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Background

Organizational Background

5loaves.net is based in Norfolk, VA and was founded in March 2005 by Glen Moriarty. He, along with a team of designers and programmers, started 5loaves.net with the vision of connecting Christians all over the world by linking friends, churches, and organizations. In addition, at that same time, they also released supplementary Websites that encourage Christians to connect and communicate with one another. For example, the Christianary site is a member created dictionary, or wiki, of Christian terms. The team at 5loaves.net is constantly working to bring innovative services to its members. They plan to release a pioneering email service and Netmall in the next several months.

About the Director:

Glen Moriarty has served in several ministry, administrative, and academic positions. He has worked in and with a variety of denominational and non-denominational churches and organizations. Moriarty is a licensed psychologist and Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology and Counseling at Regent University, where he teaches several courses that integrate psychology and Christianity. He is also the Director of Missionary Outreach Support Services (www.missionaryoutreach.net), an organization that provides web-based, private, secure mental health consultation services to missionaries, and co-director of the God Image Institute (www.godimage.com), which is the first agency in the country dedicated to helping people heal their relationship with God. He is the author of the upcoming book, published with the Haworth Press and to be released in December of 2005, Pastoral Care of Depression: Helping Clients Heal Their Relationship with God. Moriarty has been awarded several times for his contributions, receiving the Leadership Award, Fellowship Award, and being named among the Who’s Who of Universities and Colleges. He is a member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Christian Association for Psychological Studies.

Narrative of Events:

  1. Working on a website to provide web-based mental health consultation to missionaries.
  2. Read Malcolm Gladwell’s the Tipping Point
  3. Talked with a friend about Friendster (a social network)
  4. Wondered how come there wasn’t a Christian one.
  5. Joined a social network for techies
  6. Posted a comment to see if anyone had open source, or free, social network software. At that time, I didn’t realize that it was so new and rare that the software was still being developed and was strongly protected.
  7. Team of researchers from Berkeley contacted me 4 hours later and said that they were working on creating an innovative network and that we could pilot the software for free.
  8. A friend of mine agreed to design the site and here we are today doing the beta testing.
  9. It has been a wild ride and I look forward to seeing where we end up.