WikiChristian:About
Welcome to WikiChristian. WikiChristian is an open source free Christian encyclopedia that anyone can edit and contribute to the collective knowledge and understanding on Christianity, the Bible and its believers. We started in May 2004 and are now working on 4,153 articles. Learn How to edit pages, experiment in the sandbox, and visit our Community Portal to find out how you can contribute to WikiChristian.
Vision of WikiChristian
Wikichristian is both a Christian encyclopedia and a wiki community. Wikichristian is set up with the belief that every Christian, regardless of age, race, education and gender has something of value to offer and that with time, it would become a useful reference on any topic related to Christianity. Its policy is that Christians or non-Christians can write articles. These articles do not need to be neutral point of view, that is, the author can voice an opinion as long as the author of the article makes it clear what his or her background is.
Wikichristian also intends to be a reference point for factual information, original text, bible versions, bible dictionaries, song lyrics and personal testimonies of Christians. We intend to create a wiki community of Christians from around the globe that can voice their views, share their ideas and help others understand Christianity and its principles! Simply - wikichristian wants to represent, document and link everything related to Christianity! Wikichristian is happy to announce that we are the largest non-denominational Christian wiki on the internet growing everyday!
Who started WikiChristian?
WikiChristian is started by two Christian Believers who happen to be medical doctors by profession, Dr. Prab R Tumpati in USA and Dr. Graham Grove in Australia. While the secular world has so many wiki projects going on, we felt a need for a wiki forum for all Christians so that we can share what we believe, who Jesus Christ is and how God loves this world.
What Commercial Interest Do you have?
We have absolutely no commercial interest what so ever.
What is your mission?
Our mission is to provide a Christian encyclopedia and be a wiki based forum for all Christian writings, serve as a repository for all Christian Classic works expanding the usefulness of the content by wiki internlinking the key words, provide a contemporary free Bible Dictionary created by users and not but least build an open source Wiki Amplified Translation of the Bible.
A note from Prab
Welcome to WikiChristian. My name is Prab R. Tumpati. I am a full gospel Christian believer by faith and a medical doctor by profession living in the United States. I was born and brought up in a Hindu family in India who converted to Christianity due to a great healing miracle by God in our family. I grew up in a Christian missions base called Maranatha Visvasa Samajam, started by pastor Moses Choudary, who was called to work among high caste Hindu's.
I consider myself a technology enthusiast as I taught myself a lot of computer softwares in my free time. I have started successful websites like Residentscafe, a popular website for residents and residency applicants and Believerscafe with over 35,000 pages for christians. I felt a strong need for building a website that would let people to edit and add on content collaboratively would be of great help. I them came across the concept of wiki's and felt that it would be great tool for building an Encyclopedia for all Christians. Having seen the phenomenal growth of some wiki's like Wikipedia, I thought why not have a dedicated christian encyclopedia! While there are many wiki's for secular information, we felt a need a for a dedicated Christian wiki that will not only serve as a wiki community, but also serves as a source for information and an encyclopedia on Christianity. I strongly believe that there is strength in togetherness/unity and as a group, we can help build a free Christian Encyclopedia that represents the contemporary concepts in Christian Theology and Faith.
Wikichristian was started in January of 2005 by me, along with some friends like Graham grove from Australia, in order to build an open source Christian Encyclopedia. While I did all the technical stuff in setting up the wiki and posted a lot of public domain content, Graham and many others contributed greatly in building the site up to make it one of the fastest growing wikis. In fact, the website grew to over 115 MB as of August, 2005 and was utilizing upto 95% of the server resources. It lead to temporary problems with the webhost due to high CPU usage in a shared hosting. We had finally decided to get a dedicated server to help facilitate the growth of wikichristian. Our vision is to build a free Christian Encyclopedia, public domain wiki and Bible resource and a wiki Christian community representing the contemporary church thinking and philosophy.
I strongly believe that Christians have to rise up and stand for the important issues in the society in a day and age where truth is blurred and falsehood and sin are exaulted. WikiChristian would serve as a forum to represent the current concepts and trends in Christian Community the world over and will serve as a source of information, fellowship and inspiration. As this is a collaborative effort, it can only be made possible by participation from users like you! Remember that "when you cast your bread on the waters with faith, it will return one day back to you with butter on top of it". May God blesss you for your hardwork.
As the founder, I declare that I do not have any commercial interest in this project and would keep the website not-for-profit. We may latter register it as a not for profit organization, as we grow. If you would like to share your views on improving this project, please drop me a line at my email id above or leave the message in the talk page here. If you are a committed Christian interested in becoming a wiki sysop, you may contact us for information on how to become a sysop.
May God Bless you richly!
Philadelphia, USA,
January 2005.
You can reach me at prab at residentscafe dot com
or tumpati at hotmail dot com.
A note by G.G.
This wiki site was set up by a man by the name of Prab Tumpati in late 2004. I set up a wiki site on wikibooks.org in January 2005, and upon looking for it in some search engines I discovered this site, as well as an even older Christian wiki site set up by a friendly English minister, Richard Hall. It seems to me that there was no point in having lots of separate wiki sites for Christianity - so I'm making this site the one I contribute to. It would be wonderful if you contribute to this site as well. Below is the original "About" note I placed on the wikibooks.org
Introduction
2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ came to earth to save each person from his rebellion against God. He was crucified, sufferring the punishment that was meant to be for me and you. Yet Jesus lives today, and millions of people around the world know him as their personal saviour and Lord. It seems to me that the essence of Christianity is so simple that even a child can in some ways understand it, yet start to explore it in more depth, and you'll soon realise that even a life-time isn't enough to really grasp it. In fact, human endeavour alone cannot even begin to grasp it. In truth, Christianity cannot be learnt - instead it must be experienced and lived. Christianity is about being in a personal relationship with our creator, and no relationship is something that can be learnt or studied - it is something real and living. Of course, Christians desire a closer walk with God - and part of that will involve personal study and evaluation of their faith.
For a while now I've dreamt of creating an online encyclopedia to be a reference of some of the finer details of Christianity, church history and contemporary issues. Of course, this is something I could never accomplish - my faith is weak, and I certainly cannot claim to have a good understanding of most of the issues and history of the church. There are thousands of Christian websites on the internet already, many of them very good and worthwhile. This is perhaps just another one of those websites. However, the whole point of this website is to allow anyone at all to add to, and to alter the website. Every Christian has something of value to offer other Christians, regardless of age, race, education and gender. My hope is that Christians everywhere decide to add their own articles to this site so that it becomes a useful reference. If you are not a Christian and you want to submit an article, that's fine too - we can all learn from everybody's understanding, even if we don't agree with their perspective.
Please create any new links for sub-topics where-ever you believe they are needed, trying to keep the directory structure logical and clear. If you submit any articles, keep them as short as possible, and please do not break any copyright laws. When you create a link for your article, place your name or initials in brackets after the title - this way, if you submit multiple articles and people like or dislike your style or perspective, they can easily decide to view or skip your article. Also, at the end of an article you submit, could you please put your name and if your article voices your opinions please also write a brief note describing your Christian background under your name at the end of the article, so that the reader understands your perspective better (for example, if you write an article on purgatory, let the reader know if you consider yourself Roman Catholic or not). Finally, please don't alter anyone else's articles (unless you know that the work has been plagiarised or is incorrect) - if you do have something you want to write, just add a new link to a new page on the same topic. (For example, if you want to write about baptism, don't submit your work directly into the baptism page - instead make a new page titled "Baptism (by your initials)" and link to it from the baptism page)
Thanks.
Your brother in Christ,
January 2005