A video of a four-year-old girl reciting Psalm 23 from memory. A parody of the ’90s hip-hop hit “Baby Got Back” called “Baby Got Book.” “A Letter from Hell” to motivate Christian students to share their faith in Jesus with their friends. These are three of the more than 25,000 videos available on a new video-sharing Web site called Godtube.com that features over 1.5 million hours of Christian video, more than any other Christian broadcast platform, according to Chris Wyatt, Godtube’s CEO and creator.
Godtube was the fastest growing U.S. Web site in August. It experienced 973 percent growth between July and August, and there were 4 million visitors to the site in October alone. It combines many of the well-known features of other sites (Myspace.com, Facebook.com, Youtube.com) popular among teenagers and those in their 20s and 30s, such as opportunities for social networking, video chats, and user-submitted videos that range from cute home movies to music videos to church presentations.
Wyatt, 38, says he knows “the power of video” and understands the need to make Web sites user friendly. He worked as a producer at CBS before deciding to go to the evangelical Dallas Theological Seminary, where he is now a student. He says he created Godtube as a class project because he was alarmed after reading in a 2006 evangelism magazine study that the percentage of Christians who attend church regularly will drop 50 percent by the year 2025.