CLEARWATER — The Rev. Phil Miller-Evans, youth pastor at First United Methodist Church here, recently went into a computer chat room on America Online (AOL) service. He says within 15 minutes, he received 12 e-mails advertising pornographic web sites and three from people claiming to be AOL officials asking for his password.

That experience is one reason Miller-Evans is now doing more than just surfing the worldwide web. “We wanted to create a place on the ’net for United Methodist youth groups to gather,” he said, “a safe place in the internet.” That safe place, created about a year and a half ago by Miller-Evans and two youth from the church, is called UMYF.net, and its address on the internet is www.UMYF.net.

The idea for UMYF.net was born out of frustration at trying to find other youth groups on the internet, said Jeremy Slater, one of the founders and the current volunteer director of operations for the web site. “Our group was going on a trip, and we were looking for churches to stay in,” he said. “We had trouble finding other UMYFs [United Methodist Youth Fellowships]on the ’net.”

So Miller-Evans, Slater and another youth, Jeff Scarsbrook, decided they would host their own web site for the Clearwater church. They did some research and found that nobody else was using the name UMYF.net, “so we snagged it,” Slater said.

The web site is hosted on a computer server that is a combination of donated and purchased computer equipment and located in office space donated by a church member. The staff is all volunteer, and members of the church’s youth group help maintain the system, Miller-Evans said.

Soon after starting their site, the team came up with the idea of inviting other UMYFs to put their web sites on the server. There are currently more than 50 youth groups on UMYF.net, including two in the Philippines, and another two or three groups are added each day, according to Slater. The newly upgraded server has room for the sites of more than 100,000 youth groups.

In addition to hosting web sites for youth groups, the UMYF.net server is also home to the web site for an outreach mission to the Dominican Republic called InMission.com.

Support for the ministry comes from donations from churches that use the service. UMYF.net has also started offering internet access to residents of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, Tampa, New Port Richey, Sarasota, Venice, Naples, and Lakeland. Since it is a non-profit group, it cannot charge fees, but asks users to give a donation equal to what they would pay other service providers, Miller-Evans said.

The Clearwater church also budgets money to support the ministry. “The church is supporting the project because they’ve seen what it can do,” Slater said.

Another benefit of the project is the publicity it has generated for the church’s youth group. Its UMYF home page receives 60,000 visits each month, according to Miller-Evans. “I don’t know any church sending out 60,000 per month in tracts, fliers, or even getting 60,000 people to read a newspaper ad,” he said.