Frequently Asked Questions
What is the criteria for a church being included in this directory?
We have a special page that outlines the criteria for this specialized directory.
In general, the requirements are:
- Geography (just the United States and Canada at this time)
- Local Christian church congregation of any size
- Beliefs and teaching - Basic Christian teaching is a minimum.
- Focus on a specific ethnic group, usually working with first and second generation
immigrants. The basic question is "Are they reaching the nations?"
Why do I see boxes, ????,
and other strange characters in some of the descriptions?
In most cases, the boxes or question marks or "garbage" characters are real text characters in another
language and font. It will be helpful if your computer has fonts installed for other
languages e.g. a Korean font, Arabic, Russian and others. In Internet Explorer, language settings are under Tools, Options.
For some languages e.g. Khmer and Amharic, you will also need to specify a preferred
font for that language.
Sample for Chinese:
Sample for Amharic or Tigrigna (Ge'ez family of Ethiopic languages):
There are some legal free
font sites on the Internet. At this time, we do not have a resource list of links
for fonts for other languages. Searching on the Internet
for a language name e.g. "Khmer font" will often result in a font source. Fonts
described as "Unicode" or "UTF-8" work well in web browsers.
One way to get several new fonts is to modify the language and region settings for
your operating system. For example, if you specify that you wish to have the capability
to enter Russian text, a Russian font will be available for displaying also. If
you later turn off the language input setting, the font will remain for
displaying within web pages and other documents.
More information on keyboard settings for special characters
Why is there so much repetition
with multiple names and spellings?
Many users, probably most users, will find these pages via search engines.
To serve the most people, we include multiple names and spellings to help more people
find the information they need. Many churches and even some pastors have multiple
names as well.
Why are e-mail addresses reformatted?
Reformatting e-mail addresses on the pages will reduce the chance that the addresses
are added to mailing lists for advertising purposes. It is an effort to fight the spam
(unwanted mail) that takes time away from ministry.
How do I correct or add to the church information for a particular congregation?
At the bottom of each church page, there is a link to request a change to a directory
listing. It will be very helpful if you can verify that you have connections with
that particular church so that we can trust that your information is more accurate
and current than what we have listed.
How can I add more churches?
Please see the Participate page.
How can I find churches in a particular denomination?
When viewing the full listing, or any of the pages
with searching and filtering, you may sort the list in many different ways. For
example, you may search for churches in the state of California. Then check the
box to "Show more columns". Then click on the column header "Denomination" to group
churches together by denomination.
One of the goals of this site is to help people collaborate beyond denominational
walls. But it is still interesting to see which denominations are actively establishing
ethnic congregations.
How can I make more information visible on the screen?
More information will be presented if you click the checkbox to "Show more columns".
To have more information visible, reduce word wrapping and reduce scrolling:
- Maximize your browser window
- Close side windows in your browser e.g. favorites, bookmarks, history, search, etc.
- Try your browser's "Full Screen" view if it is available. With many browsers you
may toggle that on and off by pressing the F11 key. The full screen view hides the
toolbars that take up valuable screen space. Internet Explorer even has an Auto-Hide
option to completely hide the top toolbar when in full screen mode. To hide the
toolbar, right-click on an open space on the top toolbar when in full screen mode
and select "Auto-Hide". Then point your mouse near the top of the page to display
the toolbar again.
- Use a larger screen resolution which will provide more screen "real estate". A minimum
screen size of 1024 x 768 is suggested. Larger is better if the text size stays
large enough to read.
How can I combine search criteria?
We have added the ability to search within a state or province. Other combinations
of search criteria are not possible at this time. Because this is a specialized directory, the
number of churches should be manageable with all of the sorting options available.
Combining search criteria may be an option in future versions of this site.
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