I just want to let you all know that the new open-format Church of Jesus Among the Teachers is officially open today, Sept 15, at www.cjat.org

Everyone who is interested in the idea of an online church for boylovers is welcome to check it out and to register or post as a guest, today or anytime.

The original format of the CJAT as outlined by co-founder Christiaan X was as a gathering place for Christian boylovers and their friends who took a positive viewpoint on God’s acceptance of (at least similar-aged) same-sex relationships. This was partly an effort to give cblf a distinct niche space and not appear to be in competition, since at the time this site seemed only to have two active posters who took a pro-gay point of view. Since then it has been brought to Christiaan’s attention that the cblf webmasters encourage diversity of views and would rather not have the sites juxtaposed in this way, and he is happy to go along with their wishes.

What this means is that CJAT now happily welcomes everyone no matter what their viewpoint is on same-sex relationships. The main criterion for membership is to want to be involved in Christian worship, dialogue and recreation with other boylovers and supportive friends.

Cblf is a vital and well respected site these days with a very supportive core community. In that light, perhaps CJAT doesn’t have much new to offer some members here. However, one offer we can make is that if any member here has a well-worked essay or article on an important BL-related Christian topic, and they would like have this essay placed on the web in a way that’s fixed (not losing prominence over time) and accessible to search engines, then they may contact the CJAT administrators (Christiaan, Boimatt or Topher) about including this essay in the administrator-sponsored ‘pinned’ posts. Even while the new site was under construction, we had hits from places like Panama and China reading our pinned posts, and the google search bot keeps the links updated.

Things said online by boylovers tend to be low impact, either because they are ephemera (short lived postings) or because of limited accessibility to readers and/or search engines. We need to increase our ability to get our messages across, particularly our more thoughtful messages. CJAT hopes to help solve this problem.

For those interested in security, about half of the CJAT discussion areas are open to guests and accessible to Google; the other half are visible only to registrants. Thus protected discussion is possible, and there is a private personal message system. The split of open and protected areas is roughly based on the areas of physical churches that are generally open and those where you generally only encounter congregants or staff.

Whether you are interested in joining or not, we hope you’ll include our BL-positive church in your prayers. We hope to change some minds as well as providing a worship and discussion space, using the ecumenical Metropolitan Community Church as our inspiration.

I am happy to be an active member of both cblf and CJAT myself.