Membership at Aleteia is central to our new evangelization mission. In fact, we only exist to be of service to our users’ mission, as every Christian by virtue of his or her baptism is called and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be a witness of Christ’s love to the world. Aleteia exists to give its users ways to fulfill this calling more easily, effectively, and enjoyable. Aleteia is a tool that we are privileged to supply our members for information, formation, and evangelization.
Right now, signing up as a member enables you to comment on posts and share Aleteia’s stories with anyone in the world via social media and email. Our sharing tool is more sophisticated than most and presently works with six different social networks, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, with more to come. It’s not always easy to strike up a conversation with a family member, friend, or co-worker about our most deeply held beliefs, but it’s not too difficult to send an email with an article attached and a simple note: “I thought you might like to see this. What do you think?”
We want to stress as well how much we value our members commenting on stories. One of the very best things about the new media is how it breaks down walls between writers and their readers. Writers can no longer consider themselves authorities from on high dispensing wisdom to the masses. Rather, writing has become more true to its essential character as an act of communication. The writers has always been saying, “This is what I think? What do you think?” Writers who fail to be interested in what their readers think have mistaken themselves for omniscient gods. Real communication is always from one person to another: a conversation. So please, join in!
We want to make Membership as rewarding as possible, so coming soon Members will qualify for our e-Vangelizer progam. The e-Vangelizer program will provide a personal homepage for all our members. It will provide a way for each member to keep track of the topics on Aleteia in which he or she is particularly interested. It will also provide a record of your latest comments and those of your friends and aware points for sharing Aleteia stories through email or social networks, for commenting on stories, for contributing content—including tips on breaking news, original photographs, music and videos and contributions to our Big Issues section.
There will be a photo gallery for top e-Vangelizers.
There will also be special, limited-time initiatives for worthwhile projects. For example, if a natural disaster strikes and Pope Francis asks the Church to respond through a particular charitable agency, Aleteia will award special points for helping to spread the word.
As their point totals increase, e-Vangelizers will earn distinctive badges: Follower, Disciple, Apostle, and e-Vangelist. Every time someone who has attained one of these distinctions comments on an article his badge will appear alongside his or her screen name, alerting other users to the contribution of one of our most active community members.
The e-Vangelizer program will soon be released in beta for the Spanish edition. After a period of study and development, it will then be rolled out across the other five Aleteia editions.
Become a Member today and use Aleteia as a means of living the Christian life!
And today we celebrate...