So there’s churches that have launched online confessions?

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Thanks to Al’s Morning Meeting reader Theresa Moore at WTSP-TV in Tampa for sending me this one. The Miami Herald ran a piece about churches that have launched online confessionals. Some of the sites like IveScrewedUp.com, NotProud.com, DailyConfession.com, GroupHug.us and MySecret.tv are extremely popular. The story says:

A woman kept her secret for nearly two decades.

Finally ready to confess, she turned not to a minister, but to her computer.

”I am sorry God for not keeping that baby,” her anonymous confession reads. “I had an abortion and had kept that secret for over 18 years. I feel so ashamed. Please forgive me!”

The confession appears at IveScrewedUp.com, a Web site launched by the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City. It’s one of a growing number of such sites across the country — some secular and others church-sponsored — that offer a place to spill out ugly secrets or just make peccadilloes public.

”I think it helps people understand … that we’re not here to point out people’s screw-ups, that we’re here to help them,” said lead Pastor Troy Gramling, whose nondenominational church launched the site on Easter weekend. “The church is made of skin and flesh and people that have made mistakes.”

The 6,500-member church created the site as part of a 10-week series on the ways people mess up — in marriage, parenting, finances and more. The goal of the series is to help congregants learn from their mistakes.

So far, more people are reading the confessions than posting them. The site gets about 1,000 hits a day, with about 200 online admissions.

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