Infinite Church Online: is it going anywhere?

InfiniteChurch.com believes it's got the online church model figured out. It sets itself up as not just a web page, but a friend, with a fully interactive worship environment, and an emphasis on discipleship, missions, and relationship building. It's leadership, according to the "Catch the Vision" movie, is lay driven and promises more than just a website or a chat room. The motto is "making real connections in a virtual world." What it really is is a variation on Church of Fools or St. Pixels: a fairly clunky graphical interface in which one can move an avatar around and chat with people. Two immediate downsides, as far as I'm concerned: 1: You have to download and install their 26 MB graphical environment, which is no where near as smooth or as easy to navigate as Second Life. And the name? New Christian Chat. (not a chat room, huh?) 2: The guest avatar is a smiley face. Come on, how cheesy can you get? The website itself has a sort of cursory interface. I think the movie is the best part of the whole thing, and certainly worth a look, as it upholds the ideals of online church connections. The site proper is just a couple of pages, with basic information designed to get you to download their proprietary chat software. While they do have a "real time" worship service once a week, there are no archived services readily available for download. One wonders, too, how they handle the "troll" issue that was a problem for COF. It's really too much work to interact or participate with, and there's nothing in the "public spaces" to tell you how they mean to be missional, relational, or incarnational, although these values are expressed in the vision movie. They do, however, offer online baptism, if you can navigate and relate to it well enough to want to take that step; they acknowledge that having done so online, you may also wish to do so in real time. The New Christian Chat graphical environment is pixielated and small (a small window in the center of my screen). The movement controls are not intuitive, and there's no real instruction given (unless you stumble upon it) as to how to navigate the church environment. Apart from a voice that says, "welcome, new guest" there was no overt "help" or reaching out; I was on my own from there and quickly lost patience. Besides, who wants to download such a big file while they're in a coffee shop? What if they are using a public computer, such as one in a library? All in all, infinitechurch.com just doesn't life up to its own press. Shame, really. I'd like to see someone make a go of it.