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The co-founder, editor-in-chief and president of Beliefnet announced Wednesday that he will step down from his various posts in the company to head a government media commission.

Steven Waldman will assume the position of Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. His new job involves assessing government policy about media and information technology to “ensure a vibrant media landscape” in “challenging economic times,” according to the FCC.

“This is the most difficult (and surreal) post I’ve had to write. I’m leaving Beliefnet, the company I co-founded in 1999,” Waldman wrote Wednesday. “I can’t quite think of a suitable analogy. Perhaps it’s something like saying goodbye to your child as he goes off to college? (Except I’m the one leaving).” more >>

The Internet is not only useful for churches in communicating with seekers, but it can also be harnessed to reach people not actively looking for answers, says a Danish scholar.

Peter Fischer-Nielsen, a Ph.D Fellow at the Faculty of Theology at Aarhus University in Denmark, recognizes the difficulty churches have in reaching non-seekers in real life and on the World Wide Web. Non-seekers are often not interested in visiting Christian Web sites, but churches can still meet them by going to their Web turf.

“[T]he church must not isolate itself on its own Web sites; instead, it must take part in the fluent online traffic and develop initiatives on various platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia,” says Fischer-Nielsen in an article entitled, “Online Mission,” in the latest issue of Lausanne World Pulse. more >>

A new so-called “Twitter Bible,” which summarizes the over 31,000-verse Bible into nearly 4,000 short-form tweets, is being released at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week.

Formally named And God Decided to Chill, the German language book is the compilation of tweets by more than 3,000 German Christians who participated in the church project earlier this year.

In honor of the Pentecost holiday, German Christians used the micro-blogging service Twitter to summarize 3,906 Bible sections into 140 character messages, according to Berlin-based newspaper “The Local.” Though the project was scheduled for May 20-30, it was completed 37 hours ahead of schedule and achieved a world record. more >>

Some 6,000 people have registered for an unconventional conference that features about 75 speakers and their nine minutes of wisdom.

"The Nines" is an entirely online event that takes place Sept. 9, 2009 beginning at 9:09 a.m. Central Time. And it's completely free.

"The economy has really affected a good number of churches, particularly smaller ones. And two of the first things cut from church budgets during difficult times are 'travel' and 'continuing education/conferences,'" Todd Rhoades, producer of The Nines, explained to The Christian Post. more >>

A pro-life video that was taken down by YouTube several days ago was posted back up following a wave of complaints from pro-life advocates.

The video, edited and posted in Spanish and English by the Catholic News Agency, centered on the heated discussion between a female pro-abortion activist and the pro-family leader who had revealed the abortion supporter’s intent to deliberately mislead him in the interview she arranged.

"CNA is glad to see that the various pro-abortion groups who are exposed by this video did not prevail in the end," CNA Senior Editor David Uebbing said to the Population Research Institute, whose affiliate, Carlos Polo, faced off against pro-abortion filmmaker Eve Reinhardt in the YouTube video. more >>