The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) recently launched a Web-based community in support of its effort to aid individuals in the "biblically-based transformation of their families, churches, communities, and the nation."
The ERLC launched JosiahRoad.com June 11 before the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) June 12–13 annual meeting in San Antonio, looking to provide a site where people could both connect with like-minded individuals or dialogue with others who share different perspectives regardless of their faith background.
At ERLC President Richard Land’s request, the SBC entity’s staff is developing resources to reach believers who might otherwise not relate to the organization’s work. "This younger generation offers more promise and hope for spiritual and cultural reform than I have seen in all my years in the ministry," Land said. "We recognize that to reach this demographic we cannot just keep communicating the way we have been for the last 15 years. The JosiahRoad.com initiative is a major part of our effort to serve a broader audience."
The site features an expansive forum section, where registered users can post entries and respond to others’ comments. The site also has its own version of a "wiki" — fashioned after the popular online user-generated Wikipedia encyclopedia — addressing topics that might be of interest to JosiahRoad.com visitors. Like a real community, JosiahRoad.com is driven and directed almost completely by users. While the site is fully moderated, it is not designed to be an exclusively "Christian site," noted Harold Harper, the ERLC’s executive vice president.
The biblical account of Josiah (2 Chron. 34) provides the principles and the name upon which the site is built, Land said.
"The young King Josiah was open to God’s leadership," he explained. "Josiah’s journey of faith took him face-to-face with the reality of a culture that had turned its back on the one true God." (BP)
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