
The website does not just focus on challenges to Christianity, but also looks at other questions more related to living a Christian life. So for instance, should you give, how should you pray, fellowship within the Church and many more areas are covered.
MP3 bible software
There is also the option of listening to the bible via mp3.It is a well designed program to find the verses to play, although the voice does sound a little automated. It is available in the NKJ or NLT translations. There is also lots of talks from Pastor Chuck Smith, the founder of the Calvary Chapel.
Devotion
There is a daily email (Monday to Friday) that you can subscribe to. It is in the form of a prayer with a couple of application questions at the end. You may find this better than other devotionals as the prayer aspect of it really helps you to take in the essence of the topic - and hopefully grow closer to Jesus because of it.
Ease of use and Presentation
Whilst not at all groundbreaking it is a simple site to navigate, and the look of the site compliments this.
One thing I love about this site is that is always looking to get a response from you. At the end of most articles there is a little paragraph with the option of committing or recommitting your life to Jesus at the end of it.
Summary
All about God is a great place to start looking into questions you may have. It is written in clear English, and there is a real focus on evangelism and getting readers to respond to the gospel.
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Strengths
- Easy to understand
- Wide variety of topics covered.
- Easy to use and navigate
- Focused on bringing visitors to Jesus (or bringing them back)
Weaknesses
- It could be argued some extra detail may useful on some answers, but I think this would negate the positives of keeping the answers simple and quick to understand
Links
Website: http://www.allaboutgod.com/
Tags: all-about-God, apologetics, bible, bible study, christian, devotional, free, God, resources, website Related posts on this site:
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