Big Church
BigChurch Dating is a controversial dating site aimed at bringing together Christians all over the world.
Unfortunately for BigChurch.com, the fact that they are owned and operated by the same service as Adult Friend Finder and other vaguely pornographic websites has come to light, and now many Christians don't even consider BigChurch.com to be a "Christian dating service".
Before we get into the controversy of whether or not they are a Christian service, let's take a look at some basics of BigChurch Dating.
Big Church Dating Profiles
Building a profile is easy enough with BigChurch.com -- I played around with it and found that I could get started with just five or ten minutes worth of work. After you build your profile, simply get your password that is sent to you via email after your registration and jump on the site.
It seems that people who don't upload photos simply don't get much traffic to their profile. This is just like any other dating website -- BigChurch.com is not immune to the prejudices of more worldly dating services. According to material posted directly on the Big Church site, posting a photo increases your chance of getting traffic by about twenty times. That's a lot of shallow Christians, if you ask me.
Christian Dating, Bible Study Partners, Prayer Groups, and Pen Pals
The idea behind BigChurch dating is to meet Christian singles who share your spiritual values, your beliefs, your very religion. You can find people from all over the world, though you'd probably be best off looking for Christians in your area. BigChurch.com claims to have 500,00 single Christian members from all over Earth.
Besides dating, BigChurch.com promises you can find things like Bible study partners, prayer groups, Christian pen pals, and of course romantic partners. Its clear from the popularity of this site that FriendFinder's technology and dating hookup methods have invaded even the most spiritually minded dating site.
One problem I had over and over at BigChurch Dating -- searching. They offer two basic search models -- "quick search" or an "advanced search". My problem? The site seemed glitchy. I had a hard time getting the cursor to stay in the search tabs, and found myself jumping all over the site. Whether this was a temporary or permanent problem I cannot say.
The main reason for the advanced search is that many areas simply contain too many Christian singles for a quick search to be effective. In Dallas, where I love, I turned up thousands of Christian singles in my area. If I were really looking for a Christian dating partner, this number would be way too many to wade through, requiring a more picky search. For instance -- Brunette Methodists that don't believe we're in the end times, etc.
BigChurch has a strange feature for a Christian site -- "Cupid", a nerdy little nosey brat that is constantly sending you lists of Christian singles that match your search criteria. Wouldn't a Christian site want to use a Biblical character to match people up? It'd be a blast if Moses would email me potential mates. I'd like that.
Big Church Membership Upgrades
So, you CAN use BigChurch Dating for free, but as usual with dating sites, upgrading your membership will give you access to lots of cool features that would otherwise be inaccessible.
The main advantage of upgrading your BigChurch.com membership is that profile is given more site exposure. Paying BigChurch puts your profile higher on people's search lists, meaning they'll spend less time looking for your beautiful face. A month's membership is up around thirty bucks as of this writing.
Other benefits for upgraded service are the ability to view more photos, video messages, faster searches, saving your search settings permanently, etc.
BigChurch Dating Chat Rooms
Hasn't anyone told BigChurch that chat rooms are so 1998?
BigChurch offers a ton of Christian chat rooms, available even to non premium members. Unlike other dating sites like eHarmony, BigChurch allows you to make basic contact with other members for free.
The variety of chat rooms is pretty great -- chat room varieties like geographical locations, special topics, even theme rooms with names like "Congregation" and "Fellowship" are there for the choosing.
BigChurch Magazine
Maybe the weirdest part of BigChurch Dating is the BigChurch magazine. Just like a church newsletter, BigChurch.com features a magazine with articles, questions, polls, and other info that will help your BigChurch Dating experience run smoothly. You can join in the creation of the newsletter -- submit stories of your own and become something of a freelance dating journalist.
So, BigChurch.com has a ton of features, some of which are a bit outdated (chat rooms?) and some of which are available for free to non premium members. This last point's a big plus. BigChurch.com appears to be a bit less concerned with making a ton of money off their members compared to other dating sites.
Who Runs BigChurch Dating?
There are all kinds of stories rattling around the Christian community that using BigChurch.com is akin to supporting pornography.
FriendFinder, the parent company of BigChurch.com, has some interesting side businesses. The main one most people recognize is Penthouse -- the pornographic men's magazine that is far more explicit than Playboy. I'll put it this way -- Penthouse has more shots of the nature that you'd be embarrassed to look at with your mother around. FriendFinder also runs AdultFriendFinder.com, which Christians see as evil because it doesn't discriminate between gay and heterosexual behavior.
FriendFinder must be doing well for themselves, even in this otherwise tough economy. They just recently filed for a nearly $500 IPO in a time when many stocks and businesses are pulling back. Apparently, sin is big business.
If you're the kind of Christian that doesn't want to contribute to organizations that provide pornography, gay dating services, etc -- avoid Big Church Dating.