Seek First News

The seek-first.com domain has been under my control since early 2002. My goal has always been to help the church to use technology to the glory of God.

About a year ago, I created Living Stones Ministry as a vehicle for that goal. Living Stones has three ways in which that goal is delivered. One is in creating “living stones”, software building blocks that churches can drop into their website to add dynamic content that is relevant to their audiences (e.g. the Bible, sermons, etc.). A second is a web services interface to relevant content (e.g. the Bible). The “living stones” use the web services interface so that the content doesn’t need to be stored on each church’s web server.

The third way in which Living Stones Ministry helps the church use technology for the glory of God is be operating portals to information, namely Seek-First.com (and the mobile-friendly version m.seek-first.com).

The original focus of the Seek First portal was to provide a “Christian” alternative to Google. Obviously, I didn’t want to duplicate the great work of sites like the Crosswalk Directory or ChristSites or CrossSearch. Instead, I wanted to leverage the strength of existing search engines plus add some specific content that Christians should want to consider as they are searching the web. Specifically, I used the web services interface from Yahoo but, where other search engines might place ads down the side, instead I also included Bible verses found by searching for the search phrase in the Bible translations that I had parsed into my database.

Since that initial launch, the focus of my work has been on adding relevant, rich content served off the Seek-First server. Namely, several translations of the Bible, the Strongs Greek and Hebrew dictionaries, and a growing database of links to sermons.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:

• There’s nothing about the Seek First search engine that really makes people want to use it more than Google or Yahoo.
• In fact, since it has to send a web services query, it’s dramatically slower than those other engines, so folks tend not to stick around as Seek First search engine users.
• However, the growing collection of study resources are meaningful and helpful to folks preparing lessons or sermons.
• But, the interface could use some refinement to optimize it for this use.

To that end, I have started a redesign effort of the Seek First portal. Searching the web will still be an option, but it won’t be the main focus.

This weblog is also part of that redesign, making it easier for folks who actually start to use Seek First to be aware of new capabilities as they get added. Over the coming days/weeks, I’ll make it easy to subscribe to this weblog via e-mail so you can be kept up to date on new developments. Don’t worry, my goal won’t be to post as many messages as possible, but only to announce when new things are available.

Please let me know if you have ideas, thoughts, reactions, feedback, or especially if you encounter problems. I’m at russ.mcguire@seek-first.com .