I just had an interesting conversation with a guy who was looking to get into affiliate marketing in a financial lead generation opportunity. We were talking extensively about some of the sites in the financial lead generation space who target Christians with specially designed landing pages to appeal to and generate trust in Christians merely because of an apparent shared belief.

He indicated that he didn’t feel comfortable taking a similar approach - selling his Christianity as a reason people should consider him as a business partner. He threw some Scripture my way throwing some Paul at me from 2 Corinthians:

Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.

This created an interesting question about all “Christian” businesses and what we should be thinking about in doing our every day business. Are we profiting from “peddling the Word?”

I think the issue is intent and execution.

If our belief is hollow and we have no interest in ministering to our audience or the lost through what we do, I think we are definitely in trouble. If our focus in doing business with a Christian focus is on doing ministry, and in supporting that ministry through the commerce that we do, I think we are fine as long as we keep our focus where it belongs.

I take a look at sites like Abbey Press - where the proceeds of the sales benefit a monastery. Or to SinglesofFaith - where proceeds of a dating ministry with heavy emphasis on Faith development and service go to support inner-city outreach that members are invited to participate in. I think of C28 and JesusBranded that design clothing and accessories with Christian inspiration that put Scripture out there to inspire sharing among youth and young adults. I think of Alpha Omega and Sonlight who help Christian parents educate their kids with a focus on God’s Word.

I see no problem with these companies because I think that their heart and their execution are in the right place.

I look at companies like ChristianFaithFinancial, BigChurch and the variety of Christian BizOpp offers, etc and think that these folks have something big to worry about. The bottom line is this: As Christians, we have a tendancy to trust our own. Any jackass can throw up a site with “Christian” in the URL, and slap up a couple of crosses or an icthus and a badly chosen Bible verse on it and reel in the suckers. Trust me…it happens all the time.

As Christians in online business, we need to make sure that we live up to any claims we make and do the ministry work with all of our hearts, souls and strength.

As Christian consumers, we need to carefully analyze sites that market to us based on our “shared” Faith.

Try this sometime. If you go to a site that seems fishy in it’s faith basis - ask them what they believe, or ask them to point you at their “statement of faith” and you will know instantly what they are up to.

What do you think?

As I have discussed here time and time again,  “Christian” dating is a minefield of legitimate and illegitimate offers that target Christians.

Some are great and Christian in ownership and mission in vision like SinglesofFaith, ChristianCafe, CatholicMatch, etc and some like BigChurch are really flawed and shouldn’t be promoted by Christians to Christians.

A lot of Christian webmasters are still running BigChurch though because they either don’t know better or choose to look the other way for the cash.   Hey, I’ll admit it - they build a great landing page and they know the science of conversion… but they should.  They’re essentially a re-faced porn site that is veneered to appeal to Christians.

There are a couple of sites I like who play “watch dog” over the space and I really value what they bring to the table in terms of doing the research on corporate ownership of the “Christian” dating sites and giving people the straight scoop.   Then, today one of them really chapped my hide.

I saw SinglesofFaith listed as one of the sites not to work with due to “deceptive marketing practices.”  I beg to differ.  SOF is so legitimately Christian it’s ridiculous.  They absolutely should be listed with ChristianCafe and Single Christians Network as one of the “good guys”   I checked with Mike at SOF specifically on the types of marketing methods that were frowned on (bidding on competitor keywords) and was assured that this is not the case.

So- I attempted to contact the site owner through his contact form to get some clarification… hey - if my client has done something wrong, we’d like to fix it.   The “Contact us” form is broken.

Bottom line -  there is what we feel is incorrect negative info on the site up on the page and no way to get any feedback or get a changed noted and recommendation made.   ARGGGGH!

“Dog,” if you are out there and see this, please get in touch.  I love your site and want to be able to recommend you as the gold standard.  But we need to clear this up.
God Bless,

Wade Tonkin