Jim posted this comment on our feedback page - I’m moving it to here - anyone feel free to jump in and respond to Jim’s question along with Bill.
Bill
You are very thoughtful and open minded.
This comment caught my attention
I think so many of those things would be changed if people would really “work the program”. [...][Read more]
ChurchRater was an experiment intended to encourage dialog between church visitors or regular attenders and church leaders.
We wanted Church Rating to be a fun process. We included numerical ratings to encourage people not to take it too seriously. We gave people freedom to write as little or as much as they wanted. We asked for thoughtful comments which were honest but not mean.
We hoped ChurchRater would be a resource that people would use to make church better.
Some people did post thoughtful ratings. We appreciated all of those.
We were surprised how many people used ChurchRater to advertise
their own churches. "This is what we love about ourselves"
doesn't encourage dialog.
We were disappointed when people used ChurchRater as a vehicle
of retaliation. Attacking people doesn't encourage dialog. We
deleted those ratings.
We looked for the right person to lead ChurchRater but we didn't
find them. We think we would have by now if God wanted us to
continue the experiment.
For all these reasons we're ending the ChurchRater experiment
- or at least, putting it on hold until further notice. Thank
you for your participation. We hope to see you on the ChurchRater
blog.
