First and foremost, this site is a resource for anyone who wants to know more about Jesus Christ. Primarily, that takes the form of a large encyclopedia of articles on every conceivable topic related to Christ. People with questions can search for and read these articles in order to find the answers they seek. If they cannot find the answer, they can post their question and someone will reply with the answer, either in a discussion or by writing a new article. Last but not least, this site is a community for believers where we can share prayer requests, write articles and devotions, share resources such as books and movies and have discussions about whatever topics are close to our heart.

Jesus commanded his followers to preach the Gospel. In this day and age when everyone turns to the Internet for answers, we want to ensure that there is a place where people can learn the truth about Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible. This site is no substitute for a loving, caring church community, nor can it take the place of a kind friend who sits down and reads from the Bible with you. However, we do hope that it can get you started in your Christian walk if that is your starting point, or that it can help you overcome some obstacles in your faith if that is where you stand. Either way, we hope this site will be a blessing and a guide no matter what your situation.

The only time you need to create an account is if you want to post something to the site - an article, question, prayer request, response or something similar. You never need to create an account to read, search or browse the site. We ask you to create an account to post an item because this gives you the ability to keep track of what you've posted. This also gives other members the ability to know who has posted an item (though questions and prayer requests may be posted anonymously). Finally, the most important reason we ask you to create an account is because we want Delve Into Jesus to be a community, not just another information web site. We want you to get to know us, and we want to get to know you! However, if all you want is to read some articles, there is no need to create an account. Either way, we're delighted that you decided to drop by.

The only piece of information you have to give us is your email address. This permits us to send you information that you request such as your new password or notification when other members respond to your questions or prayer requests if you have requested this. Except for the welcome email from us, you will never be sent an email unless you have requested it. Any other information you provide such as your name or address are optional.

We will not give your email or other information out to anyone under any circumstances. Your password on the website is stored in encrypted format (it's called MD5), so we cannot see it (in case you use this password for other websites). In fact, we cannot even retrieve your password for you if you forget it - we have to generate a new one for you. We hope this will allay any fears you might have. Please contact us if you have any other concerns.

There is no question that we have our own firm conclusions about who Jesus was and the implications of that fact. We do not try to be, or even want to be objective. Make no mistake - we believe that the one and only path to salvation is Jesus Christ and we sincerely hope to convince you of that if you have not made your decision for Jesus. Having said that, nothing on this site will ever been factually wrong as much as it is in our ability to control. It does not serve any purpose for us to convince you with lies, or even half truths. The evidence for Christ is compelling, and we believe, conclusive, if is it evaluated and weighed fairly. That is the purpose of Delve Into Jesus - to present the good news of Christ as fully, completely and convincingly as we can. Once you know the facts, you will have to make your own choice. That is a very personal struggle that everyone must face, and we will be here to support you in that choice in any way we can. We will listen to you, give you any advice we have to give, and we will pray for you. But ultimately, that choice is yours to make. We will not try to hide the fact that we have made ours.

As much as possible, we want this site to have nothing to do with religion. Religion is not a bad thing at all, on the contrary, it is absolutely necessary. However, our focus is on a relationship with Jesus. Whether you're Catholic, Baptist, or Methodist matters little to Jesus. He wants you to know Him and worship Him and we want to help you do that. We will try to keep this site clear of any discussions which involve matters specific to a particular faith. We want to focus on Jesus and the Gospel and leave the details of worship (as important as they are) out of the mix for now.

Delve Christian Ministies has adopted the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals

• We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
• We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
• We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
• We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
• We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
• We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you feel that you have a specific area of expertise, have studied a particular doctrine, have personal knowledge of some aspect of Christianity, or simply feel that the Holy Spirit is compelling you to share, then please do. The only criteria is that all articles must be Biblically based, as we feel that the Bible is the ultimate authority of God's revelation to us. We cannot post any articles which clearly contradict a Christian doctrine as laid out in the Bible. We also want to keep the site free of any doctrine which is controversial (i.e. the bible does not offer a clear opinion) or which is specific to a particular denomination, such as predestination or baptism by immersion. We want to keep this site as close as possible to what C.S. Lewis called "Mere Christianity" (those beliefs which all Christians everywhere and for all time share in common) and not get into debates about the finer theological points.

Not at all! Our judge and instructor is Jesus Christ and the purpose of this website is to help you get to know Him better. We do this by trying to shed light on what the Bible teaches us. As the creators of this web site, we don't feel that we are any more qualified than anyone to teach others about Christianity. The reason that so many articles are written by us is that we felt we needed to get the ball rolling so the site could have some initial content. We strongly encourage others to share what they know about Christ so that we may all grow.

We know that whenever someone is trying to do the work of Christ, there will be those who will try to tear it down. A site such as this is a prime target for someone who wants to post offensive and derogatory messages. We want to shield our members from this kind of attack, so we take the precaution of only posting content which has been reviewed by a moderator and is not found to be deliberately offensive. We don't mind discussions which are controversial or even a little heated, but if someone's intent is to deliberately upset someone else, we won't allow it to be posted to the site.

Thanks so much for asking - your contributions are important. The best thing that you can do to contribute is to become an active member of the site. You can contribute articles, prayer requests, resources and discussions. Make some suggestions about what you would like to see, or how the site can be improved. If you want to contribute as a moderator (approving submissions and posts), please drop us a line. If you're skilled in graphics and want to contribute a theme or a new look, that would be tremendous. Finally, your prayers and best wishes are always welcome. We don't need any financial assistance at this time because our hosting is generously supplied courtesy of Gateway Software Productions, and we do all the programming work - but that may change. If we ever need financial assistance, we'll post the details on the site.

We have to be diligent to protect the site from a vulnerability called "cross-site" scripting. To that end, we restrict the characters that are permitted for most text, and restrict the tags that are allowed to be part of HTML in discussions, articles and comments. If you have entered something and important characters were removed, please let us know what the text was so we can determine if we need to relax the filter a little bit.

The permitted characters for most text are:

• All letters
• All numbers
• Tabs and spaces
• @
• "
• !
• .
• ,
• ?
• -
• _
• :
• /
• '
• &
• (
)

For HTML entries, we accept the following additional characters

• <
• >
• (
• )
• =
• +
• *

The following HTML tags are acceptable - all others will be rejected

• p
• ul
• ol
• b
• em
• strong
• li
• h2
• h3
• hr
• br
• a
• blockquote
• i
• u

We've written about the origins of the site here