Internet Evangelism Day is April 21. That’s just 2 days away.  If your organization has not done anything to prepare, don’t worry, it’s not too late.  IED is all about letting the folks in your organization know about the great opportunities we have to share our faith online and encouraging them to make the most of those opportunities.

So even if this is the first you’re hearing about it, you can write a blog post about sharing your faith online, tweet/share someone else’s post about it, or start a conversation in social media  by asking a question like, “What do you think about sharing your faith online? Have you done that? How did it go?”

Evangelism… Yes, There’s an App for That

A lot of people are apprehensive about trying to explain their faith to their friends.  ”What if it comes out all jumbled?”  ”What if I sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about?” “What if my friend asks me a question I don’t know the answer to?”

Intervarsity Christian Fellowship has developed the New World Gospel Presentation mobile app to help with that.

Based on material from True Story by James Choung, this free app helps you illustrate the main points of the gospel message by drawing four “worlds” on your screen.

Suggested dialogue and Scripture references are included for each world to help you explain the gospel as you draw.

The opportunity to make a decision for Jesus Christ and join his mission to heal the world is presented at the end; a suggested prayer is included.

Features 

• Draw each world by tracing its outline as you explain each step.
• Save or erase your drawings.
• Flip each of your drawings over for suggested dialogue and Scripture references.
• Offer a suggested prayer to Jesus for those who want to commit their lives to Christ.
• Email a PDF recap of the New World Gospel Presentation to follow-up after your discussion.

The app is available for iOS (iPhone, iPod, iPad) and Android.

What do you think?  Could this app help you share your faith more easily? Could it help your friends or the people in your church or ministry share their faith?

Digital media have transformed the world in the last 15 years. We have entered a new ‘digital communication culture’ where all the rules for effective communication have changed. Even offline!

There are 2+ billion web users, and over 5 billion people use mobile phones (increasingly these are web-equipped). The Web is not just another means of communication, but a hyper-medium that subsumes, links together, and enhances all previous media.

It’s in this context that Internet Evangelism Day takes place this Sunday, April 21.

Internet Evangelism Day is…

… NOT a single day in which Christians are encouraged to share their faith online – we should be sharing our faith online every day.  Rather it is an awareness day in which churches, schools and other Christian organizations make a concerted effort to inform their people about the myriad of opportunities and resources available to help in the sharing of our faith online as well as challenge and inspire each other to be more intentional about making the most of these opportunities and resources.

We at OurChurch.Com have blogged a lot about IEDay and ways to share our faith online in the past.  Here are some links to some great ideas!

• 20 Ways to Share Your Faith Online
• 14 digital ideas to share with your church
• 12 Ways to Share Your Faith Online with Instagram

What are some ways that you’ve shared your faith online?

Is your church or ministry doing anything to raise awareness about sharing our faith online on Internet Evangelism?

If not, there is still time.  And at the very least, you can champion the importance of sharing our faith online by blogging about it and sharing stories and ideas in social media.  You can do that, right?

Global Media Outreach recently released this stirring video which tells the story of Karl Nyman, who had just about given up all hope and was about to take is own life but before doing so Google’d “God.”  Have a look…

This is a great example of how God is at work online.

It also demonstrates the importance of creating good Christian websites that

• Rank well in search engines
• Are easy to use
• Clearly communicate the gospel
• Are available in many languages

It also shows the significant impact any Christ follower can have as online missionary.

What do you think?

Internet Evangelism Day is set for 29 April, as the culmination of Digital Outreach Month. IE Day is both an annual focus day and year-round resource guide for digital outreach. It has always been our suggestion that churches (or other Christian groups) build a digital evangelism focus into their events or service sheets on or near that day. In previous years, although this could be an eye-opening challenge, actual involvement in digital evangelism or ministry was not something that many church members were likely to take up. The options were somewhat limited, time-consuming, and needed technical or writing gifts.

No longer! Social networking enables any online Christian to naturally share resources that explain some aspect of the good news, and start conversations with those they are already linked with. So at last, an IE Day presentation can suggest practical ideas and opportunities that most church members can use right now.

If you’d like some help with what to share with the folks in your organization on Internet Evangelism Day, the IED website has some great  suggestions.  Here are  14 digital ideas to share with your church on IE Day 

What are your thoughts on Internet Evangelism Day?  Are you planning anything for your organization?  If so what?

Instagram is mobile app that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it on a variety of social networking services, including Instagram’s own, where “followers” can “like” and comment on those images. It was named “App o f the Year” for 2011 by Apple and recently exceeded 30 million accounts. For its first 18 months, Instagram was only available for the iPhone and iPad, but earlier this month they released an Android version. Shortly after that, they were purchased by Facebook for a whopping $1 billion.

While Instagram is often referred to as a “photo sharing app,” in reality it is much more than that. In addition to posting their own photos, people sometimes also post photos taken by others, funny images, quotes, screenshots from their phone and text. And some people don’t post anything at all, they just “like” and comment on what others post.

Because of that I think it’s more accurate and beneficial to think of Instagram as a social network where images are the primary medium.

With that in mind and Internet Evangelism Day only 4 days away, let’s talk about ways we can use Instagram to share our faith online. Here are 12 I came up with:

1) Post pics of creation.  Give God the praise.

2) Post pics of Christian community. Share the fun and love you experience at social events at church, things you do with your small group, etc.

3) Post pics of serving in your community. When you serve the poor, paint a house or join in a community service project, take and share photos.

4) Post pics from missions trips. Missions trips are especially good opportunities for great photos because they often provide the opportunity to mix in beautiful pictures of the creation, culture and people of another country.

5) Post quotes from scripture and Christian authors. This is a little trickier than the previous suggestions because you have to upload the images to your phone. (Watch this video tutorial to see how its done)  But once you figure it out, any time you come across a good quote image its quick and easy to save and sync it to your phone.

6) Post pics of Christian art. Instagram is a visual medium. Sometimes art – whether it’s paintings, stained glass, sculpture or other – speaks louder than words.

7) Post pics of the people you love & things you like.  In other words, be a real, authentic person.

8 ) Encourage others with a Tweegram.  Tweegram is a companion app to Instagram which you can download in the app store.  It enables you to type a message and post it as an image to Instagram much like you would post a tweet to Twitter

9) Listen and engage with others. Remember Instagram is a SOCIAL network. Don’t just broadcast. Follower your friends, family and people in your community who use IG. View their pics, comment, encourage them.

10) Mention your faith in your Instagram bio.

11) Post your testimony and/or a gospel presentation on the site your profile links to. In your Instagram profile, you have the ability to include a link to a website. You can use this to link to your blog or personal website where you can tell the story of how God has transformed your life and can transform theirs as well.

12) Create an Instagram profile for your church.  If your a pastor or church communications person, you can create an Instagram account for your church and do just about all of the above on behalf of your church.

If you’re on Instagram, look me up. Username: pdstein

Are you an Instagram user? If so, post your IG username below.

What do you think of the suggestions above? Any really resonate with you? Got any other ideas for using Instagram to share your faith online?

At 8:32 PM Saturday night, professional golfer Bubba Watson tweeted to his 275,000 followers:

Thanks everyone for the support! 3 reasons tomorrow will be #awesome, 1. Jesus has risen 2. See my new baby boy & my wife 3. Masters Sunday

Apr 7, 2012 8:32 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@bubbawatson

bubba watson

Twenty-four hours later Bubba was wearing the most prestigious threads in all of sports – A Green Jacket – having won the Masters in a playoff. In his acceptance speech, he thanked his “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” That was captured and shared in the YouTube video below.

Tuesday, the Huffington Post published an article about it: Bubba Watson Shares His Christian Faith After Masters Win (VIDEO)

And as I write this on Friday, @BubbaWatson has gained a quarter million new followers since that tweet Saturday night (at 526k and counting).

Since we’re focusing on the topic of sharing our faith online in the weeks leading up to Internet Evangelism Day (April 29), what can we learn from all this?

5 Lessons About Sharing Your Faith Online

1) Bubba didn’t wait until he was a Masters champion to start using Twitter. He’s been tweeting since October 2009. You don’t need to wait to connect with people on Twitter either.

2) Bubba isn’t a pastor. As far as I know he doesn’t have a theology degree. He’s not an evangelist. He simply lives out his faith offline and online. You can do the same. You’re plenty qualified.

3) Bubba didn’t wait until he was a Masters champion to express his faith online. He didn’t just thank Jesus when he won. He expressed his faith regularly before then. And when the opportunity came and all the world’s eyes and ears were focused on him he did not have to come up with a strategy to share his faith, he simply did what he’s been doing for years.

4) Bubba didn’t film and upload the YouTube video. He didn’t ask the Huffington Post to write about him. He didn’t ask me to write this post. When you’re using social media, you never know how your message might get amplified by others you’re connected with.

5) Bubba doesn’t broadcast, he engages. Look at his tweets. He actually listens and replies to people. That tells me that he gets it. That he cares about people. More importantly, that tells the people he @replies to that he cares too.

What do you think about Bubba Watson, his Masters win, sharing his faith online and off, his use of Twitter?

What learning points do you come away with?

Digital media has transformed the world in the last 15 years. Now more than half the world is connected to the Internet via mobile phones. This has provided unprecedented opportunities for us to connect, live out our faith, and have spiritual conversations with people across town, across the country, and across the world that were never before possible.

Internet Evangelism Day (IED) is an annual focus day to help raise awareness of the opportunities for Christians to share their faith online. This year’s IED is Sunday April 29.

The hope is that…

• Churches, bible colleges, outreach teams and other organizations will use Internet Evangelism Day as an opportunity to teach their members, students and staff about the online outreach opportunities.
• Organizations who are doing outreach will strategize about ways to expand their outreach online
• Organizations that are online will strategize about how they can use their online resources to reach more non-believers (rather than just focusing their efforts on believers)

The Internet Evangelism Day website is full of resources for individuals and organizations that desire to pursue one or more of those three objectives above. The site also includes the Digital Evangelism Issues blog, which provides news and insight.

I strongly encourage you to read this post on the IED site to learn about all the resources, events, and other things going on for this year’sIED.

We at OurChurch.Com are proud to say this is our 7th year supporting Internet Evangelism Day, and as we have been doing for the last 4 years we’ll be focusing our blogging and social media on Internet evangelism issues all this month leading up to IED.

What comments or questions do you have about Internet Evangelism Day?

Are you planning any events for your organization?

Just saw this on the Baptist Press website…

When outspoken Christian quarterback Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards to help Denver upset favored Pittsburgh in the playoffs, millions flocked to the Internet to search for John 3:16 — so much so that the day after the game, that Bible verse was the No. 1 search on Google.

As it turns out, some of those Google searches were of eternal significance.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association reports that more than 150 people have made a decision to accept Christ as their Savior as a result of searching for “John 3:16″ in Google and then clicking on an advertisement for the BGEA’s PeacewithGod.net website.

Pretty cool, huh?

You can read the rest of the article here.

(By the way, Tim was not wearing the verse in his eye paint Saturday. The pic is from a game with the University of Florda. Messages are banned from eye paint in the NFL.)

Thoughts?

“What’s the name of that web address again? Global what?”

I had been presenting the idea that just one person has the ability to change the world at the North American Christian Convention in Cincinnati. Before a room full of pastors and church leaders, it was the third time that the elderly couple had asked the question. I had presented Global Media Outreach’s Online Missionary program and kindly spelled out the website they were inquiring about one more time; a site where anyone can apply to be an Online Missionary.

We live in a world of great possibilities.  Ours is the first generation to possess the ability to share the gospel with everyone on the planet. In the next few years, the half of the world currently without connectivity will gain access to the world wide web through their phone or mobile device with the Internet being delivered through satellite technology currently being implemented above the most remote parts of our planet.

Today, 2,000,000 people will use a search engine to find an answer to a spiritual question. These are people searching, with questions like “Is Jesus real?”, “Does God exist,” and “Am I loved?” What they will discover when they search for meaning can be labeled in one of two ways: Truth and Lie. There is no middle ground. Global Media Outreach Online Missionaries are sharing the truth through technology that is connecting the world.

Meet Sarah Coiner. Sarah is an Online Missionary, and I wanted the folks in Cincinnati to see how technology is helping Sarah change lives. Sarah is a child of God and loves Jesus. Sarah loves telling people about Jesus. Sarah is amazing. Check out Sarah’s story on the following video:

As Sarah points out, her life has been changed by email, and the chance to share Jesus as an Online Missionary. Sarah is introducing people to Jesus, and seeing their lives changed by her Savior.

That older couple in Cincinatti made it a point to come talk with me after the presentation. It turns out that they had just returned from a lifetime in a remote area of the Philippines translating Bibles and transforming lives. Now they’re back home, near the end of their lives, having a hard time finding any area to serve or share Jesus with people.

“We don’t get out much any more,” the lady told me. She went on. “I haven’t seen my husband this excited about anything since we left the field. Now he has a mission again!”

What is keeping you from sharing your faith or leveraging technology to reach more people? Who do you know who has a desire to change lives with the gospel, but feels trapped and unable to do anything about it?

After 6 weeks and 15 bloggers leading the discussion on the 15 chapters of @StickyJesus we have reached the end of this group blogging project.

Big thanks to Tami and Toni! Not only did they write an excellent book that challenged and instructed us to live out our faith online, but they were involved in the discussion throughout the entire project.

Big thanks to the 15 bloggers who wrote posts and led the discussion for each chapter. You guys did a fantastic job! Thanks especially to those of you who were engaged in the discussion throughout the entire book.

I hope through the course of reading @StickyJesus and/or discussing the blog posts that you’ve been inspired and learned a lot. If I had to pick just three critically important things I hope you take away from this project they would be:

1) There are tremendous opportunities for Christians to share the gospel, encourage others, and live out their faith online.

2) No matter how much or little you know about social media or blogging, you – yes, I’m talking about YOU – can make a significant impact for Christ online.

3) Don’t do it alone. While you build relationships online with people who are not Christians, continue to stay connect to people who are committed to “living sticky.” Let’s stick together, encourage one another, challenge each other, share ideas, and share each other’s content. Iron sharpens iron!

Before I get to the final discussion questions, whether you participated in this series as a blogger, commenting, or even just reading along, would you take 2 minutes and do this quick @StickyJesus Feedback Survey? Thanks!

While this series ends here, I hope it’s more of a new beginning than an ending. So, I want to end with three questions.

1. What’s the most significant thing you’ve learned through the @StickyJesus series?
2. What’s your next step to “living sticky?”
3. What can we do to help you live out your faith online from this point forward?

15) you: a witness <– @StickyJesus project