GodTube visitors can socialize on its networking site (250,000 have registered), petition on its virtual Prayer Wall and consult the site's virtual Bible. The first such Web site to bundle these offerings, GodTube was introduced with a marketing campaign pitched to mainstream and faith-based media, and the logo, "Broadcast Him."
"GodTube, like YouTube, is inherently more democratic," says Jeffrey Sharlet, associate research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media. Its format is "a sign that a large number of people have caught on to the process of mimicking the culture, to creating a world that looks like the secular world but has Jesus as its foundation."
Skit has saving grace
In an affecting GodTube video, Jesus performs a pas de deux with a teenaged girl. To the mounting urgency of "Everything," a song by the Christian rock group Lifehouse, the smiling Savior introduces his disciple to a realm of spiritual wonders.
Then, the young woman is lured into an underworld of drugs, self-mutilation, prostitution and bulimia. On the verge of suicide, she struggles to return to Jesus and he struggles to return to her. Ultimately, they are reunited in a state of grace.
GodTube didn't exist yet when Tim Houston wrote the "Lifehouse Everything" skit at the Baltimore Dream Center, a former Brooklyn bingo hall where he is executive director of a bustling urban mission established by the Church of God.
The pantomime was originally performed before 30,000 teens and young adults at a 2006 church gathering in Tennessee. But since a video of the performance vaulted last year from YouTube to its Christian counterpart, the skit has been hailed globally as a catalyst for leading young souls to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One of myriad GodTube posts testifies to the skit's persuasive qualities: "This morning I came home from work and I watched this video. I got Saved by just watching it!"
"What a great medium to get across a message," says Houston, 44.
Some of GodTube's most popular videos are simple narratives such as "Lifehouse Everything" and "Logan, the Sky Angel Cowboy," an audio track of an extremely poised boy talking to a Christian radio DJ about God after the death of his calf. His perfect pitch as a little kid on the prairie has caused skeptical religious scholars and others to question Logan's authenticity.
