Surfing for spirituality

July 17, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

ChurchRater.com invites users to review and recommend houses of worship

McClatchy Newspapers

We use dating websites to find soul mates. Now, some entrepreneurs want to take that to a higher level and help you find the perfect spiritual home.

Consider ChurchRater.com, a church-shopping website that allows users to rate churches. ChurchRater — founded by a Catholic, a Christian, a Jew and an atheist — invites users to review and recommend churches.

In Michigan, for example, users have posted reviews of about 15 churches. Christ Church Cranbrook is commended for its “sermon after-party,” where the pastor takes questions. At Base Church in Waterford, the preacher was criticized for using “amen” as punctuation.

Pastor Devine Meyers of Base Church chuckled at the assessment of his reliance on amens.

“I kind of ding myself on that all the time — so he’s right,” said Meyers. He lauded the aim of the website: “It keeps you honest. It keeps you focused.”

“The whole issue of how to use the Web and communications is gigantic “for churches, said the Rev. Gary Hall, rector of Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

“People really find churches on the Web. ... More on the Web than any other medium.”

Younger faith-seekers are tech-savvy spiritualists.

“They’re not wedded to the books the way we are in traditional churches,” said Hall.

“They meet in coffeehouses and nontraditional places. And they do a lot of information-sharing on the Web.”

Since its Feb. 1 launch, ChurchRater has drawn more than 43,000 unique visitors, said Tyler Mahoney, 23, who was raised Catholic. One of the site’s co founders, Mahoney is pursuing a master of divinity degree at Duke University.

The site’s founders also include Jim Henderson, a Seattle Christian pastor, and Matt Casper, a San Diego atheist, who co-authored the book “Jim and Casper Go to Church,” which chronicles a soul-searching road trip. The final cofounder is Julian Zegelman, a San Francisco attorney who is Jewish.

It was natural for Drew Proctor, 24, a college graduate currently working at Starbucks, to take his spiritual quest on the road, and online. He’s sampled several Detroit-area churches and written about them on ChurchRater; among them Christ Church Cranbrook, Woodside Bible in Troy; and Base Church and St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Waterford.

He’s trying new places, he said, because “I wanted to find my own church and my own place, where people didn’t know me since I was this big.”

Proctor posted a review of St. Andrew’s, impressed by a plain-talking interim pastor and a small congregation who recognized him as a newcomer. Yet even “though I felt like an outsider invading a private gathering,” wrote Proctor, “... they were so excited to have a new person, I didn’t feel like I crashed the party.”

Proctor said he was most impressed, so far, by one of the area’s most well-known churches, the imposing landmark that is Christ Church Cranbrook.

“Cranbrook is concerned about the message connecting, and doesn’t want the ceremonial trappings to get in the way,” wrote Proctor. “Cranbrook inspires me and gives me a little bit of faith for the future of Christianity.”

Hall acknowledged that some flocks will find sites such as ChurchRater threatening.

“If you get a good review, it’s great,” said Hall.

“Whether we like it or not, this is the world we’re going to be working in.”