A new community of Christ has been born and being a member is as easy as filling out a form and clicking the mouse.
Using their God-given Web-designing talent, two Christians from Waterloo have built an online Christian community under the name Radical Christ Ministries.
The Web site started out in 2002 when Matthew Hundley began building the non-denominational community but it was only last year that the site received a make-over thanks to help from this friend Jason Weimer.
James Caviezel, the actor who played the role of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, described Jesus as controversial.
Hundley said the Radical Ministries Web site is also like that.
"To choose to follow Christ today is also very controversial," Hundley said. "The Radical Christ Web site that we're developing is about just that --- Christ as a radical figure, and how those who follow Christ's teaching today are adapting to a radical lifestyle choice."
The site, which receives more than a 100 hits a day, receives all kinds of audiences who read articles from the different sites under Radical Christ Ministries.
"It's fun to see the different people reading the articles. It's really neat to see that John Smith over in England really liked the article about this," Weimer said. "It makes the world seem a little bit smaller."
Featuring resources from news to personal submissions by members of the site, RadicalChrist.org promises viewers a Christian take on the world. From time to time, the two founders also write articles for the site.
Other subsidiary sites are also included under Radical Christ Ministries, including GlobalGospelSounds.org, a Christian music news digest. MissionsToday.org, an advice page for Christian missionaries, and BibleSmugglers.org, a Bible provider for countries abroad, are under development.
Already, the community has members from an array of countries such as Bavaria, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Singapore, Belgium, South Africa, Australia, France and Portugal.
Even though the members of the virtual community may be far apart from one another, there is one thing Weimer wants them all to share in common.
"If anything, I'd like people to not only find an article that would hit home to them, but open their mind and get them thinking about what is a radical faith," Weimer said. "How faith in Jesus is different than faith in Muhammad, or faith in another figure, or faith in yourself."
