John Saddington is a social computing strategist, a technologist, a web junkie and the Creative Web Director @ Northpoint Ministries.  He thinks, "To reach people that no one is reaching we have to do things that no one is doing."

Follow John's Blog.  Follow John on Twitter.

Something I've been recently chewing on is how leadership plays out in the online space. For a few, it's already been "earned" or developed as they've had exciting careers and have a proven track record of leadership.

But the vast majority of those that engage in the online segment do not have this credibility as the first jump in, and developing it over time can be a challenge.

What I've found, though, is that true leadership is more character than one's effectiveness to gather those that are like-minded (or simply interested). And character, as we know, takes time.

Character, though, is a difficult thing to discern through online mediums. Just as wit, sarcasm, and humor are hard to interpret, it's even more difficult to ascertain character that is worthy to be followed. So what, then, are some of the filters that can be used to filter out the noise to find true leadership and character?

For myself I've used 3 points of reference:

1. Close biblical ties through their words and expression online. Honestly, the only thing we have to move on is what this person writes (blogs/tweets/etc). Is what they say (or have to say) tied somehow biblically? Typically it's easier to see if their content is "morally" fine-tuned (lifestyle) but I sometimes attempt to discern their love of scripture. Nebulous, I know, but worth an attempt.

2. Consistency of speech and content. You can learn a lot about someone over time. Unfortunately we judge people on a single tweet. I try to survey the expanse of their digital empire and see what I can find.

3. Google.com - It's amazing what you can find through Google's search engine. I'll just leave it at that.

The point, really, is that I want to follow people who have great character, not just people who are effective at what they are doing. Almost anyone can be effective at doing a lot of stuff, but only a few do it with a character that is worthy of emulating and copying.