I found a link to amusing story on the Landover Baptist Church site. It speaks of winning souls in the World of Warcraft.

I jumped over to the site to see what was up.  It is fascinating!  The more I read, the more I started to really get curious about it being some sort of joke.  They take things to a certain point and then just nudge themselves over the line a little too far.  This made me even more curious so I surfed around the site and started doing some research.

It turns out that the site is a clever satire meant to mock the fundamentalist Christian community.  I have to admit that it is a VERY well written site that people obviously put an enormous amount of effort into.  I am truly impressed on an intellectual level with their level of sophistication and raw talent.  Here is a link to it being a hoax though.  Neither this church nor even the place "Landover, IA" really exist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landov...ist_Church

I am very interested in the topic of religion, and I would say that most of my non-work reading that I do relates to this subject in one way or another.  The fascinating thing about this site and the carefully crafted satire is how close to the edge of credibility they reach.  I really couldn't tell for a long time if they were just trying to be "hip" and appeal to a younger internet crowd or if it was some kind of weird joke.  Unfortunately, I suppose highlighting this credibility border is in itself a scathing indictment of the same fundamentalist community (which is of course the intention of the authors).

There are real "Christian" guilds on WoW servers, just as there are gay and lesbian guilds and many other types of specialty guilds.  I've seen them advertised at the same locations I post ads for our guild.  WoW has such a different guild/social environment, I don't personally see any specialty guild like that thriving or lasting.  Although of any of them, I think a "Christian" guild might be able to maintain enough member activity if they were open enough to being very inclusive of people.

So anyway, their inflammatory comments like this are part of the satire:

"I think the reason so many people are open to hearing about Jesus in the World of Warcraft is because the majority of people who play the game are lonely kids who don't have any friends. I doubt any of them play sports so you can pretty much guess that there are lots of gay boys and fat little pale-faced Wiccan girls on the servers who hate themselves and escape into virtual characters so they don't have to deal with their pathetic lives. When they hear that someone loves them, even if it is just the Lord Jesus Christ, they always want to hear more!"

There are certainly people who see online gaming as an opportunity to proselytize their beliefs.  It is explicitly stated so in the guild information for some of those Christian guilds I have seen.  That part is true.  There are likely to be some people out there with the above beliefs about who plays MMORPG games, but I don’t really think they are even a noticed minority in that community.

I spent 2 years as a full-time (unpaid) missionary for my church, so I guess I have an experienced opinion about what generates effective proselyting.  I don’t really think in-game advertising would be productive at all.  It just isn’t the right forum for the discussion of a serious topic like religion (or politics, philosophy or any other serious topic for that matter).  I am also not of the opinion that there is a magical set of words you can say to generate “salvation.”  So getting someone to “pledge” themselves to Jesus (or whatever) in a video game really seems like an irreverent trivialization of a serious and profound thing to me.  The Landover Baptist Church people make a point there in their satire.  I don’t think it is their intended point, but it has some merit nevertheless.

Encouraging people to behave in a divine, loving and empathic manner by your good example does seem like something that might be effective in a team-oriented environment like an MMORPG.  Having a “family-friendly” and uplifting guild environment that encourages respect of others and the spirit of giving is certainly possible.  I offer as evidence the great success and long history of Resurrection going back 3 years now ;-).  We aren’t any sort of specialty guild, but we try to encourage the best in human nature in a virtual environment.  It works.  Just like it works in real life.

Well...that went over like a fart in church ;-)

:-D  :-D  :-D  :-D  :-D

I saw that website when it first came out a while back.   I about shot soda out of my nose when I read the part about the guy having "conversation duels" and the fact that they have "True Christians" trademarked. 

Granted the site is obviously satirical in nature but indeed well written enough to spark curiousity. 

"God told me to hate you."  I don't care who you are... that's funny right there.

Yeah, the advertisment for a skimpy ladies thong with the words "What would Jesus do" on it displayed on the homepage was what finally made me jump off the site and see what was up with this wacko place.

Once I figured out it was a joke, I thought it was amusing to go back and surf through the rest of the site.  I am not sure it is really the "ha ha," laugh out loud kind of humor to me personally, but I admit the site is clever.

Starting deep in the site where the article was located about World of Warcraft and working out from there, it wasn't as clear of a satire as starting from the homepage and working your way in.

I am still amazed at how much effort went into this.  This thing goes many levels deep, has long articles and even sermon recordings, including a full online store.

Agreed - it was quite the clever site. I really wasn't quite sure for a while myself. It didn't smack of the obvious Onion satire I've grown used to on the internet. The first thing that tipped me off was the 'Religon - Kills Folks Dead!' graphic on the side - and all the goodies in the store.

Now I have some underwear in the mail.