14. Scotland: “ignite” Social Networking Website

By Steve Hall

“Allowing the relationships formed on our holidays and camps to continue and deepen is the primary aim of ignite”

In October 2007 SU Scotland launched ignite (www.suignite.org.uk), an exciting new website targeted at 12-18 year old teenagers. ignite is a colourful blend of daily Bible readings, discipleship blog posts, news stories, evangelistic articles and flash games, combined with a private social network area, where teenage members gain access to their own customisable profile, instant messaging, discussion forums, plus more.

Social networking (or online community) websites have rapidly grown in popularity over the past 2 to 3 years. As many as 49% of all under-18s online in the UK (equivalent to 3.8 million young people) now regularly use these sites to stay connected with friends and meet new people.*

Each year up to 2,500 teenagers attend SU Scotland residentials. Many of these teenagers share a feeling of isolation as they face the challenges of growing up. Sandy, one of ignite’s 15 year old male members, shares how ignite is making a difference: ‘Sadly where I live there are almost no Christians my age, so ignite is a fantastic place to meet young Christians.’

Allowing the relationships formed on our holidays and camps to continue and deepen is the primary aim of ignite. The secondary aim is to enable all users to explore the significance of Jesus in a fresh way that is postmodern in context, expression and theology. The evangelistic content within ignite’s Seek zone is some of the most viewed content on the site.

One of the greatest challenges facing online ministry with teenagers is the highly publicised issue of security. In response to this, SU Scotland has made ignite’s social network completely private and members (both young people and adult moderators) all have a face-to-face relationship with the organisation. This approach has meant we’ve produced a site where over 90% of members are teenagers, something that is unique among social networking sites.

At least once a month 120 young people login to ignite; please pray that this number will increase as a result of our summer holidays so that we can see more young people benefit from the friendships and content ignite offers.

* SOURCE: Guardian Newspaper (www.guardian.co.uk) 2/4/08.

For more information about ignite, Steve can be contacted at: steve.hall@suscotland.org.uk