I swear, this isn't a bad joke. It's a very real site, ChurchRater, and it allows anyone with an Internet connection to identify and review church services around the world. Is the site inspiring frank conversations about worship and religion, as its creators intended? Is it allowing sometimes closed or cliqueish communities to see how they appear to outsiders? Or does it, as some users wrote, "trivialize the deep dimensions of spiritual experiences" and "bolster the notion that church is a consumer-oriented proposition"?

The website now allows any user to essentially replicate that feedback process.

Here's how it works: Users create a profile (what, no Facebook Connect option?) and then have the options of searching for churches, reading reviews and posting reviews and ratings of their own. Churches can also request to be rated, in which case a reviewer is hired and sent to review that church.

Right now, only Christian denominations are included on the site (Catholic and Protestant); the co-founders have stated they do not intend to add mosques, synagogues or other places of worship to their system. And most of the reviews are for churches inside the U.S. Still, if you've ever had the unique experience of living in or around any of the American Protestant subcultures, you know there's some darn good fodder for reviews there.

Many of the churches in the site's database remain unreviewed. The review threads that exist, however, range from informative to entertaining. One well-known megachurch was criticized for its emphasis on showmanship. Another large church was given a terrible review for its unwelcoming congregation and self-important preacher. One pastor got smacked down for giving his own church a five-star rating.

As interesting and even useful as such reviews can be, however, some of the site's users take umbrage at its purpose and execution.

"We live in a world where 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water, over three billion people live in poverty, and children of God are sold into slavery; we have no time to waste rating 'Sunday shows,'" one wrote.

"By providing such an open forum," wrote another, "dirty laundry can be aired (in fact, IS aired) with no means of proving its truthfulness; as such, you become accessories, in all likelihood, to the bearing of false witness, even slander."

Still, as a young person who was subjected to an unrelenting Baptist upbringing as well as constant coast-to-coast travel, I can see the value in having such a site. For discriminating church-goers who are looking for a new church home, it's good to have firsthand and honest feedback on exactly what a given worship service will entail.

Besides, churchgoers are already "reviewing" churches informally and offline, anyhow. Why not bring these conversations into the light?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

The occasion was the 44th annual World Communications Day, traditionally a time for the Vatican to project an annual message from the church to its people and the rest of the world. This year's message stood in sharp contrast to the missive he delivered in 2009, when the Holy See stated that mass media - including online information sources - acted as a "poison" that numbed morality and sensitivity. "'It recounts, repeats and amplifies evil," he said, "making us accustomed to horrendous acts, desensitizing us and, in some ways, poisoning us." So, why the about-face?

In contrast to the popular conceptions of church leaders and religious figures as being out of touch, the Holy Father urged priests to express their message not as a relic or a theory but as something "concrete, present and engaging...

"Consecrated men and women working in the media have a special responsibility for opening the door to new forms of encounter, maintaining the quality of human interaction, and showing concern for individuals and their genuine spiritual needs."

In essence, the Catholic Church is beginning to sound like some of the clients of digital ad agencies during and after the dot-com boom. While we wouldn't dare condense the Pope's message down to "we gotta get us some of that-there Internet," we do feel that this call to online action is a bit late and a bit out of step with last year's World Communications Day message.

In 2009, Pope Benedict gave an address on new technologies that seemed like a two-sided coin where the Web was concerned.

While applauding the ability of "so-called cyberspace" to foster dialog between diverse and geographically distant people, the Pope continued to say that the social web trivialized the concept of friendship and might contain words and images that "are degrading of human beings, that promote hatred and intolerance, that debase the goodness and intimacy of human sexuality or that exploit the weak and vulnerable."

None of these notes were present in this year's message, which called for a strong pastoral presence online and positioned the social Web as a tool of the ministry rather than a dangerous frontier of questionable content from which to protect laypersons.

What do you think: Should the Church be more visible online? How does the Holy See's position effect priests and other church leaders on the ground, many of whom have taken to the Web already to enhance their outreach and ministry? And why do you think the Pope's message is so encouraging about using the Internet as opposed to last year's cautionary tale? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

One denomination, the United Methodist Church, has opted for a boldly redesigned web presence to ask users, "What if church wasn't just a building, but thousands of doors? Each of them opening up to a different concept or experience of church - and a journey that could change our world. Would you come?"

Apart from being remarkably aesthetically pleasing and entirely modern, the site also blows the lid off of traditional expectations of static church websites. Even non-Methodists or non-Christians would get a kick out of the rich interactivity: The TALK page that allows users to respond to simple questions, the FIND page that directs users to the closest churches with programs most relevant to users' interests, the LISTEN page with audio news features and an iLike music player.

We caught up with one of the minds behind the site, Miiacom's Bayard Saunders, in Nashville, Tennessee. "The big idea," he said, "was to serve the content of the home page like a giant tag cloud based on feeds from news sources, blogs (including Twitter), keyword searches, site paths and referring pages. So by design, the site is constantly refreshed and always highlighting the most relevant content based on the most current topics relevant to seekers."

Saunders also revealed that an ad buy-fueled partnership with Google has allowed for additional relevant innovations, including a Methodist layer on Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Friend Connect, and content fed by individual UMC churches from Google Apps.

"It is ground-breaking, certainly for an official religious denomination's website," he said. "And it's been quite an interesting experience, designing a web presence for 'the God account.'"