Last week I blogged about Internet Evangelism Day and the unexpected opportunity I was given to speak at my church. So, today I’d like to share with you an article about Internet evangelism, a little about my talk, and some thoughts spurred by some of the comments posted to last week’s IED blog article. This also fits nicely with our theme of Church Website Innovation Month as one of the most important improvements you can make to your church website is to make it friendly for spiritual seekers who are looking for a church.
Finding God Online
This weekend Christian Broadcasting Network published an article and video news story about Internet Evangelism Day entitled Finding God Online. The video is excellent – you won’t want to miss it. The article itself talks about how people are going online to search for spiritual information, the importance of church websites, and even the pros and cons of chuches that exist entirely in the virtual world. It also mentions some websites you may have heard mentioned around here. 😉
My First IED Talk
Let me preface this by saying I don’t speak in front of people very often. I don’t really like to do it and I don’t think it’s really where my gifts lie. The last thing I would do is suggest my talk is a good example for how to do an IED presentation. But I am willing to risk embarrassing myself here in the hopes that some of you can take what I did and improve upon it at your own churches.
There were three things I wanted to accomplish in my talk:
- Convince people that the Internet provides the greatest opportunity in history to communicate the Gospel to unchurched people.
- Inspire people with the stories of real people who received Christ online.
- Direct people to ways they can help to communicate the Gospel online.
Being a techie math geek, I used statistics to try to convince people of the unprecedented opportunities the Internet provides for evangelism. But rather than simply recite states, I did it in the form of trivia questions. Next I planned to show the video testimonies of real people who received Christ online. I downloaded some great videos from the IED site, brought them up to the church several hours before the service and tested everything out, and then due to technical difficulties was unable to show them. So, I ended up in the awkward position of having to describe the videos. I finished up the talk by suggesting ways people could help to share the Gospel online and providing the web addresses of sites they could use as resources.
As you might expect, after the talk all my fellow techno-geeks came forward and told me how much they liked the talk. 🙂 Seriously though, I think techie people liked the talk because the topic was right up their alley, but the non-techie people I talked to said they had learned a lot and they were very excited to hear how God was working in ways they had never realized before. Whether people will actually take steps to share their faith online I don’t know, but I think it was well worth the effort to bring the opportunities to people’s attention.
If you like, you can listen to the IED talk and follow along with the IED Powerpoint presentation. You might want to get yourself a cup of coffee first as the talk is about 45 minutes long.
The 99 Percent Problem
One final point I wanted to mention in response to comments that were made to last week’s IED article. Just because your church or ministry has a website does not mean you are helping to convey the Gospel online to unbelievers.
The fact is about 99% of Christian websites are designed for Christians. Only 1% are to help seekers understand the Gospel message. If you really want to reach spiritual seekers, you have to intentionally design your site to accommodate them – speak their language, address issues they’re interested in, be friendly and non-judgemental. And you have to be proactive about engaging spiritual seekers on the non-Christian sites where they hang out.
So, did you and your church do anything for Internet Evangelism Day? If not, there’s no rule that says you have to wait 365 days to do something. If you recognize the opportunities the Internet provides and feel inspired and led to do something, get started today!
5 Comments
Being “friendly and non judgemental” has got to be a huge problem. I’ve been blogging two or three years and keep things very civil and deliberately open to people of different points of view. Regretfully, the only people that have ever “flamed” on my blog are evangelicals, to the point where I’ve stopped visiting such sites. It’s not that I wouldn’t still be welcoming but I’ve come to recognize the futility of inviting them.
Even when they initially appear friendly and non judgemental, I find that if I make points that they can’t counter they reliably begin to first deliberately misrepresent my statements, so that I have to go back and say “Well, no, what I actually said was… ” The next stage is thinly veiled insult and then comes the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I just haven’t found that Christians to the far right of center have the capacity to agree to disagree in a respectful manner. And I think it has to do with sin, the ego, “the flesh” – ego involvment in their own point of view – and not “religious fervor.” A lot of people need to distiguish “righteousness” from self righteousness.
If internet Evangelism day was nothing else, else it was great marketing. I saw the ads all over the place. I was going to put one on my site, but did on some others.
Take a look at my site if you get bored.
http://www.powerfulchurchwebsites.com
Great stuff– tough luck with the technical difficulties with the videos for your presentation. 🙁
The three points that you wanted to hit home in your presentation lay heavily on my heart as well! Thanks for this post.
One of the greatest difficulties that we find is that technology changes so fast that as soon as you learn the latest “cutting edge” technique, there is something new around the corner. It is the nature of the “techno” industry.
Internet is now getting quite change and you have mentioned some effective points. I like it that now every one seems to be getting engaged.