Photo by, Chitose Suzuki - Boston Globe

Dorchester - In the Stone Age, before the computer, if you were looking for a church to attend, besides being told where to go by your parents, you had to let your fingers do the walking through the telephone book.

Today in the Technology Age, your fingers can fly across a keyboard and get more information then even imagined.

For example the Yellow Pages don't list the 33 ministries of Twelfth Baptist Church, They don't tell you about the October family conference sponsored by Greater Love Tabernacle, not to mention the up coming women's retreat that Morning Star Baptist Church is sponsoring.

For those things go to churchline.com. Thanks to Sidney Burton Jr., creator of the religious web site, you will find all sorts of church-related information, including events listings, church locations, Bible quotes, words to the hymns and even gospel trivia.

The web site, which features information on the Boston churches of many denominations, has search engines that make local and national network links. Browsers can search for churches by community, by name, or by pastor.

"The goal is to be a resource of information for the metropolitan Boston Christian church community and beyond, " said Burton, 45 "It's meant to be a central on-line community where people can come and share ideas and read about what other people are doing, see businesses and find out more about Christian fundamentals."

Burton, who runs a computer business from the basement of his Dorchester triple-decker, says he is following a religious calling to do God's work. It is a calling that years ago turned him away from working full time as a recording engineer in the pop music industry. That job once bought him big bucks and big trouble.

He worked more then 12 years with Boston International Records and Maurice Starr Productions as chief engineer and studio manager. During that time he worked on albums for groups such as Boston based new Edition and New Kids On The Block.

Today, Burton says he is poorer in finances but richer in spirit, especially not that he is spreading the good news via the net and possibly luring church-goers to buildings they might never have set foot in had they first not been able to take a virtual look inside.
All this comes form a man who was brought up in St. James Orthodox Church in Roxbury but abandoned religion after graduating from Boston Technical High School in 1997. His parents, now deceased, had instilled religion in him as a child, But by the time he was an adult, religion was mostly a habit that had little to do with belief or faith.

That changed in 1987, he said, when he lost himself in alcohol, a bad relationship, a fast life, and job stress that plunged him into depression and gave him panic attacks. The job with Maurice Starr was on the decline, as was his salary, which had plummeted from $100,000 a year to $36,000 by the time he lest the business.

Sitting in an armless black chair in his den, Burton is surrounded by framed gold and platinum albums (decorations of the past) and the Twelfth Baptist Church 1996 Man of The Year award (a testimony to his new life). He's looking across the room stroking his beard .

Now married and with three daughters, Burton rediscovered God at a prayer meeting at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury in 1987 that he attended at the suggestion of a friend. Now, Burton is director of the audiovisual ministry at the church.

He started churchline.com last October as he was getting his computer publishing business into gear. For $135. A year, churches pay Burton to create and host a web page. His site includes businesses advertising services. So far, Burton who learned about computers on his own, has designed web pages for three churches, As of last week, more then 2,000 visits had been made to the site since counting began in February.

The site is just one of a budding trend in which church officials are realizing the power of technology. This year, the Episcopal Dioceses of Massachusetts set up a web site, www.diomass.org. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston also has a site, www.rcab.org, created about a year ago and staffed by volunteers.

"This is the beginning of a new electronic public square in society," said John Walsh Director of communications for the archdiocese. "We don't want to leave any of these opportunities unused."

Burton says it has been tough to get churches interested in paying for a web page on churchline.com because it means convincing some church officials that they need to move beyond the church bulletin and word-of-mouth method to spread information.

Ask him what he thinks about a secular tool like the Internet being used for religious purposes and he becomes animated. His gravely voice swings an octave higher and he shifts forward in his chair as he answers.

"Everything on the Internet is not good, but does that mean were not supposed to go out into that space and preach and minister?" he asks, "I think God gave us the ability to use all the materials he gave us. Man did not invent this. He just took something that Gad gave us and used it in a certain way. We need to offer some alternatives and get a hold of that media before we are shut out"

"This is the information age. To expect that the church that we belong to should not be a participating part of that whole environment I think is a mistake."

Craig McMullen, co-pastor of Dorchester Temple Baptist Church, believes churchline.com is a great idea. He sees Burton as "extremely creative, rather courageous in the entrepreneurial sense for trying something untested and untried by such a select group as Boston churches." says McMullen and co-pastor Bruce Wall are talking with Burton about designing a web page.

"The church needs to move into the 21st century," said McMullen. The church send Burton weekly updates about events. A recent end-of-summer cookout was featured on churchline.com.

"About 200 people showed up, said McMullen "Who came because they looked it up? Who knows. But there were people I didn't know."

By next year, Burton hopes his business will be on solid ground and he will have more clients. He's not worried through.

"When we do what God wants us to do, we will always be successful," he said. "We might not be millionaires, but we will be content."

By Sandy Coleman
Globe Staff
September 14, 1997

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