Christian Web Community Provides Internet Users With Godly Alternative
by Jim Brown
March 20, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Pastor Brian Bozarth of south Maui, Hawaii, is offering Christian young people a clean, safe alternative to taking part in Internet forums, blogging, and photo and music sharing on the popular "myspace.com" website and others like it. Bozarth, a professor at Calvary Chapel Bible College, has launched a free online Christian Community called "Ditty Talk." He says the dittytalk.com website and corresponding Internet community began as an effort to steer young people away from MySpace.com, a social website with 55 million users that has been linked to numerous sexual assaults against teens.
"One day," the Hawaii pastor and educator recalls, "I was approached by a student, saying, 'You know, there's some bad stuff posted by our students on there.' I was Dean of Men of the Bible College, and so I was prompted to actually check out 'My Space' and was literally horrified by what I saw -- not only located just in the content there but also the stuff some of my students were posting."
Soon afterward, Bozarth says another student gave him an idea. "As I kind of do web programming on the side, he challenged me, [asking], 'Why don't you just build your own My Space?'" the professor explains.
Rising to the challenge, the Bible College dean developed the alternative site and named it, taking his inspiration from God's word. "Ephesians 2:10 says, 'We are his workmanship'" he points out. "The word for workmanship is poema, where we get our word poem or song; so a kind of modern translation of poema or poem is 'ditty.' You know -- you sing a little ditty. So, since we are His ditty, the site is now 'Ditty Talk.'"
Bozarth says monitors are constantly checking dittytalk.com to make sure that the content is kept to a godly standard and that users posting new messages there express themselves accordingly. Also, he notes, in addition to that safeguard the site has a feature that gives each user the ability to flag others who act deceitfully or talk inappropriately.
At Ditty Talk, Bozarth says teens are encouraged to take part in forums, create their own blogs, share music and photographs, and fellowship with others in an online community where profanity and pornography have no place. Also, he invites pastors, parents and other Christian supporters to become "Ditty Talk Watch Dogs" to help monitor the site and clean up any attempts to "dirty up the ditty."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
