Hi from Chuckt

[Chuckt]

Hi,

I've pretty much run out of Christian message boards and then I saw a couple advertised on gotquestions and then I decided to try this one.

I'm married. I write my own Bible studies and Biblical articles.

I have a minor interest in microcontrollers.

Chuck

 

[HammerStone]

Forums seem to be dwindling. I guess I am old fashioned in that I run one and still like them. I browse them for several things. I am becoming less and less enamoured with Facebook, but I am reminded in your comments by the message boards that converted to Facebook pages. I wonder if they're still active? I should look them up.

Welcome to the community! We are growing at a measured pace, so we plan on being around for at least a little while! Seems like you should definitely be able to get involved!

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

Welcome, friend!

 

[Chuckt]

Forums seem to be dwindling. I guess I am old fashioned in that I run one and still like them. I browse them for several things. I am becoming less and less enamoured with Facebook, but I am reminded in your comments by the message boards that converted to Facebook pages. I wonder if they're still active? I should look them up.

Welcome to the community! We are growing at a measured pace, so we plan on being around for at least a little while! Seems like you should definitely be able to get involved!

I think that with Facebook, people have stopped going to church to see their friends because they can keep track on Facebook and message boards have lost users to Facebook.

I ran my own Christian message board for a year and a half to two years and no one cared. If I put a little more money into it, I might have made it work.

I started on message boards back in the days of the 300bps modem before there was an internet.

Welcome, friend!

Hi,

Nice to meet you.

Chuck

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

I've been on many discussion boards, both political and religious, and the thing that kills them all is excessive moderation.

That's too many moderators with too much power, exercising their own interpretation of the rules, and not inclined to inaction when there hasn't been any clear violation of the rules. They take sides, they have favorites..people they protect, and they make participation so prickly that people like me give up in frustration.

I'm a frequent poster on any forum, and when a frequent poster leaves, the loss takes a toll. We just lost Randor here and posters like that are irreplaceable. Though no moderator caused that to happen. Thankfully, excessive moderation doesn't seem to be a problem here.

 

[Chuckt]

I've been on many discussion boards, both political and religious, and the thing that kills them all is excessive moderation.

That's too many moderators with too much power, exercising their own interpretation of the rules, and not inclined to inaction when there hasn't been any clear violation of the rules. They take sides, they have favorites..people they protect, and they make participation so prickly that people like me give up in frustration.

I'm a frequent poster on any forum, and when a frequent poster leaves, the loss takes a toll. We just lost Randor here and posters like that are irreplaceable. Though no moderator caused that to happen. Thankfully, excessive moderation doesn't seem to be a problem here.

I think you are right but there are Christian boards where I counted 18 attacks on the Trinity in just one weekend and I'm only one person but when you can't keep up with it, it is no longer a Christian board, I'm afraid. The moderator or owner didn't want to do anything about it.

There are Christian forums that a big time Christian station runs and they are a business. The moderator seemed uptight that I told him there was a Mormon group formed using their software and being hosted by them. I complained they have a number of users not following the Bible so they kicked me off and I did some investigating and found some further problems where they have about 12 workers making over 100,000 a year while asking people to pledge $40 dollars a month and someone figured out it would take 2500 listeners to pay the CEO's salary. At the same time, I didn't believe the number of people who were getting online and saying they were depressed and the radio station wasn't bringing a lot of counselors online to talk to them but leaving it up to the users who have no training and I remember having lunch with a student going for her master's in counseling and she said that people can do tremendous damage to people.

There are large parts of the church which feel it is more important to make friends than to hold to Biblical truth. They aren't teaching justification by faith alone. They aren't teaching against sin. I had a feeling that there were a number of users there sleeping with their boyfriends which I didn't say anything against and one of their users was teaching that homosexuals were born perfect. But because they want a positive and uplifting atmosphere, you will get booted if they have issue with you telling the truth. Because this brand of radio stations feels that the listener is more important, I can't talk there but they can have four different gospels going on in their forums. I'm horrified. I am besides myself.

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

I think you are right but there are Christian boards where I counted 18 attacks on the Trinity in just one weekend and I'm only one person but when you can't keep up with it, it is no longer a Christian board, I'm afraid. The moderator or owner didn't want to do anything about it.

There are Christian forums that a big time Christian station runs and they are a business. The moderator seemed uptight that I told him there was a Mormon group formed using their software and being hosted by them. I complained they have a number of users not following the Bible so they kicked me off and I did some investigating and found some further problems where they have about 12 workers making over 100,000 a year while asking people to pledge $40 dollars a month and someone figured out it would take 2500 listeners to pay the CEO's salary. At the same time, I didn't believe the number of people who were getting online and saying they were depressed and the radio station wasn't bringing a lot of counselors online to talk to them but leaving it up to the users who have no training and I remember having lunch with a student going for her master's in counseling and she said that people can do tremendous damage to people.

There are large parts of the church which feel it is more important to make friends than to hold to Biblical truth. They aren't teaching justification by faith alone. They aren't teaching against sin. I had a feeling that there were a number of users there sleeping with their boyfriends which I didn't say anything against and one of their users was teaching that homosexuals were born perfect. But because they want a positive and uplifting atmosphere, you will get booted if they have issue with you telling the truth. Because this brand of radio stations feels that the listener is more important, I can't talk there but they can have four different gospels going on in their forums. I'm horrified. I am besides myself.

We have people on this forum claiming to be Christian who start thread after thread promoting the lies of evolution. I've already suggested that these threads be taken out of the mainstream. You'll notice we have a section for non Christian beliefs, so they don't sully sections dedicated to genuine Christian discussion. But overall, I think the moderators here very quickly deal with those hostile to Christian values. The worst place for Christian discussions is political discussion boards that have a section for religion. They don't seem to grasp that the atheists come in hoards when they're not controlled and make any discussion impossible. They hold no sway here, though.

But when you say "They aren't teaching justification by faith alone" I would say that the issue is definitely a controversy among Christians. I'm Catholic, and quick to point out that the only place the Bible says "faith alone" is when James stated that a man is justified by works and NOT faith alone. As you can see, there's room for debate on this issue.

 

[Chuckt]

We have people on this forum claiming to be Christian who start thread after thread promoting the lies of evolution. I've already suggested that these threads be taken out of the mainstream. You'll notice we have a section for non Christian beliefs, so they don't sully sections dedicated to genuine Christian discussion. But overall, I think the moderators here very quickly deal with those hostile to Christian values. The worst place for Christian discussions is political discussion boards that have a section for religion. They don't seem to grasp that the atheists come in hoards when they're not controlled and make any discussion impossible. They hold no sway here, though.

But when you say "They aren't teaching justification by faith alone" I would say that the issue is definitely a controversy among Christians. I'm Catholic, and quick to point out that the only place the Bible says "faith alone" is when James stated that a man is justified by works and NOT faith alone. As you can see, there's room for debate on this issue.

I wrote about 20 pages on why the current understanding of James 2:20 is wrong or misunderstood. I'm not saying James is wrong; I am saying the understanding of the passage is wrong and two other scholars have chipped away at James 2:20.

I understand that people don't like change and that I may get labeled as a heretic and kicked out of places and churches for saying that but I ask people not to judge me before I publish my e-book on the matter. I never considered myself a heretic because I base everything on the word of God but I wonder if people here will tell me what kind of fight I am in for. I had a stalker on the web follow me around looking at my profile and my posts because another forum showed them being online and also looking at my profile (there are logs).

Further information on how I came to this conclusion is under wraps and I refuse to discuss it until after publication. The reason is that I wish to control my intellectual property and once it is released into the world wide web, I no longer control it without its final form being under copyright. People have asked me why I am right and everyone else is wrong and my answer is that they could have found it if they looked. I spent a good number of years searching and I found it. I can't afford to get published so I wish to publish my work in an e-book but I need more than 20 pages or so and formatting it for an e-reader is something I never did before so I ended up buying e-books on how to write a book for the Kindle and how to write books.

So if people wish to enlighten me as to what kind of fight I will have against me when I release my book, I will be interested. Don't worry. I don't wish to introduce the information here.

 

[djchuang]

I think there's something to message board discussions that is still different than social media and social networks. Blogs with comments are the closest things that come to a message board.

The best example of a place for message boards is how online education (and even some offline education) have teachers and professors using message boards for educational purposes.

Keep up the good work here at ChristianityBoard.com

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

By the way, I'm going to try out a political forum that does just what I was talking about, banning atheists from the religious discussion. It's such a pleasant surprise to see that somebody gets it:

"This forum is dedicated and limited to discussions of religion, faith, and spirituality. Threads/posts critical of religion and spiritual aspects are not allowed here and will result in a B/F/T Infraction + Thread Ban"
http://www.debatepolitics.com/religious-discussions/105486-religious-discussions-forum.html

Now THAT's worth looking into.