September 3, 2010

Online Evangelism (Digital Culture and the Church – Pt. 4)

Posted in Digital Culture and the Church at 5:08 pm by billgepford

Digital Evangelism exists.  People are discovering God through the internet.  That doesn’t mean it could exist.  It doesn’t mean there is the possibility that it could be part of the future.  It’s happening online, and it’s happening now.

Imagine something with me (but don’t close your eyes – that makes it tough to read) – imagine that there are people all over the world who have access to the internet but don’t live within reasonable distance of a Church.  Not that hard, right?    Now imagine what would happen if the Church leveraged one of the greatest tools of communication (even bigger than Gutenberg’s printing press) to transform the lives of all those people.

I spent this last summer working with the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Online.  During that time, I had the opportunity to play around with different ways of doing ministry online.  Let me clear one thing up first – I’m not a tech guy.  4 months ago, I didn’t blog, Tweet, or use Facebook more than the average person.  I don’t seek to use technology for ministry simply because I love technology; I use technology for ministry because I love ministry, and I see the potential that technology holds for life-changing ministry.

There are millions, perhaps billions, of people all over the world who regularly log on to Google or Facebook, but don’t have access to a Church.  Furthermore, there are sites, such as Chat Roulette or Omegle, which act as virtual meeting places – places where one can go to interact with complete strangers.  Relationships are being formed that have absolutely no respect for the limitations imposed by geography.  The Church needs to get involved in this in an intelligent and theologically orthodox fashion.  Online evangelism will never truly supplant in person evangelism.  It will, however, come alongside and work in a symbiotic relationship.

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