| Our History |
|
The Early Years First Hand started simply as an online teen outreach ministry founded by two teenagers. It would be two years from the ministry's founding to the launch of its first website. Initially, First Hand's activities were confined to message boards and chat rooms prior to launching a teen website. In the early days, our work was mostly in apologetics. With the advent of the website, the ministry began to expand beyond apologetics into inspiring, motivating and teaching teens about Jesus Christ and about God's love for them personally. The premise behind our website was to be different. At that time, there were only a handful of websites. There were a few Christian websites that mostly existed to give fire and brimstone teachings, or attempted to sell things. There were teen websites, that were there to engage and entertain teenagers, and there were a few websites for Christian teens, but there weren't any websites we knew of that existed as a Christian out reach to non-believing teens. The goal of the website at that point was to fill that niche'. To reach out to teens and teach them in a non-hostile, non-judgmental way. 1998: An attitude emerges It didn't take long for this small group of teenagers to realize that other teens responded to being different. The website began to gain momentum, and the feedback suggested teens were happy with how the site was unique and not like other Christian sites. It wasn't long before the ministry began adapting to the naturally rebellious attitude of teenagers, trying on new slogans such as “Rebels With A Cause,” “Go Against The Crowd” and “We Hate Religion, Too!” While this tactic was often seen as edgy by the church crowd, the response from the ministry's intended audience was often overwhelmingly positive and willing to listen. It was at this point that the ministry developed its edgy “attitude,” which still exists today. 2000: Birth of TeenSite.Net In terms of content, approach and design, everything prior to the year 2000 looked about the same on First Hand's website. It was very basic and content driven, with content updated slowly. In an effort to make the ministry more relevant to teenagers and more relevant, a massive site update was planned that would include the doubling of content, along with an advice feature. Once the effort began, we realized we had more than a site update and began a process of re-vamping the nature of the website. First, we bought the TeenSite.Net domain name to appeal to a broader audience. Then, we added the content and advice feature, which became an instant success. Then, we added message boards and began offering free e-mail. All of these changes drew a whole new audience to the website and paved the way for a new era. At this point, most of the content updates slowed down. The site was re-designed every few months to look fresh, and the focus was on building the community and new features. It was during this period that we really saw fruit in forming relationships with site visitors and helping them through their day to day struggles. What emerged was a close-nit group on our message boards who would come online after school and talk to their friends and ask questions about life. Oddly enough, most of the active members of the community were not Christians, but were willing to listen to the Christ-centered message and nature of the website, even if they didn't necessarily agree. 2003: Not just teens While the teen website continued, the ministry opened a new website at its old domain with the goal of equipping young Christians and teaching non-Christians who were beyond the teen years. It was to be a natural next step for people who had visited TeenSite as teens, but were now entering college or older. Unfortunately, this new website lacked direction, and with significantly less manpower than in previous years, both the new website and TeenSite began to suffer neglect. Plans were made to re-vitalize TeenSite and breathe new life into it for a new generation. The First Hand website was moved to a new content management system, and a prototype was later built for the new TeenSite, which would be more community-driven than the previous incarnations. It would take time, but the end result would be worth it. Now (2007-present) In 2007, First Hand rediscovered it's previous “attitude” and began to change and reinvent itself on all fronts. The reason? Initially, our success was in our uniqueness. What we had become was not unique, we were just another ministry with a website that had a blue sky for a background image. Finally, a new vision was realized for our floundering second website. We realized that one of the things that made TeenSite successful was it's focus on Jesus and not on doctrine, so we took this to another level, launching Jesus1st.Net, a website solely devoted to introducing people from all backgrounds and ages to the person of Jesus Christ.
Now, we have a re-launched TeenSite.Net that is building a community, a Jesus1st site that is growing in content and traffic, our real.faith blog, which pulls no punches on matters of faith and a few other new ideas that will come to fruition in the coming months. |