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At Conversantlife.com, our goal is to bring content and conversation together in a meaningful way. Whether you are a casual user or a dedicated content creator, we want to help inform your faith experience so you can engage and activate your life.

This month we are excited to introduce some new enhancements to our homepage that will hopefully make it easier to find content posted by our team of 40+ expert bloggers, as well as content submitted by the community. Here are some highlights:

• Now you can click on your favorite topics and immediately see the most recent content posted by our bloggers
• There is a video player at the top of the homepage that features our newest interviews and features
• You can quickly access the most popular posts from the growing community of Undiscovered writers, musicians and artists
• You can easily connect with people involved in cross-culture service around the world through The Bridge

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In the ongoing efforts of media companies (including Conversantlife.com) to attract and keep audiences, it isn't just about the means of communication (radio, television, the Internet, etc.). It's not even about the technology that drives media (computers, iPhones, HDTVs, etc.). Even more than media and technology, the thing that makes or breaks a movie or a book or a song or a web site is one thing and one thing only: content.

Without a great script, a movie suffers, and people stay away. Without great writing, a book isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and readers pass it by. Same goes for a song. When it comes to web sites, it doesn't take long to realize that reading dumb comments or viewing crummy videos is a colossal waste of time. What people want is compelling, challenging, creative content.

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Christianity Today has a terrific cover and cover story this month that is getting lots of attention. How could it not? The headline, "God Is Not Dead Yet," mimics the famous "Is God Dead?" headline that graced (some would say disgraced) the cover of Time magazine on April 8, 1966. The lead article by William Lane Craig, the popular philosopher and Christian apologist, showcases the extraordinary work being done by a handful of gifted theistic philosophers who answer virtually every objection raised by today's pop-atheists and secular philosophers.

Here at Conversantlife.com, we try to keep up with the news, especially news that has faith implications. So this issue of CT naturally caught our attention. As we checked out the contents, we were pleasantly surprised to find a number of places where Conversantlife.com authors were featured. In a piece titled, "A New Day for Apologetics," J.P. Moreland was referenced as one of the new Christian apologists who are informing the national conversation by producing books, videos, and public lectures (Conversantlife.com and Harvest House are publishing Dr. Moreland's forthcoming book, The God Question, due in January).

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A couple of us from ConversantLife.com attended Book Expo America (BEA) in Los Angeles last week. It's a massive event, with more than 2,000 exhibitors, 1,000 authors, and 25,000 people attending. It was hard to tell if any business was being conducted, but lots of people were milling around. Truth is, the publishing world is in a great deal of turmoil right now. Sales are flat, if not in decline, due to a number of factors: a decrease in reading among younger people, a move from print to digital content, a flat economy, and a dearth of blockbuster titles, such as Harry Potter.

Of these, the factor with the most serious long-term consequence is arguably the move from print to digital content. For every person who says, "I'll never read a book online," there are many more people who are accessing increasing amounts of digital content, whether it's news, commentary, or entertainment. It may be too early to declare the book to be an outmoded form of conveying content, but it's not to soon to recognize that most of us are getting our content from a wide variety of sources, with books being just one.

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If there's one constant about technology that trumps all others, it's this: change. We can be sure that whatever technology is cool and useful and popular today will be replaced by something that's cooler, more useful, and more popular tomorrow. It's just the way it is.

With truth it's different. Unless you're a relativist, truth doesn't change. We need to know that what's true today will still be true tomorrow. We also need to know that the content we access, whether it's on a printed page or in some kind of electronic form, is trustworthy.

At ConversantLife.com, we are committed to both technology and truth. We are using the latest technology to present trustworthy content by a team of passionate and knowledgeable communicators, all the while inviting our users to comment and post content of their own in the form of news stories that have faith implications.

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For the first time in American history, Protestants are close to becoming the minority religion. A new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that barely 51% of Americans are Protestant. Even more revealing, only 43% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they are Protestant.

According to the study, 79% of American's call themselves "Christian," including 24% who say they are Catholic. Another 5% belong to other faith traditions (Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism are the main ones). And 16% aren't affiliated with any religion, including 4% who consider themselves either atheists (1.6%) or agnostic (2.4%).

The 148-page Pew study is one of the most comprehensive surveys of American religious affiliation ever done. What it shows is that America is an increasingly pluralistic when it comes to faith and belief. "The presumption of a Protestant framework for understanding the American character is now a thing of the past," said Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

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Here at ConversantLife.com, the goal is to encourage conversations about faith and life by meeting people where they are with engaging content from trustworthy communicators. The content can spring from the heart and mind of one of our ConversantLife.com bloggers, who post content in various topics. Or the content can come from the news, where everyday there are issues that impact faith and life, even if the events occur thousands of miles away.

A striking example of the second type of content are the tragic shootings that occurred in Colorado two weeks before Christmas. The headlines that surrounded this horror story hit everyone right between the eyes. At first it seemed like a random act of violence perpetrated by a troubled young man. Then, as the details of the case evolved, it became clear that that the shooter was targeting Christians and Christian centers, including the YWAM missionary center in Arvada where he had once attended.

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What an exciting time it is. The launch of ConversantLife.com solidifies a journey over 9 years with 4 guys who have had a passion to engage the culture in a unique way. Two focused on content and two focused on technology. ConversantLife.com is what we came up with.

So, what is this site all about? The best way to describe ConversantLife.com is to break it down into 3 managable parts: conversant-generated content, user submitted content and unDiscovered.

Conversant generated content is created in the form of blogs, Podcasts and video by writers, professors, scholars, musicians, film makers, artists, missionaries, pastors and more who are considered experts (or up-and-coming experts) in their particular field. As you navigate through various topics of interest on the site, you will find content created by our authorized bloggers in these areas. You can also visit our blog roll, which has a listing of all the authorize content creators for ConversantLife.com. By clicking on a blog, you will be taken to that blogger's micro site where you can find everything he or she has created for the site.

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