Why do our chat rooms exist?

TruthMedia’s chat rooms exist on the sites to provide an arena where Bible-based evangelism and discipleship can occur in a safe, welcoming community. The purpose of each chat room is to glorify God and allow the Holy Spirit to teach, encourage, and change lives.

Why do we run chat the way we do?

We use moderated or hosted chats to allow for focused discussion groups that elicit ministry. Open chat rooms build community and provide a place for ministry to happen on an informal basis. The terms of service apply to both open and moderated chats.

Why do we have focused small groups?

Evangelism and discipleship can happen more easily in small groups or what we term ‘hosted chat’ sessions. Prayer times happen more naturally when in a small group and teaching is more effective in a small group setting, The small group atmosphere lends itself well to building community meeting the felt needs of all participants.

Who leads the small groups?

These groups are led by a teams of leaders and co-leaders who have gone through an application process as well as training sessions. Selected leaders are then placed under the guidance of a head coach.

How are small groups led?

We encourage the hosts to lead the room using the topical curriculum provided. This chat curriculum has been designed with the use of “leading questions” that allow for the audience to interact and share their own insights to the posed question. We do not encourage the posting of large amounts of text as answers to any questions since this takes away from the interactive part of the ministry. We don’t "lecture" but allow the participants to ask questions as long as they in some way pertain to the topic. The chat room is a round table discussion. We maintain control in the room, but at the same time, make it warm and inviting for all participants.

Why do we allow open chat?

We allow open moderated chat for the purpose of building community. This environment offers an atmosphere for people to meet and visit. It also provides a place where our trained regular chatters can share the Gospel and pray with others. How it works: - Curriculum is developed by the Curriculum Development Team and is posted online on the training site. Specific curriculum development can be requested. - Host/hostess prayerfully selects the scheduled curriculum topics three months in advance in accordance with the audience of the chat site and what they are sensing the Holy Spirit is leading them to do. - As chat topics are selected they are submitted to the Chat Administrator who enters them into the posted calendar online. Subsequent newsletters are sent out announcing up coming chat sessions. - Chat changes in schedule or topics are sent to the Interactive Coordinator/Chat Administrator. - Guest authors in chat are welcomed. Information regarding guest authors is available for both the guest as well as the host moderating the session. - Specific training on how to determine where people are spiritually, how to share the Gospel, how to share Holy Spirit message and how to deal with challenging issues are provided in the general chat training section on the training site. Online host/hostess training sessions are also provided on a regular basis. - On going training for the chat host team is also provided through individual coaching, participation in the chat room for hands-on experience, weekly or monthly training sessions. The chat host team also receives “Connecting Online”, a monthly newsletter that contains resourceful and refreshing articles for their encouragement.

Uniqueness of each chat room:

• Christian Women Today This is a very Bible-based ministry-oriented chat room. Bible studies or discipleship related topics are offered on a continual basis to build participants in their faith. Scheduled and informal prayer times are a regular occurrence in this room. Men are not encouraged to visit this room.
• Women Today Magazine This is a seeker-friendly chat room. Topical chats draw women in from a felt need perspective with the goal of sharing the Gospel sometime during the chat session. The chats designed for this site are mainly for an unchurched audience, but the use of focus questions help to guide the discussion so that opportunities are given to share the Gospel.
• Power to Change (connects to thelife.com chat room) 
• The Life This chat room attracts a diverse audience of men and women of various spiritual backgrounds that are generally very familiar with open chat. The purpose of this room is evangelism through the use of moderated sessions as well as open chat and active monitoring of the room. Because of the nature of the audience, chat hosts and monitors need to remain focused yet even more gracious as they lead topical discussions. The use of testimony sharing, or deep questions that open up the conversation to spiritual topics works well in this room.

Link to further resources: http://truthmedia.com/thementorcenter/