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Spiritual sites get that online religion: profits
MUSKEGON, Mich. -
Religion and the Web collide daily in this city on the shore of Lake Michigan, just west of Grand Rapids. Muskegon, population 40,000, is home to Gospelcom.net, the busiest Bible site on the Web.
The online home for 147 evangelical Christian groups, Gospelcom has evolved from a religious-film distributor's experiment to a thriving portal. It consistently ranks in the Media Metrix list of the 500 most-visited Web sites, which is otherwise short of religious sites. Gospelcom has succeeded through zeal, jumping onto the Web back in 1995, but it has remained cautious in one key area: money.
At a time when the Internet means dollar signs to most people, Gospelcom forbids fund raising on its site - a policy it has followed from the very start. Robby Richardson, the site's director, says the group was wary of the backlash against televangelists. "We didn't want to perpetuate the stereotype of Christian organizations out for your money," he says.
Now dot-com fever has finally spread to religion, bringing for- profit competition to Gospelcom's nonprofit site. Crosswalk.com, a Christian portal that is publicly traded on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AMEN, recently launched a national TV ad campaign. And in late September, Family Christian Stores, a retail chain, said it would team with a private equity firm to launch...