I am back from fishing and had a great time. Will post more on that later.
Here is the reply I received from Faithwriters. I am satisfied to say that I did not read the terms of service closely and stand corrected.
They are NOT a scam.

Andria:

Thank you for writing. We are very up front about this whole process.
We say
this in our terms of service that all members agree to at sign up, on
the
private messenger area of your account we make it clear that there is a
cost
for this service. It is of our few upgrade services that help support
the
site. Without these upgrade services we would have to go offline. I
wish
there was something else we could do be we have a VERY LARGE site that
takes
a tremendous amount of time and money to keep going. It is not like
running
a small website.

FaithWriters is provided to members at no cost whatsoever. As part of
this
free embership, members will receive messages via the private messenger
service, however, they can only access those private messages by
subscribing
to that service.

This is done for two reasons. The private messenger service is an
add-on to
the basic membership and does help support FaithWriters financially. It
is a
small way for members to be able to give something back to a site which
trys
to give alot back to its members. We do not ask for much since we have
kept
the cost where anyone should be able to afford it. The Private
Messenger
service also ensures that the members' e-mail addresses are protected
from
SPAM, which is a potential problem when people post their e-mail
addresses
in any public forum.

Yes, there is a cost for the service - but it is very small, working
out at
just $3 a month. Basically, if they are members of FaithWriters who are
enjoying all the benefits of that free membership, but feel they can't
afford the cost of the Private Messenger, then one of the things they
will
have to put up with is the fact that there will be messages sent to
them at
times that they can't access. It is part of being a member of
FaithWriters.

By the way, we tried donations but we had very few members who would
actually make a donation.

God Bless You Richly,
Scott Lindsay
FaithWriters.com
"The HOME for Christian Writers!"

[ April 03, 2005, 04:18 AM: Message edited by: chickadee ]