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SITE OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE
The FaithWriters.com website has grown as a direct result of enthusiastic members who have been willing to share their ideas.
This interaction with FaithWriters.com staff has provided the infrastructure for growth.
Some of the areas you will find within FaithWriters.com include:
- Writing Challenge
- Message Boards
- FaithWriters 500
- Ebook Section
- Critique Circle
- Article Management
- Free Articles Directory
- FaithWriters Magazine
- Writing University
- Marketplace
- Website Tours
Purpose
The purpose of FaithWriters.com is:
- To encourage Christian writers to learn and grow in an environment that is nurturing.
- To provide comprehensive resources that enables us to be the premier online destination for Christian writers.
- To assist members in finding worldwide markets for their writing.
In order to facilitate our purpose statement we have enlisted the help of our members. The very act of listening to our members has allowed for phenomenal growth and broad-based support. Every day a community of writers, publishers and readers make FaithWriters.com a destination for support, material and encouragement
To date, more than 40,000 Christian writers have signed up for membership with FaithWriters.com. Thousands of readers and visitors make our site a welcome edition to their quotient of daily edification making FaithWriters.com a premier resource for online reading of faith-based material.
Did You Know?
- FaithWriters.com has over 1,150,000 (1 million +) unique visitors per month and growing.
- We have over 3,150,000 (3 million +) hits per month and growing.
- 36% of our members are published writers.
- 25% of our members have a goal to be a full time writer.
- 39% of our members like to write in quiet private places while 28% can write anywhere.
- 67% of our members use a computer to write while 26% use long hand in a notebook to craft their writing.
- While nearly 50% of our membership can write anytime it is late night when the majority of the remaining respondents find the time, energy or inspiration to write.
- The denominational preferences of our members are as diverse as their personalities. The majority (34%) comes from Non-denominational backgrounds. While Pentecostal and Baptist writers round out the top three.
As the community of FaithWriters.com continues to grow we continue to look for ways to assist members in achieving their writing goals through valued encouragement and extensive resources.
BEHIND THE SCENES AT FAITHWRITERS
 Scott Lindsay is a website developer, entrepreneur and the man behind FaithWriters.com. His passion and commitment to developing the site has its roots in his personal interest in web design mixed with a passion for seeing Good News freely shared.
In his twenties, Scott knew God had designs on his life, but struggled to find direction. Two moderately successful businesses in the 1990's led Scott to consider the worldwide web. Scott purchased his first BRAND NEW computer in 1998 and found himself transfixed by web design. This ultimately led him to consider how he could take what he had learned and use his faith to make an impact.
Scott took that knowledge and created FaithWriters.com. The initial design was based on what Scott knew about web design, but as the workload grew, Scott hired programmers who assisted him in developing a fully automated design. As the site began to grow, he found the members of FaithWriters.com were providing a strong sense of what worked and what didn't. He stayed the course and worked through the issues that enabled the site to grow to more than 40,000 members.
Scott has spent many long nights working on the functionality of FaithWriters.com, but he's happy to provide this labor of love, Lindsay notes, "FaithWriters is like my child. It is like an extended family. Of course I don't know everyone, but there are beautiful people here that I have come to know and love."
Since then, Scott founded a company called MeasurelessMedia which is devoted to building and operating web based communities and membership websites.
Scott lives in Northville Michigan.
 Deborah Porter has been a long-time member of FaithWriters.com, joining in November, 2001. Her passion and enthusiasm for FaithWriters stems from her early realization of its enormous potential for encouraging, equipping, empowering and inspiring Christian writers--particularly those taking their very first steps into the public writing arena.
This passion for FaithWriters and its members is easy to understand in light of Deborah's own personal ministry, Breath of Fresh Air. Her mission statement is "To take a message of love, grace, encouragement and wisdom to Christian men and women of all ages, race and social status, using every form of media and communication available; so that they may believe in their God-given potential and rise up to take hold of the destiny that He has prepared, in advance, for their lives." Her work at FaithWriters flows quite naturally out of that mission statement.
Deborah is a published writer and popular public speaker, with a particular gift for communicating in a way that is both enjoyable and easy for readers and listeners to understand. This combination of wisdom, encouragement and calm reassurance has made Deb a valuable and much loved member of FaithWriters.
As the Coordinator of the FaithWriters' Writing Challenge, Deb has helped to shape this weekly contest into arguably the most popular aspect of FaithWriters.com. She is the editor of FaithWriters' Magazine, as well as for the FaithWriters' quarterly anthologies, and acts as coordinator and reviewer for the FaithWriters' Book Review section.
As well as her work at FaithWriters and through Breath of Fresh Air, Deborah also runs her own business, Finesse Writing and Editing Service, which once again gives her the opportunity to help writers become everything they were created to be.
Deborah lives in Sydney, Australia, and is married, with two adult children and one son-in-law.
 Jan Ackerson spent her childhood with Beatrix Potter, L. Frank Baum, and Louisa May Alcott. These constant companions and their literary cohorts fostered her love of the written word as surely as her close-knit family nurtured her Christian faith.
In her early twenties, Jan gained a teaching degree and a husband, and began the business of starting a family and building a career teaching students with learning disabilities. She and Ben were greatly blessed with two precious daughters, Megan and Jericho. Busy with the demands of her family and her job, Jan rarely wrote but never lost her passion for language.
In the fall of 2000, her youngest daughter was seriously injured, sending Jan and her family into the unfamiliar territory of seeking physical and spiritual healing. For a time, Jan battled depression as she watched her daughter's struggles, until she discovered that God had awakened in her a desire to write as a means of rediscovering His grace. By early 2005, she had begun a blog (www.glorybee55.blogspot.com) and had become a member of FaithWriters. Since joining FaithWriters, Jan has volunteered to select the pieces for the Front Page Showcase, to judge the weekly Writing Challenge, and occasionally to write book reviews.
With both daughters off on their own, Jan and her husband are currently enjoying their autumn years with Sophie, the Demented Cat. They are members of a small local congregation, where Jan serves as secretary and plays keyboards for the worship team.
Jan is unsure at this time how God will use her writing, but every word she writes is given to her Heavenly Father as either an offering or a prayer.
 Amy Michelle Wiley is from the Pacific Northwest and is currently training to become a sign language interpreter through a two year intensive college program. Amy has been a member of FaithWriters since April of 2005 and says, "FW is so important to me. I truly feel the people here are family. I can always count on finding encouragement, prayer, support, and laughter. My writing has grown in leaps and bounds and so many publishing doors have been opened to me through FW."
Amy is the founder and director of Peculiar People--an organization that creates unique Christian fiction through group writing projects. She has been writing since she was young and has had numerous short pieces published. Though she dabbles in most writing genres, Amy primarily writes fiction, believing it touches people with the truth and love of God in a special way.
One of her favorite things to do is take a familiar Bible story and tell it in an unusual way, with the goal of showing how God loves us on a personal level. Recently she wrote the story of Jesus's triumphal entry told from the point of view of a servant girl who had befriended the donkey. Amy also enjoys telling a story with an accurate historical or current setting, but with fictional characters, such as her story set in Sri Lanka a few days after the December 2004 tsunami.
 Lynda Schab gathered the courage to submit a few poems to a greeting card company when she was a mere twenty years old. She was shocked when two were selected for possible publication a few weeks later! Encouraged, she continued submitting and now her name can be found inside select cards and products by SPS Studios. In addition, her articles and short stories have been published in various print and online magazines, including Christian Home & School, FaithWriters Magazine, and Sisters in the Lord.
Immediately after discovering FaithWriters in 2004, Lynda jumped into the infamous writing challenge. Now, two years later, over twenty of her entries have been selected for FaithWriter's quarterly anthologies. She also regularly takes a turn on the other side of the challenge as judge. Previously, she served as editor of the 'Tis the Season monthly column in FaithWriters' online magazine. In addition, Lynda has conducted author interviews with FaithWriters members, including the 2006 Best of the Best Writing Challenge winner, Kenn Allan. Recently, she joined on as a book reviewer as well.
Although she writes poetry and non-fiction, Lynda's main writing love is fiction, particularly stories that intimately explore human emotion and depth while at the same time entertaining the reader, often with humor. She is currently working on her first contemporary Christian novel of this type, which she hopes to develop into a series.
Lynda says she can hardly remember (nor does she care to remember) life without FaithWriters. Not only has she gained insight and advice from many other talented authors on honing her own skill, FaithWriters has given her the opportunity to encourage and help others improve on their writing, giving her a wonderful sense of satisfaction and purpose.
Lynda lives in Michigan with her husband of eighteen years and their two children.
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