Christianity Today

Plug pulled on Christianity.com
The CEO of Christianity.com, the Pat Robertson-backed Web site that hosts major churches and ministries like Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, the Salvation Army, and Jews for Jesus, told employees yesterday that the site was unable to find further financing. The site is closing down and will lay off almost all of its three dozen or so employees by November 15. Word on the street is that they're going to try to keep the site running for a few months more so ministries can have some time to find somewhere else to go. A few employees will stick around to make sure nothing breaks.

What Weblog hasn't heard yet is what's going to happen to Crosswalk.com. Christianity.com's demise can't be good news for the publicly traded company. In a radical effort to cut costs, Crosswalk partnered with Christianity.com this summer: Christianity.com got Crosswalk's content, Crosswalk got Christianity.com's Web site management software. The move allowed Crosswalk to drastically reduce its technical staff and programmers. But now that Christianity.com is going away, who will run Crosswalk's infrastructure? The company doesn't have the funds to hire programmers back. According to its most recent press release, the company is burning through $255,000 a month. At that rate, it'll go through the rest of its assets in only a few months: "At September 30, 2001 the Company had cash and invested funds of $801,298 and working capital of $627,840," the company says. "As a result of the upturn in cash burn, even with the outlook for a cash positive fourth quarter, the company may pursue an additional capital infusion, and new business opportunities that may result in increased liquidity and value to shareholders."

In other ...

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