CEO, Chris Wyatt photo by Bill Miles

Secrets and truths about GodTube.com

Comment: SpiritLinks

GodTube.com, aka God YouTube, Broadcast Him, Jesus 2.0 and Godcaster presents a website for Christians and non-Christians to meet in a safe community to chat; discuss religious issues; watch or upload videos; research a virtual Bible; leave and view prayer requests; and participate in a poll for presidential candidates and related questions. The site had 10 million members log on from the official launch August 2007 to the end of the year, and 2 ½ million in January 2008. Forty percent of the traffic is international.

September 18, 2007, Mashable.com reported: "GodTube was the #1 fastest growing website in the US for the month of August ... With a 973% growth in August, reported by comScore, Inc., the site has done well since its launch in August."

I recently had a conversation with founder and CEO Chris Wyatt about GodTube.

R&S: What was your original intent for the site?

Wyatt: The intent all along was to spread the Gospel worldwide to help fulfill the great commission. We’re basically evangelizing on the internet.

Let me fill you in on a little more details. I was traveling from church to church for the last several years, and kept hearing the same thing, that church has difficulty reaching teens and 20-somethings. The language that they understand is videophile sharing and social networks – right? And what we did was, finally, I started helping churches individually by selling a very similar web product, and the sale cycle was so long that we were making programs with the churches that understood it. I said, 'You know what, we'll just do this on GodTube, right? Help the churches give tools and the resources to really reach the youth of America.

I read a study, a Pugh Institute study that said by 2025 half as many people will be going to church as in the year 2000. That set off some bells and alarms. So that was the original intent of the site.

So that was the original intent of the site. [He repeated] Now it's become what I consider to be the largest evangelical outreach, you know, period. We have millions of people coming to GodTube.com to learn about Christianity in a whole new way, and that's what it's really become. We've become an online Christian destination.

We have a Prayer Wall where you can upload prayers. We have a Virtual bible. We launched our family-friendly answer to MySpace. So there's a lot of tools now that have gone beyond that initial objective to help the church. [It has] become something that certainly has grown beyond our wildest imagination, and it continues helping the churches connect Christians worldwide.

R&S: What do you see next?

Wyatt: Well, certainly we see a lot of things. We're getting ready to enter the elections in a very public way here this week. Umm, we're also getting ready to do our own original programming. That's the type of thing we're really looking forward to.

We're building up the features of GodTube.com So right now our social network is in beta. We see accelerating that incrementally over the next couple of weeks. At the same time, we really, consider ourselves the best kept secret in Christianity at this point because we've only been marketed to the secular [population]. We're not that well known in Christianity. Last year we spent no money on marketing or advertizing, and we're going to start our transitional marketing this year. We're going to build traffic and attract traffic.

R&S: What are the original programming projects you're talking about?

Wyatt: Well, we're gonna start producing the news on a daily basis here in about 60 days, and we'll break that out into entertainment programs.

So, then you're going to see all sorts of Bible studies online; online lectures; you name it, you'll be able to see a whole plethora of stuff, using our live video tools.

R&S: It will all come from an evangelical perspective?

Wyatt: It'll come from a traditional Christian perspective.

R&S: What are you going to do in regards to the elections?

Wyatt: We're gonna do polling of the Christian market.

R&S: Are you going to give advice?

Wyatt: No, basically, it's a polling effort.

R&S: So you won't make any commentary about the candidates' religion?

Wyatt: No, we won't make any commentary. Um, let me tell you what we are. We're not going to endorse the candidates. We are going to invite the candidates to come on. There's no one single national source of Christian polling. No one's doing it. You know Christians are very pivotal in this election, and at the same time, we have a user base that represents all parties and all candidates.

And, we like to say at GodTube.com, we're the Switzerland of Christianity, which means we don't take sides whether it's a denominational view or a political view. We're there basically to express the views and commentary of our users.

R&S: That gets into an area I was curious about. Are different organizations or faith communities, for instance, if a community believes in gay rights or abortion are they able to upload to your website? You're coming from the evangelical position and I presume that means …

Wyatt: We don't come from an evangelical perspective, ma'am. We're the Switzerland of Christianity. We don't take a denominational view, whatsoever. So we're not coming from an evangelical perspective. What I said was, we are the largest evangelical outreach, which means all we're trying to do is spread the message of Christ.

So we don't come from a specific denominational view. We don't. This is not the Baptists online. It's not Presbyterians online. It's traditional Christianity. We have [members] from the Church of Christ, all the way to Baptists. We've got Protestant to Catholic. So, we're very neutral, extremely neutral, ok?

R&S: If someone from the Catholic perspective wrote against abortion, pro-life, what would you do with that?

Wyatt: Well, certainly if it's done in a respectful, family-friendly manner we'd post it. We have a statement of faith on our website and regardless of what their views are. Like, say, for example, someone comes and says, 'I believe in abortion and here's the reason,' we wouldn't allow them to proselytize it, but certainly they can get on. They can upload their perspective on it, you know. Just as anybody could.

Does that answer your question?

R&S: Yeah, a little bit, let me ask just one more part of that.

Wyatt: Sure.

R&S: Is there an area, I believe there is, where someone can start a blog, perhaps, and start discussions from different perspectives?

Wyatt: Oh, absolutely! I mean, as long as it's biblically based. You know what I mean? I mean, absolutely, that's what we're here for. We're absolutely, positively, here so that not only believers, but non-believers can get together in a nonthreatening environment and discuss these issues, you know.

Let me take it a step further. I see, for example, you've got Catholic and Protestant, and there's a number of differences between their theologies. We, certainly, on the one side, let's just take one issue. One issue that seems to be one of the larger issues is that of salvation. Salvation can be attained by grace or by work. Meaning, Protestants believe, as you probably know, that once you're saved, you're always saved. Well, Catholics believe that you're saved but you can lose your salvation and you must continue to do good works. Classic church debate.

Lots of opposition, heated opinion on either side. We are here to facilitate the discussion about those topics. So, for example, if you take a look at our comments section, there are lots of people arguing, arguing and disagreeing. And that's really where a lot of the traffic comes from – one person putting out a perspective and someone replies to it .

So, we're clearly there, you know, for the ability for them to have a place, to have a platform for a debate or disagreement. As a matter of fact, we see hosting a lot of those debates. We have live video tools that will allow us to have a videoed debate, much like you see on television. So, we see bringing these debates on.

There's really, in the history of Christ, there's not been one, let's call it a platform, a central place that you could go to discuss all of this. You obviously can't be at more than one place at a time, so you can't go to a Catholic or Baptist church. If you do hold an event, it's generally a local event. Well, on GodTube.com, it’s for online and it’s a single place for all those ideas and discussions about theology to take place.

I don't think I've explained it to a reporter that way before but there you go.

R&S: Well, I like the way you just reported it to me and I think that's where the richness of your site lies.

Wyatt: I definitely agree, that's it. You know, we've had discussions, arguments, thoughts for 2,000 years now. So, it's a really central market place, if you will, to be heard and state your opinion.

You know, believe it or not, we have a section called 'Non-Believers Seeking Answers,' and right now we're getting ready to heavily promote that. We want non-believers to come on.

Again, as long as it's in a respectful manner. If they go, 'If you think God doesn't exist you're all going to hell.' Well, that's not going to make it. But, if someone goes, 'I don't think there's a God and here's why …' If they say, 'I don't understand why Christians evangelize. Why do you guys go door to door? Help explain that. You know what, I have questions about my faith. I'm curious, but you're going to have to convince me.' I mean, that's what we're here for. We're here for the 2.5 billion Christians but, more importantly, we're here for the 4 billion who have questions about faith.

Let me give you an idea. Nobody knows this, ok. Here's a little scoop for you. Nobody knows what we've done, because I haven't told anybody. You have to do a little research on it, but in North Dakota a teacher was suspended for showing a video from GodTube in health class, ok. What happened was that we have a video called 'Letter from Hell.' And, it's kind of a jarring video. One of our most viewed videos. You can go to the video tab and click most viewed and you can see it there.

What it is, is a letter about a fictitious boy who's killed in a drunken driving accident and he's waiting to be taken to hell. So he writes his friend the letter. He says, 'Why didn't you tell me about Jesus? You told me about everything else. You are a Christian; shame on you.'

Well, the teacher in the health class, he wants to use this to discuss drunken driving. He was to discuss the finality of death. He used this as an illustration. He prefaced it with, 'Listen, I'm not showing this to you for religion. All right? But what I want you to take a look at is the finality of death. I want to discuss the finality of death, and I also want to discuss the seriousness of drinking and driving. Take all the religion out of it.'

Well, one young lady who was cutting up in class, according to the teacher, went home and told her parents. Now the problem was, it's the first week of Hanukah, right? The kid is Jewish and went home and complained to mom and dad. Well, dad just happens to be an attorney. So he wrote the school board a letter.

Understandably, he was upset. Understandably, he was upset. But, what happened, well, they suspended the teacher for 2 weeks without pay right before the holidays.

And, the story broke, certainly in North Dakota [in The Bismarck Tribune http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/12/11/news/topnews/144235.txt December 11, 2007, which posted the video on their webpage below the article].

Well, what we found after investigating it ourselves was, in fact, the young girl was cutting up in class, was not paying attention. According to the teacher, was not really paying attention.

So now, unfortunately, what ended up happening was we at GodTube felt very bad that we had disturbed their Hanukah. I sent them a gift basket, a very nice gift basket.

Bottom line, we regret what happened to your family. We regret that your holidays were spoiled, right? They were very kind and wrote me a letter back. They said, 'Hey, we've got no problem with you. We just didn't want religion in the classroom.'

Hey, I've got no problem with that, you know. End of story. But the teacher who did this, I think was treated unfairly by the school board. In my estimation he was. But he didn't want to fight it. He would let it go and he said, 'You know what, this has really destroyed my Christmas holiday. My holiday's destroyed because I can't buy gifts for my kids.'

So, you know what I did? We paid for his lost wages. So both families, right? We tried to make reparations to both families because of this incident. So, that really describes who we are. Being neutral, this is where we excel.

R&S: Very Switzerland.

Wyatt: Nobody knows that, by the way. They do now! [He laughed]. But it was just the family didn't do anything wrong; they were well within their right to complain. And, I was like, 'You know what, I feel bad that that's happened."

Didn't apologize, because I never apologize for the Bible. I do feel bad that it did happen and it was a regrettable situation.

So I think in the end, everybody's learned a lesson and everybody was made whole, to the best we could do it.

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Diana deRegnier is a freelance writer and writes the SpiritLinks column for www.ScientificBlogging.com and UPI www.ReligionAndSpirituality.com. Her articles appear in numerous Internet and print publications. Diana is also editor and webmaster for the non-profit program www.spiritlinksnews.org for spiritual explorers of any or no religious affiliation. © Copyright 2008 by Diana deRegnier.