e-Dater OnLine Dating

ChristianCafe.com is such a friendly, feel-good and safe kind of online experience where you can’t help but feel welcome. Just to be clear, it is very much a Christian place to go and really is best suited for sincere believers, although there are options when filling out your profile for those who are non-practicing or not currently strong in their faith. They are better than some of the competition in recognizing that it is important to establish both religious affiliation and individual church denominations while still trying to bring everyone together.

You start by filling out a profile to begin your free seven-day trial. I have to say that the description you are expected to provide is rather extensive. There were about 11 short essays required, as well as lots of multiple choice questions to answer. I normally get annoyed if a site asks too much information, but I must admit that the questions were pretty thoughtful and definitely would provide a more complete idea of a person than by just asking them their favorite food or favorite color. As with most of the services provided by this site, before you post any written content it will remind you that it is a Christian site and that any inappropriate comments will be removed and/or your membership could be cancelled.

Like any secular site, Christian Cafe has a chat service. Unfortunately, due to previous issues involving trial members, it isn’t available to anyone but paid subscribers. This doesn’t greally surprise me since it is already ambitious to invite so many people from different kinds of churches together peacefully without risking letting outsiders easily interject into online discussions. There is also instant messaging, which can be accessed by reviewing the members online and clicking on the “quick message” link. You can create your personal directory of contacts under the “friends” section.

A very unique section of the site, which I haven’t really seen anywhere else so far, is the post-a-prayer page. People literally write prayers that everyone else can read and ideally join in making their own prayer for the poster. This is another section of the site where the administration warns that they have sole discretion as to what is acceptable or not. It seems reasonable since some people have a gift for saying more and asking less when praying, making accusations or endorsing political views or personal opinions. My only comment on this issue is that I found some of the pages under “cool links” had a slight political undercurrent that I know would be an issue for some believers, although nothing “anti-anything” was included in the mix.

I appreciated on the sign up page how the site made comparisons between the costs of the service and the cost of going to dinner and a movie. So I will quote them almost verbatim and say that at just under $30 US, one month membership costs about as much as a film and a theatre snack, and you know how much a jumbo buttered popcorn costs these days.

Visit Christian Cafe for a casual and relaxed place to meet fellow believers from diverse faiths.