Articles on Cybermissions
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Table of Contents
Section 1: Getting the Idea
Overview
of Cybermissions Journal Article
How
Internet Evangelism and Cybermissions will affect the Way We
Do
Missions in the 21st Century
How to
Have A Big Ministry On A Small Budget
The
Missionary Society of 2020
Section 2: Doing Some Research
Cybermissions
– Where to Start?
Section 3: Local Churches
How Can a
Local Church Can Have a Global Presence Through Cybermissions
Online-Offline
Synergies That Dramatically Increase Evangelistic Effectiveness
Section 4: Online Security
Paul vs.
John – Information Security Then and Now
Section
5: Theology and Future
Proposal for A Postgraduate Course in Cyber-Missions and internet evangelism
The Need for
Cybermissions Partnership
Overview of Cybermissions Journal Article
Missions in Cyberspace: The Strategic
Front-Line Use of the Internet in Missions
Introduction
Frontier mission is always an adventure and a calling, in the words of William
Carey, to “use means” for the completion of the Great Commission. One of these
means is the use of the Internet. And one of the most exhilarating frontiers of
mission today is cyber-missions; the frontline use of IT to evangelize and
disciple the nations. In this article we will keep the focus on cross-cultural
mission web sites and strategic approaches to ministry online such as
web-evangelism, email discipleship, web-based TEE and icafes as a
church-planting strategy. This paper will review the potential, the actual uses
and the successful implementation of Internet-based missionary outreach and put
the case for missionary societies to have an Internet evangelism department
headed by a Field Director – Cyberspace. I have intentionally excluded the
traditional uses of computing in missions or the use of the Internet for
mono-cultural ministry as this has already been extensively reviewed elsewhere
(for instance in the work of Leonard Sweet).
Some Statistics
Worldwide Internet Population:
445.9
million (eMarketer)
533
million (Computer Industry Almanac)
Projection for 2004:
709.1 million
(eMarketer)
945
million (Computer Industry Almanac)
Online Language Populations (September 2002)
English
36.5%; Chinese 10.9%, Japanese 9.7%, Spanish 7.2%, German 6.7%, Korean 4.5%,
Italian 3.8%, French 3.5%, Portuguese 3.0%, Russian 2.9%, Dutch 2.0%
(Source: Global Reach)
From the above statistics it is clear that the Internet is no longer
predominantly an English speaking medium and that Asian languages such as
Chinese, Japanese and Korean now occupy a significant portion of cyber-space
along with major European languages such as Spanish., Portuguese and French.
There are over 275 million Internet searches each day and 80% of all Internet
sessions begin at a search engine (Internetstatistics.com). Religion is one of
the main topics people search for. Pew Internet surveys found that 28 million
Americans get religion information online, that three million do so daily and
that 25 % of net users search for religion-related topics. Barna Research
estimates that up to 50 million Americans may worship solely over the Internet
by 2010. There is every indication that the Internet is a major source of
religious information where people of many cultures and languages collect their
spiritual facts and opinions in private. Thus it’s a place where missionaries must
be.
Part
One - The Concept, Opportunities And Strategic Use of Cyber-Missions
Despite the obvious potential for online evangelism mission computing is
still largely seen as mission databases, accounting, fund-raising, email and
publicity. Large “computing in missions” conferences debate security issues and
networking but do not touch on how the IT staff can plant churches and reach
unreached people groups for Jesus. That is left to “real missionaries”! This
paper is about how geeks can spread the gospel and how cyber-missionaries can
go places where conventional missionaries cannot. It will cover how the
Internet is being used for theological education by extension, how chat rooms
are being used for online evangelism in creative access countries, and how
Internet cafes are proving a useful strategy in reaching unreached people
groups. This paper presents the radical idea of IT as a frontline pioneer
church-planting and evangelistic ministry.
Personal Involvement
My
personal involvement with computers and mission began in 1988 with an ancient
Microbee personal computer that did not even have a hard drive! By 1991 I had
helped start Australian BibleNet, which was part of the old FidoNet bulletin
board groups. In early 1994 as the web was just starting, I set up one of the
first Christian websites “The Prayer Page”, the first site to allow people to
put their prayer points online and give lessons on how to pray. This eventually
developed (in mid 1994) into Eternity Online Magazine, which ran until the end
of 1998 when funding ceased. At its peak in 1997 Eternity Online Magazine had
over one million readers and around five hundred people per year wrote in
reporting they had found Christ through its pages. In late 2001 I took up the
challenge of the Asian Internet Bible Institute (www.aibi.ph), which runs
twelve free online courses including the 21 module Harvestime church-planting
course, in an effort to equip (via icafes and church computers) the 70% of
Asian pastors who have no formal ministry training. In combination with key
missionaries I am currently also working on a strategy of planting internet
cafes, staffed by Filipino missionaries, in unreached people groups in Asia.
The Word in Cyber-Space
Cyber-surfers mainly do just two things, read words and write words. Despite
the graphics and sound bites of the WWW, the Internet is still mainly a
text-based medium, and this is especially so in the developing world. But is
this adequate? Can text transform the world? The answer is yes, people can be,
and are often, changed by the written word addressing a real spiritual or
personal need. The Internet simply places such material in an environment where
people, who are interested in it, can easily access it through hyper-links and
search engines. As I sleep or work, people read an article and are changed, or
they go to the “How to Become a Christian” page and make a real commitment to
Christ while sitting at their computer. They are transformed by the written
word quite apart from my presence, appearance or charm. Thus cyber-ministry is
far less dependent on personality, location, buildings, clothing or cultural
cues than most missionary activity. Cyber-ministry however is highly dependent
on writing and counseling skills, extensive networking between sites and on
clarity and ease of use. The idea is to get the seeking person to the word that
can transform their life (within three or four clicks of the mouse) and then to
facilitate and follow up the encounter between the seeker and the Word of God
and to build such people into encouraging online communities.
Understanding
the WWW
Ok so you
want to be a cyber-missionary? This requires a deep and intimate
knowledge of the nature of cyberspace and particularly these four foundational
concepts:
Firstly -
the WWW is not a broadcast medium. When content is placed on the WWW it is not
“sent out”. The content stays where it is, on the computer it was put on and
visitors arrive at that content via a vast web of interconnections. In fact the
WWW can be private, semi-public or public. It is not like a radio station, that
anyone can listen in on. Content can be restricted to people with passwords or
put on obscure and unlisted pages that ‘robots’ and search engines are
prevented from finding and web pages can even be encrypted. Thus the WWW is not
designed to send out general information to a random audience, but to draw
selected people to specific information. The difference is critical. There is
no automatic audience. Unless you understand how to draw people through the
network of links to your website you can end up with zero visitors.
Secondly,
in drawing people to the gospel on the Internet it is essential to understand
how people navigate their way to a web site. The WWW is actually most like a
vast library and generally surfers do not visit web pages by accident any more
than they take out a library book by accident. They mainly arrive at a web page
on the basis of a relevant, particular and specific interest, via a search engine
or a link from a related web page or an email. The Internet is not passive like
listening to radio, rather the surfer is always active, clicking, searching,
reading, browsing and intentionally navigating through cyber-space. Thus the
web surfer is a self-directed seeker driven by curiosity traveling through a
community of hyper-links. So you have somehow to be connected to where that
person is now if they are ever to reach you. The idea is to position your
website within one or two clicks of millions of people. You need to be part of
the network, woven into cyberspace so people “bump into” links to your site in
all sorts of places. You also must be able to offer them a reason to go to your
page. Surfers are mainly in search of two things: human contact and relevant
information. Curiosity and community are the driving forces of the WWW and
cyber-ministries need to harness the power of these forces if they are to
succeed.
Thirdly,
the WWW was designed for scientists and military personnel to share data and is
designed to share highly specific information with a widely dispersed audience.
Thus, in a counter-intuitive way, the more specific your information, the more
visitors your mission website will get! If your site is on a broad topic like
“Christianity’ or “the gospel” you will find that it is one among millions –
and yours is number 34,218 in the search engine. So your site will get very few
visitors. My most specific and unusual articles, such as articles on human
cloning, Theophostic counseling, or blessings and curses attract more visitors
than articles on general discipleship topics. You can also see this principle
operating in the commercial websites. General shopping sites on the Internet
have failed by the thousands - while rare booksellers; antique shops, vintage
wine and art sales have flourished. The trick is to have up-to-date topics that
are highly specific. So when Dolly the sheep was cloned – I immediately wrote a
Christian view of human cloning. It was about the only Christian article on the
topic (in cyberspace) that week and was a huge success. Thus, to draw people to
a cyber-ministry it is important to build on your special knowledge and
specific strengths. Forget about appealing to all, instead be relevant, be
unique and be specific.
Fourthly,
the WWW is more about relevance to needs than it is about image. Content is
King. So have good content that meets real needs. People will come even to a
really ugly website if it offers free software that they want. The key “click
factor” that causes people to decide to follow a link is the visitor’s
perception of the site’s relevance to their immediate needs. Mainly these are
relational and informational needs. Clicks are made “site unseen”. Visitors
have not seen your site when they click on a link to it. So your graphics don’t
matter a hoot. The decision (to click) is made, and can only be made, on the
basis of information about the site’s content – not its appearance. Thus “cool”
is not as important as connection, content, and clarity. Yahoo is one of the
largest Internet portals yet it is quite ordinary in its layout. Some of the
most visited sites on the web are just plain text. However all successful web
sites have great content, are fast, useful, clear and easy to use and navigate.
Great websites “connect” with and meet the needs of their target audience. So
an effective ministry web page is relevant, unique, clear, fast loading,
useful, easily searched, interactive and full of highly specific information
and resources that draw people in to use, re-use and explore the website.
The
Internet in Creative Access Countries
A recent
Chinese government decision to block access to Google shows that governments
can and do censor the Internet and they generally block websites for political
reasons. Governments generally seem to be less concerned about religious
websites that are politically neutral. The AIBI has students in many creative
access countries and there is no sign of interference so far. Though an
Internet ministry will only reach a small percentage of people in creative
access countries, these tend to be businessmen or leaders. These leaders can
download training material that they can then share with others. This is what I
call the “tunnel and blast” strategy in that you “tunnel into” a creative
access country and find a person who is widely networked who then organizes
others and the ministry spreads. While caution needs to be exercised it is
quite possible to minister effectively even in countries like Myanmar which has
severe restrictions on the Internet. It is important for websites hoping to
minister in creative access countries to be politically neutral, culturally
sensitive, free of damaging information and cautious about the image that is
presented and the terms used. Also bandwidth needs to be conserved (as
connections are frequently slow and sometimes people pay per MB for downloads
and surfing) and the use of large graphics, sound or video needs to be
carefully thought through. With these caveats the Internet is a great means of
praying for, encouraging and training isolated Christian believers in creative
access countries. The “how to” of this will unfold later in this paper.
Internet
Evangelism in the Missions Context
Evangelism
can effectively take place in chat rooms, by email, through friendship
evangelism in email discussion groups, and through the gospel presented on web
pages and in dozens of other online avenues. Tony Whittaker of
web-evangelism.com has extensive resources and his web-evangelism guide can be
found at http://www.aibi.ph/articles/webguide.htm. The use of anonymous or pseudonymous
email addresses makes web evangelism possible even in creative access
countries. Follow-up can be done by sending lessons through email and enabling
converts to download a bible and discipleship resources. (see http://www.aibi.ph/articles/gospel1.htm). As with all evangelism, integrity
is a must. “Spamming”, aggressive pop-ups, and other approaches are
unappreciated by most visitors and should not be part of web-evangelism. The
unique thing about web-evangelism is how specific and focused it can be. Years
ago I heard a statistic that, at any one moment in time, generally two-percent
of any audience is at the point of conversion and ready to receive Jesus. I
have found this true in my own evangelistic preaching and recently found that
same two percent holds for Billy Graham crusades as well. Now two-percent of
the Internet is a LOT of people. That means that on any given day ten million
people online are at the point of conversion. By the strategic use of the
self-selecting nature of Internet audiences you can reach just this
“two-percent”. By titling your page so that it only appeals to people who want
to make a decision and making sure it comes up well in the search engines you
can communicate solely to those about to make a decision for Jesus. My
evangelism page is simply called “How to Become a Christian” and targets those
who want to become a Christian but don’t know how. It is read by thousands of
people each year who have typed “how to become a Christian” in a search engine
and dozens give their life to Jesus (in 1997-98, 500 people a year made
decisions for Christ on this simple web page). You can even target very
specific groups e.g. with a web page in Hindi with a testimony and a specific
title that will show up in the search engines and attract those on the point of
conversion. The Internet has also begun to be much more supportive of
non-English scripts such as Tamil, Japanese and Chinese. It is quite possible
to be a full-time and very productive Internet-based personal evangelist
working solely with “ready to convert” enquirers after the gospel!
The
Internet as Missions Exposure
Do you
want to safely expose some bible college students to dialogue with Muslim
clerics? Give them an anonymous email address and let them loose on the sites
run by Muslim apologists. Do you want to teach tact in witnessing? Put your
students in chat rooms. Do you want a youth group to dig into the Scriptures?
Set them the task of answering questions online and they will be forced into
doing the research for the answers. On the Internet missions candidates and
bible college students can be involved with people from all cultures and belief
systems and get exposure to both the friendly and the hostile with little risk
of actual physical harm and in an environment where the mistakes won’t ruin the
ministry. Like all forms of mission exposure it needs to be supervised by an
experienced missionary and planned in advance. It can also be integrated into
traditional mission exposure trips as part of the preparation before arriving
in the foreign country.
Study
Cells, Email Groups and Online Communities of Interest
One of the
great challenges of cyber-ministry is to bring people out of individual
isolation into online groups and eventually into face-to-face communities of
faith. Students at the Asian Internet Bible Institute are encouraged to find
other students in their area and to form study cells discussing the material
together and praying for each other. Generally one individual will be the
facilitator and motivator in gathering the others together. Communities can be
intentionally formed through online discussion such as YahooGroups. Such
discussion groups can be used for a wide variety of purposes such as
theological discussion, personal sharing and prayer points, a discipleship
group, online classrooms, coordinating a geographically dispersed project or
team, sharing information among churches in a local area, community organizing
around a cause, policy formation, etc. Most successful online communities have
between 40 members and 600 members. Below 40 members discussion tends to be
occasional. Beyond 600 members the traffic is so large that people start
unsubscribing. Good communities are managed by “moderators” who are tactful and
wise and know how to start, guide and terminate discussions. There are many
testimonies to how such online discussion groups have proved an enormous source
of support and encouragement to isolated missionaries, lonely clergy and busy
believers. [Technical notes: By using CGI and Perl scripts it is quite easy to
set up guestbooks, chat rooms, discussion boards. Reliable secure scripts can
be found at: http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net. The latest community trend is the
weblog commonly known as “Blogs” see www.blogger.com. If you really get into
blogs you can Use Movable Type for a dynamic weblog experience. For larger
communities Xoops (xoops.org) is a free, easy to install PHP/MySQL web portal system
that has proved very useful for the AIBI Student Center). ]
Online
TEE and Pastor Training
Theological
education by extension has been around for many years in the missions context,
in correspondence schools like ICI and through missionary radio follow-up from
FEBC and HJCB. The logical next step is to create online bible colleges. This
is what I am doing with the Asian Internet Bible Institute (www.aibi.ph). The proliferation of
Internet cafes in the developing nations means that web-based training is now
accessible by pastors in practically every small town in Asia, without them
having to own a computer. Compressing study material into zip files and ebooks
can minimize the cost of using icafes. This enables a 300-page training module
to be downloaded in five minutes or less. Study materials can be printed out in
the icafe or just read offline on the computer screen. The AIBI produces a CD
of the materials as well as distributing them online. AIBI students seem to
fall into a number of categories: pastors in remote areas who cannot access
conventional forms of training, small denominations needing a low-cost training
option they can easily implement, busy Christians who want to study at their
own pace and time and who are comfortable with the Internet and bible students
using AIBI material to supplement their studies. Another category is also
emerging, Christians who simply don’t want to fight the traffic in Manila for
two hours to get to a conventional classroom! This is an increasing reality in
Asia’s mega-cities. Cyber-learning is still relatively new and many are
cautious or fearful of the technology but it has the potential to provide a
low-cost and very practical educational alternative for Christians,
particularly in developing nations. The challenges of web-based TEE are student
management, databases, and making effective use of online classrooms. Good database
programmers, and a web-savvy Christian educator are the essential parts of the
team.
Networking
Missions Specialists
Missions specialists and project teams can be coordinated using email lists, discussion groups, groupware and web-portal software. For example a linguist in Pakistan can co-ordinate with a printer in Hong Kong and a funding church in the USA to produce a gospel tract in a tribal language. Discussions can be held among dispersed members of a team with each member receiving a copy of the emails that fly back and forth, so that highly specialized personnel can consult on numerous projects without leaving home. These technologies can be made secure through strict membership criteria and in some cases, by encryption of emails. I have used these technologies to coordinate prayer cover and to facilitate partnerships such as in the evangelization of a certain UPG. Task groups can be coordinated by using an online calendar with project events and deadlines. [Technical note: If you don’t like CGI calendar scripts try using www.calendars.net. TUTOS at www.sourceforge.net is a good free groupware package.] Email groups are particularly useful when they are focused on a specific topic e.g. “missionary member care” or a specific project, “reaching the XYZ tribe”. Successful lists have a very clear purpose, are factual and concise and have a positive tone, which is set by a committed team coordinator. In addition to email groups there are numerous networking and resource sites for missions that can be of enormous help in finding partners, information, and even funding for initiatives. Brigada is perhaps the best known of these (http://www.brigada.org) and a helpful list of mission links can be found here.
Online
Mentoring, Counseling And Discipleship
The power
of IT to connect people with common interests assists in mentoring missionaries
and pastors and in online counseling and discipleship. A young missionary in a
remote area can develop an email mentoring friendship with a more senior
missionary, which can be a significant boost to the pastoral care of that
missionary. Online leadership development has been attempted by organizations
such as mentorlink.org amongst others. My observation is that in cyber-space more informal mentoring
takes place, than formal structured mentoring, and mentoring tends to emerge
out of a rapport that develops between two people online and then this extends
into a deeper and more structured relationship.
Online counseling
and discipleship has been a controversial issue with some saying it should not
even be attempted. Proponents of brief therapy, solution-focused therapy and
cognitive therapy seem to be open to the possibilities; while more
talk-intensive psychotherapies remain generally opposed to online counseling.
Various New Age therapies, personal coaching and motivational seminar speakers
have adopted the Internet, even offering individual spiritual mentoring online.
One coaching and training email list has over 1700 members. Career counseling
has made extensive use of computers and online testing and counseling and is
probably the most computerized segment of the counseling profession.
Myers-Briggs and other personality tests can be administered online and thus
staff selection procedures can be streamlined.
In the
missions context a missionary can raise a personal issue with the mission
counselor and get some online advice, and then, if needed, arrange for a visit
to or from the counselor. Thus email access to competent counselors can help a
missionary to deal with issues and irritations without accumulating the stress
until a face-to-face meeting at the next staff conference. This is very
valuable in and of itself. The mentoring functions can be used in leadership
development programs, pastoral training and in discipling new converts in
creative access countries. Cyber-counseling is not a full replacement for
face-to-face counseling but in many situations it will be a much welcome relief
and better than no counseling or support at all.
Christian Community Internet Cafes
The
community Internet café is gaining acceptance as a mission strategy and a form
of holistic development ministry in bridging the digital divide. Andrew Sears
of AC4 and Dr. Josias Conradie of WIN International are known as innovators in
this area. The Association of Christian Community Computer Centers (http://www.techmission.org/history) is an organization founded to assist
in the use of icafes by churches and missions, among others. In missions,
icafes have been used as outreaches and teaching centers with considerable
success in creative access countries where they provide community Internet
access and teach English and various computer courses. This strategy seems to
work best in small to mid-sized urban communities in remote areas where there
are enough people to keep the icafe busy and yet where the icafe is still novel
enough to be a welcome addition to their infrastructure.
I am
attempting to take this one step further and use icafes as a self-funding
sending strategy for teams of Asian missionaries going into Asian UPG’s. An
Internet café of twenty computers can support between 4-6 Asian missionaries at
an acceptable living standard for their area of ministry ($200 a month).
Donated second-hand computers will be used to set up three such icafes
initially with a further 27 icafes envisaged over a five year period, Lord
willing and providing. The icafe provides a point of community contact, a venue
for web-based distance education and income for the team (as in Asia support
levels from traditional sources are often inconsistent). All members of the
team are expected to be computer-literate but only one will be an actual IT
specialist looking after the computers. The others will be church planters,
community workers and educators. This requires team based, on-field
decision-making structures which will be outlined later in this paper. Further
information can be obtained by emailing johned@aibi.ph .
Other
Applications
There are
numerous other applications being explored. These include distributing Palm
PC’s, loaded with development and educational material to remote communities
(p3internet.org), justice and community organizing via email, mercy ministries
and relief efforts coordinated through a web-site, computer distribution to
bridge the digital divide, online church consulting and so forth. The fertile
imaginations of mission-minded Great Commission Christians are finding
innumerable ways to minister to the nations using computers.
Part
Two - Moving Into Cyber-Missions
What then
should a missionary society do to take advantage of the strategic opportunities
and low-cost advantages of cyber-ministry? This next section is how I think
cyber-missions can best be implemented within the operating procedures of a
contemporary missionary society.
Integrating
Cyber-Missions With Conventional Missions
Cyber-mission
works best when it is in active synergy with more conventional forms of
mission. For instance, a convert via web evangelism can be referred to a church
in his or her area, or a student at the AIBI may want to articulate into a
local bible college. Taking care of these transition points is a critical part
of the task of the cyber-missionary.
The best
way this synergy can happen is if cyber-ministries are a department of a larger
mission and are headed by a Field Director-Cyberspace. Since the Internet has its
own unique working conditions, sub-culture and approach to ministry it should
be considered as a separate field for front-line ministry. It is granted that
it is possible that cyber-missionaries could simply be incorporated into
existing teams. A team reaching Thailand could contain a cyber-missionary doing
web-evangelism in Thai. But this would probably lead to much unnecessary
duplication with each field area setting up its own computers and
cyber-outreach. Thus cyber-mission is probably best organized as a separate
department within the mission, but with extensive links to all the more
traditional fields.
Cyber-ministry
also defies traditional boundaries and definitions of whose field is whose. An
evangelistic website may deal with people from Kenya, Myanmar and Brazil all on
the same day. Except for websites in a particular local language, it is almost
impossible to geographically confine such a ministry. Hyperlinks create
partners, and alliances are formed on the Internet that would seldom exist on
the field. Thus the Cyber-Missions Department will be the “fuzzy boundary” of
the organization and the place where many of its possible linkages to other
churches and missions may well first develop.
A
Cyber-Missions department does not just need computer technicians. It also
needs passionate evangelists, careful bible teachers and sensitive prayer
warriors. The Internet is simply a medium for the expression of all the gifts
of the Spirit not a “gift” itself. That said, the WWW is a unique ministry
space with a unique sub-culture and conditions of service. Cyber-missionaries
need a definite calling and the ability to sit in front of a computer eight
hours a day, three hundred days a year. Cyber-ministry looks easy at first but
few people last more than three months in “full-time service” online. The
requirements on human concentration and patience are immense and
discouragements and weariness abound. Results rarely come as quickly as initially
expected and people occasionally disparage cyber-ministry saying, “you aren’t a
real missionary, you just play with computers”. The online environment can be
emotionally hostile, and there are technical breakdowns. In fact it is just
like any other form of missionary service! I advise cyber-missionaries to have
some face-to-face ministry as well, as the lack of warm human contact can also
be a very draining part of the challenge, especially for extroverts.
A
Cyber-Missions team should contain, or have access to, a computer technician
and a database programmer. Most of the other staff should be computer literate
ministry personnel whose primary calling is non-technical (evangelism,
teaching, mercy). The Cyber-Missions Team should have its own goals, budget,
vision statement, and planning and be semi-autonomous. Where possible it should
have its own physical space and be sufficiently separate so it is not invaded
by other staff wanting their computers repaired. I spend a lot of time saying
to people “No, I don’t fix computers” and this needs almost to be a sign
outside the door! Cyber-mission should not be set up as part of
the administration department handling donor databases etc. While
administration and cyber-mission both use computers they have little else in
common and are very different in ethos and vision. Ministry in cyberspace needs
its own space and recognition as a pioneer frontline ministry. Staff should be
selected carefully and should be biblically trained pioneer missionaries and
have at least two years of extensive experience with the Internet.
A note of
caution: There is some danger in the Cyber-Missions department being portrayed
as the “glamour team”. Firstly, glamour tends to attract people who are
there for the image, and who leave after a few months when reality sets in.
Secondly, it will tend to develop jealousies among other mission staff, who may
believe that money spent on technology is wasted. This tension can be minimized
by getting donated equipment (and letting people know it's donated) and also by
giving cyber-missions the flavor of a vigorous pioneer ministry with a
spiritual and evangelistic emphasis that serves the real needs of the field.
What about
the alternative of making the entire mission a cyber-mission? At the moment
there are certain disadvantages to this especially in applying for funding and
in recognition among peers as cyber-mission has not yet been validated and
accepted. I think cyber-missions are best nurtured inside conventional
missionary societies for another five years or so before cyber-missionary
societies are formed on a wider scale. Specialist cyber-missions can be set up
just like there are specialist radio ministries and specialist tract
distribution societies. It is a valid way forward. However anyone setting up
such a mission should be passionate about networking the ministry into other
efforts in the Kingdom or much of its effectiveness will be lost.
Implication
For Mission Structures
The
connected, egalitarian, self-navigating world of the WWW creates a culture that
is highly independent, so most cyber-missionaries will not fit easily into a
traditional missions bureaucracy. On the other hand, cyber-missions is
technical, somewhat fixed in a physical place where the computers are, and
demands continuous steady daily application to the task. You can spend a day
looking for a missing comma in a script that runs the website. Cyber-mission is
a free wheeling pizza and coffee world that keeps strange hours, but it is also
a technical and precise world. It is too unconventional for the administrative
types and too nerdy for the gung-ho radicals and thus falls somewhere between
the two main types of mission structures today.
Good
cyber-missionaries tend to be highly independent, focused, disciplined, intelligent,
technically minded and sometimes quite nerdy. They tend to be the NT type
category of the Myers-Briggs test – particularly the INTJs. They have their own
wavelength and when this is respected, by giving them freedom and acknowledging
their unique gifts and needs, they can be built into exciting and highly
productive teams.
Because of
the current popularity of the Internet there is the possibility for a structure
involving hundreds of volunteers coordinated by a central team of permanent
staff. The central staff team would strategize and direct the cyber-ministry as
a core group, other missionaries in the same mission who were interested could
do “some Internet ministry” and perhaps lead a bible class online, and a large
team of volunteers could do web graphics, man chat rooms, help with translation
and answer enquiry emails, forwarding more complex matters to mission staff. I
envisage a Cyber-Missions Department looking a bit like the following
flow-chart:
The above
structure is also well adapted to the Two-Thirds World context and the sending
of national missionaries. Here in Asia missionary applicants sometimes find
themselves alienated by the traditional selection process, with its devastating
possibility of personal rejection. With a large pool of volunteers the
cyber-missions team can operate by invitation, rather than by “selection”.
Volunteers who prove their mettle would be invited to further responsibility
and finally onto full-time staff as colleagues in the ministry. Operating by invitation
is more relational and accepting and generally more suited to the Asian
context. Thus the ideal structure for a cyber-missions department would be a
semi-autonomous team, consisting of full-time staff, part-time contributors and
numerous volunteers, and operating by invitation on a relational basis, with
its own budget, vision statement and planning. But who should lead such an
enterprise?
The
Field Director – Cyberspace
The Field
Director – Cyberspace should be a mature missionary with high-level leadership
and networking skills and a good technical and theological background. He or
she should be able to keep the team together and focused on the task, not lost
in making minor technological improvements or absorbed in online theological
disputes. He or she would also be a champion for cyber-ministry in the
organization. The Field Director-Cyberspace has to have a detailed
on-the-ground awareness of conditions in the area of ministry and the needs of
the local churches. This enables the most relevant and useful online materials
to be developed ensuring that the Cyber-Missions department is a servant of the
national church.
This
requirement for local knowledge means that an ideal location for a
cyber-mission would be in Singapore or a similarly well-wired city in Asia. In
such a location field conditions and local culture are more immediately
obvious. If the team were located in the USA, with easy broadband access,
first-world assumptions and a culture of having to acquire the latest
technology, there would tend to be pressure to be a high-end, high-band-width
ministry that would gradually become alienated from the reality of conditions
on the field and the technological challenges of the recipients.
It is not
absolutely necessary for the Field Director-Cyberspace to have a computing
degree, as that is more the province of the technical staff. First and
foremost, the Field Director-Cyberspace must be a visionary with a huge
missionary heart and the ability to manage, delegate to, and receive advice
from field missionaries and IT experts.
Finally,
the Field Director needs to be focused on the church, and on the unreached, not
on the Internet. The people visiting the website have a face and a culture and
are Tibetans or Sikhs or Malay Muslims and it is these people who are the
object of the ministry – not the technology. The Field Director needs to see
the role as not just running a computer department – but being a pioneer
missionary to unreached people groups.
Conclusion
Cyber-mission
is going to happen. In fact it has begun to happen in the far-flung corners and
on the innovative edges of mission. The mustard-seed has been planted. How then
can it grow best? I would like to see a consultation held among missions on how
to best structure, fund, plan and implement cyber-missions as a form of
front-line pioneer ministry. Out of that conference I would like the major
missions to set up cyber-missions departments, linked and networked to each
other with high-levels of external and internal cooperation. Also specialist
cyber-missions should be set up and take their place along with the other
specialist missionary societies and hopefully in cooperation with other church
and mission agencies. Cyber-missions is an adventure, and like all real
adventure it has an uncertain outcome, and lots of risks, challenges and
question marks. But the Internet is a great way to share the gospel, is
incredibly effective and astonishingly inexpensive. Cyber-mission is complex,
but it can be done and is being done successfully. Cyber-mission delivers
results, and it can deliver those results in places where we cannot get any by
conventional means. To use a saying from solution-focused brief therapy: “If it
works – do more of it! “.
Biographical
John
Edmiston is Field Director-Philippines of Frontier Servants and the President
of the Asian Internet Bible Institute. He has been in Internet ministry since
1989 and was formerly editor of Eternity Online Magazine. He is an Australian
and lives in Manila with his wife Minda who is a botanist.
How Internet Evangelism and Cybermissions will affect the
Way We Do Missions in the 21st Century
Introduction
William Carey wrote his famous tract about the need to “use means” for the
fulfillment of the Great Commission, one such means in the 21st century is
information technology. The changes in this area are so rapid and so profound
that major thinkers such as Ray Kurzweil and Francis Fukuyama are saying that
we stand at the verge of a major change in human nature, as vast increases in
processing power propel us into a world of artificial intelligence, and a
“post-human future” where many people are cyborgs with computers inputting
directly into their brains or with body parts augmented by computer chips and
other technological aids. The rate of change is so great that it is predicted
that by 2013 a super-computer will have achieved a human level of intelligence,
by 2023 that such a computer will cost only $1000 and that by 2049 there will
be a $1000 computer with the processing power of the entire human race
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q).
This is
due to Moore's Law, named after computer scientist Gordon Moore who said that
computing power / processing power will double about every eighteen months.
Moore's Law has held true for over fifty years as technologies have changed
from valves, to transistors to printed circuit boards and now to dual core and
multiple core processors. There is no sign that Moore's Law is coming to an end
and in fact processing power per $1000 is doubling every year or so (which is
even faster than Moore's Law predicted).
Missionary
work is going to be profoundly changed by this (and is being changed even as I
write). The Internet has become one of the main places that people ask their
spiritual questions and is the natural place people go to seek private and
personal information (such as medical, financial, sexual and spiritual
information). With the use of hand-held devices such as PDA's, cellphones and
Ipods the possibility for distribution of the gospel has become immense. The 3
billion mark for cellphone subscribers was passed on July 1, 2007, by the year's
end it is expected to be 3.4 billion plus. The 1.1 billion regular Internet
users of today is expected to reach 3.3 billion by 2010 (just three years) as
cellphone use spreads and people access the web, email and music online using
their cellphones and not just their personal computers. In 2010 a single
Christian website, optimized for cellphone use, will potentially be able to
reach over half the world's population. The missionary on a bicycle could
become the missionary on the computer.
The rise
in the use of English and of the top ten trade languages means that 81% of
Internet communication is in just ten main languages: English, Chinese,
Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Portuguese, Korean, Italian and Arabic
(http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm). Other major world languages
include Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, Javanese, Vietnamese, Telugu,
Marathi, Tamil, Turkish, Persian, Gujarati, Polish, Ukranian, Malayalam,
Kannada, Oriya, Burmese, Thai, Tagalog, and Swahili. The improvement in
handling non-English scripts and in translation software will make it
relatively easy for a single missions agency to communicate the gospel on a
one-to-one basis with the vast majority of the world's population. This is also
being driven by the demands of trade and the human need to inter-connect. The
rush to learn English means that China will be the world's largest
English-speaking country in the fairly near future (2010 – 2015) though many
may not speak it that well! India has a long history of the use of the English
language and will also be accessible to English based attempts to communicate
the gospel in cyberspace.
The vast
increase in available bandwidth has made audio podcasts and video clips (as in
www.youtube.com)
part of the gospel armory. By 2010 (or before) we will be streaming full length
movies to millions of the unreached. By 2015, at the latest, a camel driver in
the remotest part of Uzbekistan will be able to open up a personal hand-held
device, view the Jesus film, send in a response, and get an answer to his
spiritual questions, in the Uzbek language, in seconds. In fact I am part of a
Silicon Valley based group of Christians working on such a system at the
moment. And this response can be to a text message, phone call, email, letter
or fax – multiple methods of input and output will be available. The Bible, the
plan of salvation, the basics of the Christian life, and standard theological
works will be universally available in digital form. With improvements in
printing technology and e-paper they will also be universally available in
print.
Many
people will seek their religious information online, make their decisions for
Christ online and be followed up online. Some will baptize themselves (as
happened with Muslim background believers), others will join cyber-churches,
some will join online and offline bible studies, or worship in small groups
with their families. For billions of folk the cellphone or PDA will be their
main means of finding out about God.
In this
emerging information age the power of databases has become immense. A friend of
mine who lives in England went to shop online for the first time at Tesco (a
major supermarket chain where he normally bought his groceries). After logging
in on this first occasion “Peter” was presented with a tab called My Favorites.
When he clicked on it he did not find it empty - instead found a complete list
of all the things he normally bought at the store. Tesco had tracked his every
purchase for years and so they knew what he wanted and when he would want it
and had arranged his “favorites” for him as soon as he generated an online
account. The power of databases means that missions agencies will be able to
track millions of individual Christian enquirers and precisely meet their needs
for spiritual information.
The job of
the missionary will necessarily move from proclaimer / communicator mentor/discipler as the purely informational
needs are being increasingly met by the Internet. Information is only part of
the equation of spiritual growth. Prayer, encouragement, and the impartation of
anointing and power in ministry come through loving, interested relationships.
The missionary of the future will be both high tech and high touch. I am not
saying that there is no validity in the “missionary on a bicycle” approach,
just that new means of communicating the gospel have become available and that
this new means are powerful even beyond our wildest imaginations. According to
my sources in Muslim ministry more Muslims are coming to Christ online than by
any other method, and Campus Crusade predicts that by 2010 Internet evangelism
will be responsible for the majority of its indicated decisions for Christ. The
use of video and audio will mean that even non-literate or semi-literate people
may now be able to hear the gospel in cyberspace, via their cellphones.
Why
21st Century Mission Agencies Need To Adopt Technology
The
primary reason that 21st century mission agencies need to adopt technology is because
the people they are trying to reach will have adopted technology and it will be
their (the target group's) primary form of communication. As Prensky
says (Prensky: 2001) people born after 1985 or so are 'digital
natives' who naturally communicate with other via technology. When they talk to someone it is on a cellphone. When they watch someone it is on YouTube.
When they write someone it is a text message or instant message
(even email is now “old hat”). A large portion of their communication
is technology-mediated communication, and with the inclusion of powerful
processors on cellphones this communication is becoming
computer-mediated communication or CMC. For digital natives a
video game is part of the real world and having a presence in a multi-player role-playing community such as Second Life is perfectly natural. This is
particularly true in some parts of Asia.
As John
Naughton from the Observer wrote:
Just to
put that in perspective, today's 21-year-olds were born in 1985. The internet
was two years old in January that year, the same year as Nintendo launched
'Super Mario Brothers', the first blockbuster game. When these young people
were going to primary school in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee was busy inventing the
World Wide Web. The Palm Pilot was launched in 1996, when they were heading for
secondary school. Around that time, pay-as-you-go mobile phone tariffs arrived,
enabling teenagers to have phones. Napster and Blogger.com launched in 1999,
just when they were doing GCSEs. The iPod and the early social networking
services appeared in 2002, when they were doing A-levels. Skype launched in
2003, just as they were heading for university, and YouTube launched in 2005,
as they were heading towards graduation.
Sure there
are still 49% of people who 'only occasionally' use communications technology
and prefer watching TV instead. For them technology is 'just too complicated'
and they just want to push a button and see a movie. Yet in soon foreseeable
future their wide-screen TV is going to be connected to the Internet and made
interactive. They may not become content producers, but they will become
content consumers and so the Internet will eventually reach everyone. The
people who we want to share the gospel with, will be connected to the Internet
and be using it either actively or passively, as a communications device. So if
you want to reach “Fred Smith” - he is going to be online in some way or form
(computer, phone, personal communication device, Internet enabled TV etc). In
2001 in the Philippines I tried to strike up a conversation with some
college-aged nieces and nephews. But they were 'just too busy' – they were
texting each other and they were all in the same room! One young lady was even
texting her sister who was standing right next to her! The room was silent
except for the clicking of keypads. 'Texting' was mediating speech even under
normal circumstances! They were 'technology natives' and for them the most
natural form of communication involves the use of technology. For many people
actual 'face-to-face' conversation is seen as socially difficult. Now one
cannot extrapolate too far from this one personal incident but it is
illustrative of what many observers of socio-technological trends are saying.
The
corollary is also that if you get on a bicycle and go down Main Street with a
bunch of tracts hardly anyone will talk to you. Indeed in most developed
countries it is no longer socially acceptable to knock on doors with a tract,
or to take a bullhorn and preach outside the local cinema. The lost generally
do not want to be personally approached by a zealous evangelist. Even inviting
folk to a high quality Christian rock concert has its limitations, and very few
will ever walk into a church! (And if they do no one talks to them). The lost
are now increasingly immune to traditional forms of evangelism. The old means
of missionary communication are effectively reaching less and less people,
while the new media are becoming the sole means by which people receive
communication that they deem to be credible. To get the message of the gospel
into the world of the unsaved you will have to get into their computer, their
cellphone, or their iPod – in other words you will have to engage in Internet
Evangelism and Cybermissions!
So the
main reason why missions agencies MUST develop an understanding of cyberspace
is that the Internet and the devices connected to it will soon become the
dominant means of personal communication on planet Earth. It
is imperative that we grasp this.
Other
Reasons
1. Lower
cost – cost per online decision for Christ is generally less than $5
per decision for Christ and often less
than $1 per decision for Christ (this is based in my own experience and that of
campus Crusade and other members of the Internet Evangelism Coalition). There
is also a far lower barrier to entry and cost of entry and many of the main
software tools are free or inexpensive and web hosting itself (at sites such as
Dreamhost and 1and1.com) is now almost ridiculously cheap.
2.
Lower Risk – this is
especially true when it comes to reaching Muslims and other groups that are
hostile to the gospel. While online ministry is not perfectly secure it is
still more secure than almost any other kind of ministry.
3. Wide
geographical reach – the Internet is not restricted to a local area (such
as a church), broadcast radius (such as radio, TV), or a satellite footprint.
In fact for a few dollars a month a missionary can minister in dozens, if not
hundreds of countries.
4. Both
one-to-many and one-to-one – Cyberspace
enable both one-to-many communication such as a web page, video clip or
podcast, and one-to-one communication such as chat, email, and instant
messaging, and can also freely move between these. For instance a one-to-many web
page can have an one-to-one email response form. Thus the gospel can be
proclaimed in a one-to-many format and get individual one-to-one responses
which can be properly followed up.
5. Multiple
formats – other media are limited to one format, radio to audio, TV to
video, print publication to text and graphics and so on. The Internet allows
the missionary to use all media types – audio, video, text, graphics,
animation, games , interactive forums, role playing games, imaginary worlds and
so forth. The Internet can also connect with other communication devices such
as telephone (via VOIP), SMS (online free SMS services), and fax (online fax sending
and receiving services). So an Internet ministry has a much wider spectrum of
means available to it with which to communicate Christ.
6. Can
reach entire language groups – the Internet is post-geographical - where
you are does not matter – only the language you are communicating in matters. A
Spanish speaking evangelist can thus touch lives in Spain, the USA, Peru,
Ecuador and so forth simultaneously. In fact our courses in Spanish are in a
dozen countries and are co-ordinated by an Argentinian living in Townsville,
Australia!
7. Asynchronous
communication - the Internet is always 'on' - a YouTube video can be viewed
at any time of day – not just on a certain TV channel at a certain time. Email
can be read at the person's convenience. A conversation can take place on a
bulletin board among different people in different time zones posting at hours
that suit them. Communication does not have to be synchronous – radio programs,
TV programs , face to face communication, and telephone calls require us to be
'in-sync' with each other. The Internet removes this requirement. A missionary
can post an article on a website one day and go to sleep – while it is then
read elsewhere by people at the time of their choice.
8. Archived
communication – the Internet archives and preserves communication. Articles
I wrote in 1995 are still being read and replied to today. This is unlike radio
and TV programs which are generally not accessible after transmission. It is
even better than most magazines and newspapers as few of these have their
articles read ten years later. Thus a sermon that is preached in 2007 and is
then uploaded to the Internet could still be touching lives in 2027.
9. The
power of collaborative networks of volunteers – Major websites such as
Wikipedia are run by large collaborative networks of volunteer contributors.
This model can unleash the gifts of Christians who can go online and share
Christ, teach Scriptures and so forth. In a large church only a very small
percentage may get to 'do anything spiritual' but online nearly everyone can use
their spiritual gift to some extent. Intercessors can pray for prayer points
sent in, teachers can upload bible studies and teach online classes,
evangelists can go into chat rooms and share Christ, and they can do this from
home, in their spare time and be a blessing as part of a network of volunteers
on a Christian website. Missions agencies can use their retired missionaries
who know the language and culture (and are perhaps back home for medical reasons)
as coordinators so one missionary has a team of say 20 volunteers who work on sharing
Christ with a particular UPG.
10. The
power of peer to peer ministry - the Internet allows peer to peer ministry
with enquirers or believers grouped into online discussion groups, bulletin
boards, egroups and chat rooms. This takes a lot of the pressure off the
missionary who can act as a facilitator for believers who may be scattered over
a wide geographical area. The believers share their questions, answers and
prayer points with each other. This is particularly effective with young
people.
11. The
power of building knowledge in community for strategic purposes – the
Internet allows geographically dispersed experts to share knowledge and
contribute to a strategic missions project. This gains leverage and allows good
projects to be done more efficiently.
12. Seeker
driven - the Internet is an ideal medium for people with questions as
search engines such as Google make it easy for users to find highly specific
information in answer to a query. A
religion seeker cannot expect to get a timely answer to his or her specific
personal question from a print publication, or radio or TV station but they can
find an answer, in a few seconds or so, online. When people want information
about sensitive issues such as health, sexuality, religion and politics they turn to the
Internet. Religion seekers tend to go online as part of their searching process
and we should be there to interact with them. Therefore the Internet is the medium
of choice for seekers with questions and we should be online to help them.
13. Ability
to target particular niches – as the Internet becomes far more
sophisticated it has become possible to target people in specific areas (by zip
code) with Google advertisements (for
your church, your outreach or your website) or to design websites that target a
particular demographic (e.g. Portuguese speaking 14-18 year olds, or German
speaking seniors) and then to promote it with great accuracy to that group.
This means that highly relevant gospel messages can be sent to those most
likely to be interested in them.
14. Tunnel
and blast – in countries with little Internet infrastructure the Internet
can reach a handful of believers, who can then print out the material and share
it with their friends locally. This
tactic is being used to set up bible colleges in churches and prisons, with the
curriculum being downloaded from the Internet and then shared locally. Several
tract ministries are also putting their tracts online in numerous languages so
they can be downloaded by pastors and shared in that church's community. This
ability to get quality print materials to people, for almost zero cost cannot
be matched by radio, TV or other methods. It can also be used to distribute
audio and video.
15. The
ability to explain complex concepts – The Internet was originally designed
for the impartation of scientific and defense information and this is still
what it does best. The web can present complex text, graphics, charts and
videos to explain a medical procedure, a science experiment, and data from
outer space. It can also help explain complex theological problems and
illustrate optimal techniques in church planting, holistic ministry, and aid
and development. It is an ideal training
medium and online theological training is now blossoming. Because the Internet
has inexpensive feedback and collaborative possibilities it can enhance a
purely informational presentation (such as a sermon, book, tape or DVD) with
live online discussion. It has become commonplace for TV programs to say 'for
further information see our website'. The
website allows a much more in-depth look at the idea presented on the TV
program. So churches, missionaries and pastors can refer during the sermon, to
information presented online and thus develop concepts such as the Trinity,
eschatology or ontology that may not be able to explained easily from the
pulpit or even face to face.
16. Non-profit
giving is increasingly online – even US presidential hopefuls are finding
out that online donations and Paypal are now a major part of their funding
strategy. In fact many nonprofits such as World Vision receive a large portion
of their funding from massive online responses to crisis situations such as the
Asian tsunami. Missions agencies, which are finding it more and more difficult
to get into churches, may find online giving by individual Christians to be a
major source of funding.
17. Less
licensing needed - the Internet does not need government licensing in the
same way that a radio or TV station does or, as a newspaper may need. It is the
most restriction-free form of mass communication and thus is one that missions
agencies can with relative ease.
18. Does
not require the missionary to be in a certain fixed location – a missionary
who cannot be on the field because of health problems or visa difficulties can
still reach his or her people group via the Internet. Also missionaries who
travel extensively can still maintain a website.
19. Very
useful for pre-field preparation - a missionary can chat with connected
members of his or her people group online prior to going to that country. This
can build useful relationships prior to arrival. Also a missionary can engage
anonymously (online) with Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus to gain real experience
of their viewpoint, and do so in relative safety, so that the missionary learns
to handle many of the common arguments, objections and sensitive cultural issues
prior to arrival on the field. This helped me a great deal prior to arriving in
Mindanao in the southern Philippines. It could also be useful for helping
short-term missionaries become more culturally aware prior to deployment.
20. Enhanced
credibility - digital competence is a sign of personal and organizational
credibility and is essential if 'digital natives' are going to respect the
missionary or missions organization.
21. Bypasses
traditional denominational restrictions – Many online practitioners started
a website because they could not use their gift (teaching, preaching, cult
ministry, evangelism) in a local church or denominational setting where the
good positions are often tied up in an 'old boys’ network' or in complex
ordination requirements. Missions is often on the periphery of denominational
concerns and certain issues such as training for Two-Thirds World pastors is often
woefully neglected. Internet ministry has given people a chance to use their
gifts and to solve problems that were not being (and perhaps would never have
been) addressed by more traditional forms of ministry.
Effective
21st century missions agencies will develop vigorous and well-funded
departments of Internet Evangelism and Cybermissions that will their main
avenue for sharing Christ with the unreached and for following up enquirers and
new believers. These departments will synergize with the other departments
involved in worship, prayer, pastoral ministry and holistic ministry. Agencies
that fail to do this will find themselves less and less able to communicate
Christ to the non-Christian world as the global population shifts to digital
devices as the primary means of credible personal communication.
The
Implications For Missions In The 21st Century
The
traditional missionary will always have a place but will have to work alongside
colleagues who are engaged in Internet Evangelism and Cybermissions.
Increasingly the impartation of information will occur online and on personal
communication devices connected to the Internet. Offline ministry will involve
dynamic worship, the administration of the sacraments, healing ministry,
spiritual warfare, discipleship pastoral
problem solving, and community engagement. The missional church will be able to engage its members between services
by sending material to their personal communication devices and encouraging
discussion on forums located on the church website. Giving can be via digital
means as well as 'in the plate'.
One
approach to blending online and offline aspects of ministry is 'multiple
location' or 'multiple
presence'
churches such as www.lifechurch.tv which has 20,000 members meeting in 11
different locations around the USA. Each church receives the same message,
broadcast from the senior pastor, while having local worship team and pastoral
care Here is how it explains itself:
All
experiences at LifeChurch.tv are comprised of the two primary elements:
powerful worship and a life-changing message. Worship at LifeChurch.tv is led
by a worship pastor along with a talented live band and the style is consistent
with today’s culture. All LifeChurch.tv campuses receive the same dynamic and
relevant teaching messages each week via satellite broadcast from Senior Pastor
Craig Groeschel or a LifeChurch.tv teaching pastor. A weekend experience lasts
for one hour – you can always expect them to start and end on time. In
addition, the local campus team will spend time engaging, connecting and doing
ministry with the church body throughout the week.
The Rev.
Yonggi Cho of Yoido Full Gospel Church in Korea uses a similar approach
utilizing Korea's very fast broadband to the home, to broadcast services into
home groups and house churches with donations being made online by credit card/
Paypal. And Menlo Park Presbyterian Church is aiming to invest some $20 million
in multiple location technology to solve their space problem and bring their
minister's preaching (Rev. John Ortberg) to more folk in the Silicon Valley
area. These approaches all blend sophisticated digital input with personal care
and small group ministry. This allows the church to have both the small church
feel - and the big church pastor.
This
combination of high tech and high touch will also apply to missions. Internet
enabled house churches, simple churches, cell churches and small groups is one
such option. Church growth advocates are often enthusiastic about simple church
models as allowing rapid multiplication by removing the barriers to growth
associated with a physical structure (such as obtaining government licenses and
raising building program expenses). However simple churches have a long track
record of doctrinal variance and leadership problems and they often lack
resources in areas such as women's ministry and children's ministry. A
centralized website for a house church network can provide pastoral networking
and encouragement, leadership development, doctrinal consistency, teaching
outlines, videos, and ministry resources and allow people with gifts throughout
the network to contribute ideas, information and resources to the network as a whole. Thus many of the
advantages of a formal denominational structure can be provided, yet without
the onerous administrative overhead. The website provides the sophisticated
informational tools while the small group / house church structure enables
deeper relationships, better discipleship and the development and practice of
the spiritual gifts in a relatively safe environment. I am beginning to develop
such an approach at www.eternitychristian.com
A similar
approach can also be applied to holistic ministry and to small scale aid and
development in the Two-Thirds World. There is often a considerable amount of
duplication and 're-inventing of the wheel' in such efforts which could be
prevented by online sharing of global best practices in each area. The
information and wisdom of many different organizations would allow each
organization to operate optimally while preserving the efficiencies, cultural
adaptability and close to the community feel of smaller grass-roots efforts.
Information
alone seldom accomplishes much in the way of community transformation. However information
connected to vibrant small group structures does have the potential to be
transformative. This principle of
informed networks of small groups bringing transformation is seen in the
dynamics of the early church, in Wesley and the development of Methodist cell
groups, and in the blossoming of the student missions movement through campus
bible studies and prayer groups. Thus Internet enabled simple churches and
mutually informed grass-roots NGOs may become a vital part of the cutting edges
of 21st century missions efforts.
Disintermediation is defined as: The
removal of an intermediary, or middleman, from a transaction or
communication. An example is the option for a business to sell its product
directly to consumers as opposed to retailers.
The
Internet is a powerful force that will disintermediate much of what is seen as
standard in modern missions, for instance the traditional missions agency is
removed as the middleman when:
1. Sending
churches in the West communicate directly with churches and missionaries in the
developing world rather than solely via the missions agency.
2. Donors
give directly to national churches and aid projects that they have learned
about online.
3.
National pastors get their theological education online (without leaving their
church and often for free) rather than at the approved seminary run by the
missions agency.
4. A
Christian wanting to reach the lost in 'country X' simply switches on their
computer, finds people in that country, and shares Christ with them online
rather than going through a long and arduous missionary selection process.
5. Prayer
needs from the field are sent directly to intercessors without being vetted by
the missions agency and prayer letters are sent directly to supporters by email
without being typed up and mailed by the missions agency.
6. Visa
applications and other government paperwork are done by the independent
missionary online rather than through an approved in-country missionary agency
representative usually assigned to do such things. Travel arrangements, health
insurance and other administrative tasks (even finding housing) is also
increasingly done online reducing the requirement of belonging to a missions
agency in order to do such things in the target country.
7.
Missionaries receive funds instantly directly from supporters via Paypal rather
receiving funds than months later once they have passed through mission agency
accounting and had an (often sizable)
percentage extracted.
8.
Projects tend more and more to be inter-agency efforts networked through an
egroup than intra-agency efforts managed solely by standard in-house
communication.
9.
Missionaries independently select the group they work with based on information
obtained online at websites such as the Joshua Project rather than being
assigned their field of service by the missions agency.
10.
Pastoral care and support of missionaries is done by the home church using VOIP
(Skype), email and annual personal
visits and often exceeds the pastoral care given by most missions agencies to
their staff.
11. Bible
translation is done by a person from that language group located in the USA or
other Western country and is field tested directly on a website with comments
from missionaries and national leaders in the target country - thus simplifying
the need for expensive in-country bible translation programs managed by a
traditional missions agency.
12. A
large part of missionary orientation can be done online, including language
learning and chatting with members of the ethnic group under consideration (see
page 11 above). Thus the Internet is
empowering independent missionaries and small missions agencies and disempowering
and dis-intermediating the larger agencies with their huge administrative
overheads. It is also allowing the rapid rise of smaller indigenous missions
agencies in the developing world.
This is
slowly but surely going to change the entire face of missions during the next
ten years as Great Commission Christians realize they simply do not need to
join a traditional missions agency in order to share the gospel
cross-culturally in an effective manner. Fewer and fewer missionary candidates
will line up to go out full-time with the major missions agencies. Instead
fully committed Great Commission Christians will go as independent
missionaries, or as missionaries sent by their local church or with
'mustard-seed' style small mission agencies consisting of a few friends with a
common vision. A considerable number will catch the vision of Internet
evangelism and share Christ from home, just using their broadband connection,
combined with trips of just a few weeks long to make face to face connections
on the field. Fundraising will be a major challenge for these smaller agencies
and various tentmaking and business-as-mission approaches will be developed to
assist with this need. Numerous indigenous missions agencies are arising and
will arise and be empowered by the new technology.
Internet
Cafes In Unreached People Groups
One
example of how technology is impacting models of mission in the 21st century is
the use of Internet cafes as self-supporting missions bases in unreached people
groups (UPGs). An Internet café consisting of some 20 client computers is
established in a suitable and secure location (such as the second floor of a
building near a school, college or business district) and run by 2 or 3
indigenous missionaries who receive income from the operation of the Internet
cafe as a legitimate small business. Relationships with non-Christians are
established as clients come in regularly to check their email or surf the web.
Additional services are also offered such as VOIP, webcams, CD duplication, computer classes and photocopying. The
witness is low-key and aims to bring customers to faith in Christ and
incorporate them in a local church, bible study or house church. These icafes
can economically set-up using a good server, donated recycled computers and
thin-client technology which makes the older computers able to run applications
from the server very quickly. The indigenous missionaries are thus able to
establish themselves as a legitimate part of the business community and have a
platform that enables them to come in contact with 100 or more local non-
Christians each day for thirty minutes or more each. When these Internet cafes
are properly run they have considerably boosted the development of
church-planting movements among certain unreached people groups. Numerous
missions agencies are now looking at Internet cafes as viable missions
platforms and developing both non-profit educational computer centers as well
as for-profit self-sustaining ventures. A micro-franchise model for Internet
cafes is being actively developed by a group out of Regent University to help
ensure the financial sustainability of this model. This illustrates how
technology can empower the development of indigenous missions and how
business-as-mission plus technology can have a powerful role in the future of
global missions in the 21st century. Part of the equation here is that many
developing nations have numerous people (including local believers) with very
good IT skills who unfortunately have no outlet for employment. Thus the IT
sector has great potential for mission agencies wanting to set up businesses in
the developing world.
Computers
And Evangelistic Persuasion
The recent
book by B.J. Fogg Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We
Think And Do argues that computers have six advantages over humans when it
comes to the art of persuasion, they can:
1. Be more
persistent than human beings
2. Offer
greater anonymity
3. Manage
huge volumes of data
4. Use
many modalities to influence
5. Scale
easily
6. Go
where humans cannot go or may not be welcome
Dr. Fogg
works at the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at Stanford University and
focuses on how computers can be used to change human behavior in areas as
diverse as quitting smoking, avoiding teenage pregnancy and personal hygiene
monitoring. This has a fairly obvious
application to online evangelism! If computers are (or can be made to be) more persuasive than human beings could they
be better evangelists? Could a computer scan a sophisticated database, decide
exactly how an individual should be approached, then approach them to make a
secure anonymous response to the gospel in the privacy of their own home, using
text, video, and audio, and touching
hundreds of lives simultaneously, in a nation that has strict laws forbidding conventional
missionary activity? To really 'jump the shark' and be controversial – could a
computer generated personality known as an 'avatar' be the ultimate personal
evangelist? (I think we are at least a decade away from the computing power
needed to do that at reasonable cost, but I could be wrong). If we think 50
years out, to say 2057, Lord tarrying, could computer-generated avatars have
become a major asset to global evangelization? There is even an interesting
hint in Scripture that artificially intelligent personalities may exist in the
Tribulation and be used as part of the worship of the Beast:
Revelation
13:15 MKJV And
there was given to it to give a spirit to the image of the beast, so that the
image of the beast might both speak, and might cause as many as would not
worship the image of the beast to be killed.
It is
impossible to predict the methods we will be using for evangelism at the end of
the 21st century and it may even sound foolish to try. However the mere
exercise of doing so gets us to realize that many of the current methods of
evangelism will be irrelevant by the time the children born today graduate from
seminary - and that even the seminarian of today may be in for a mid-life
crisis!
Immediate
Technical Challenges For 21st Century Missions Agencies
It is not
envisaged that missions agencies will design or manufacture communications
technology or that they will even be involved in major software projects (such
as automated translation software). What is envisaged is that missionaries and
their organizations will become very savvy users of technology. Missionaries
and their organizations will strategically deploy communications technology and
the Internet to achieve the Great Commission. The following immediate technical
challenges include some areas where the problem has been solved but has simply
not been implemented effectively and at scale in the Christian world:
1.
Evangelistic presentations for mobile devices (cellphones, PDAs, etc)
2. Short
(5 minute or less) video clips for YouTube that present Christ clearly
3.
Evangelistic audio clips ( 5 minutes to twenty minutes) and online tracts
4. A
mission-friendly CMS (content management system) perhaps based on Joomla or
Drupal
5. High
quality production facilities for evangelistic podcasting & video-casting
6. A
high-bandwidth secure server cluster dedicated to serving missions media
7.
Improving Linux Thin Server Protocol for Internet cafes & icafe management
software
8. Secure
evangelistic response and follow-up systems capable of coping with non-ASCII characters
and with large numbers of respondents.
9. Good,
open-source, text (SMS) to email gateway applications for crusade follow-up (an
enquirer texts a question or response from their cell phone, this gets turned
into an email that a pastor answers and the answer is then sent back to the
enquirers phone.)
10. A
website that lets ministries create their own Christian Internet radio station
11. Better
online bible colleges and e-learning systems especially those that can handle
Arabic and Asian languages and which allow much higher levels of user
interaction and feedback.
12.
Web-enabled house church and simple church networks and leadership training
13.
Sophisticated websites devoted to facilitating holistic ministry and Christian
aid and development.
14. The
widespread adoption of effective online evangelism, particularly by local
churches.
15. Far
deeper and better contextualization of websites aimed at sharing Christ
cross-culturally (not just translating a
tract but putting it in the worldview and culture of the target group).
Organizational
Challenges
The
adoption of technology which transforms and disintermediates global missions is
going to result in a new set of challenges for traditional mission agency structures.
These will range from the incorporation of a department for Internet Evangelism
and Cybermissions to the development of new criteria for measuring conversions,
follow-up, discipleship, and the transformation of a people group.
How will
supporters react to possible statements such as: ABC mission established 5
cyber-churches in Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Pashtun and Bhojpuri language groups
with 80,000 indicated decisions for Christ and 158,000 regularly attending
online video worship services?
It is currently
extremely difficult to raise funds for cyber-ministry and it may take twenty
years or more for many missions supporters to be comfortable with the notion of
online decisions and cyberchurches. While cyber-ministry will be having a huge strategic impact, nonetheless
it will probably not be well-funded. This will slow down adoption as missions
agencies, while wanting to get better results, will not want to commit financial suicide and so will focus their efforts
on more traditional ministries which have greater appeal to supporters. Hints
of this are seen in many missions websites today which can be little more than
'web brochures' extolling the agency, with a large “Donate Now By Paypal”
button in a prominent location.
The
development of serious, well-funded and missiologically informed
cyber-outreaches is an urgent priority. Some ninety organizations are doing
high-quality Internet evangelism in the Muslim world because face-to-face
evangelism carries so many risks. The fruit is already evident, and by many
accounts the majority of Muslims making decisions for Christ are doing so
online. Similar efforts need to be done for the other major religious blocks
and cultural groupings.
Internet
Evangelism and Cybermissions has not yet entered the mainstream curriculum. Only four courses exist and I am
involved with three of them – lecturing in an online MAGL course in Internet
Evangelism and Cybermissions at Fuller, running my own online course at Cybermissions.Org,
and revamping the free Internet Evangelism Coalition course at webevangelism.com.
The Billy Graham Center at Wheaton runs the only other course in this topic. If
this area is to be taught in bible colleges and seminaries a textbook will be
required, possibly as a joint effort by leading experts in the field.
A handful
of very large organizations (such as Campus Crusade and various radio
ministries) have begun to adopt Internet evangelism strategies and there are a
host of small operators and lone website builders. Still others have adopted a certain
aspect of information technology such as Elearning or multiple location
churches. The full realization of the impact of the Internet of 21st century
missions is yet to be felt and very few denominations or major agencies are
planning to have an Internet Evangelism department. Tony Whittaker and the
Internet Evangelism Coalition sponsor an Internet Evangelism Day in may each
year and this is a small but valuable effort towards creating awareness. The
fact that Internet Evangelism and Cybermissions is not happening in major
missions agencies does not mean that it will not happen at all. There is a low
barrier to entry and Christians, moved by the Holy Spirit, will start going
online and sharing Jesus - and thousands are already doing so. Christians are
'gossiping the gospel' all over the Internet! Thus the proclamation of the
gospel in the 21st century may well move away from the corporate giants of the
evangelical world and into the hands of inter-connected independent small bands
of believers who create gospel presentations in their own languages and then
share them on the web, in chat rooms, and by video and audio and also
developing presentations for the world of increasingly sophisticated mobile
devices. I am not proclaiming the end of the corporate giants of the
evangelical world, but I am saying that with the technology, tools and
information available today the task of the Great Commission will increasingly
move into the hands of indigenous believers equipped with broadband Internet
connections.
References
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf - From On the
Horizon (NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001) © 2001 Marc
Prensky
It's the
'digital natives' versus the 'immigrants' as kids go to work John Naughton
Sunday
October 1, 2006 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1884740,00.html
Did You Know : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q Created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod; Globalization and
The Information Age
Fogg, B.J. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think
And Do, 2003,
Morgan
Kauffman, Boston
Ten Ways the Internet
is changing Mission and Evangelism
There are
currently 1.7 billion active Internet users, another 3 billion active Internet
users are expected to be added in the next five years or so. The developing
world will soon go online as cellphones become smartphones and as cheap digital
devices such as netbooks and e-readers proliferate. The roll-out of fiber-optic
cable in Africa and massive satellite communications projects will also mean
that bandwidth availability and reach will increase. Within five years at least
half the globe should be online, and within fifteen years Internet reach should
be almost universal. Global proclamation will soon be within the reach of any
Christian with a computer.
The
changes are not only quantitative, they are also qualitative. The very nature
and dynamics of Christian ministry are being fundamentally altered due to the
new possibilities for relationship, connectivity and information delivery that
the Internet has brought about. The very heart of how we minister is being
changed forever in at least ten significant areas:
1. Information: The Internet is bringing an enormous amount of timely strategic information
into the hands of even the smallest church or mission agency. These include
religious and cultural statistics, demographics, compilations such as Operation
World, and research websites such as Joshua Project, Caleb Project, and
StrategicNetwork. This is allowing us to see the big picture better than before
and even to drill down to the small details that affect how we implement our
evangelism strategies.
2. Ratiocination: People “think aloud” in cyberspace. The theology and practice (including
ecclesiology and missiology) of most Christians is now mainly formed as a
peer-to-peer online process with occasional expert input. There is less and
less reference to decisions promulgated by the central governing ecclesiastical
bodies of the major world religions. People do their own thinking, and they do
so increasingly online - through sources such as Wikipedia, old
out-of-copyright commentaries, and through browsing various websites, egroups
and postings on social networks. Those ministries who wish to influence opinion
need to start doing so in cyberspace because that is where Christian opinion is
largely now being formed.
3. Exploration: People do their private, personal and controversial thinking online. If a
person wants to find out about a suspected medical matter or investigate a
forbidden political opinion they first check it out online. A Muslim wishing to
find out about Christianity is not going to ask their family or their imam,
rather he or she will look at Christian websites. About a quarter of all
Internet users make regular queries about religious matters. They are exploring
their own and other faiths. The Church needs to have an evangelistic, apologetic
and missionary presence in this new global marketplace of ideas.
4. Collaboration: The Internet is facilitating collaboration across denominational
boundaries, and across national borders. Experts and now able to link up with
other experts in fields such as church-planting and theological education. This
collaboration is making the denomination almost obsolete. Most Christian
workers now operate in networks rather than in denominational silos. People are
now partnering with like-minded specialists in their area of interest rather
than with people who totally agree with their formal belief system.
5. Validation: People use the Internet to check things out. This applies to everything
from a “too good to be true” investment scam to the local church they plan to
attend when they move to a new city. One oft-quoted statistic is that 85% of
young people check out a church's website before deciding whether or not to
even visit that church in the first place. They won't even walk though your
door until they have clicked through your website! Churches and organizations
that are easy to validate online have a huge competitive advantage. This
includes having a clear statement of faith and making your ethos, programs,
times of meetings, address, contact information, operating principles and
finances clear and above board to the honest online enquirer.
6. Allocation
of Resources: The Internet is allowing donors, foundations and churches to
efficiently assess projects and receive applications for funding across
national boundaries. Groups such as JIMI (the Joint Information Management
Initiative of the WEA-MC) and the Global Missions Fund are trying to refine
this process of allocation so that the ministries who are most worthy are most
funded. A big part of this is having trusted mission information facilitators
who regularly supply quality information in a secure format so that it can be
used for resource allocation purposes.
7. Proclamation: The gospel is being proclaimed on websites, in chat rooms, on YouTube, on
cellphones and on numerous Internet-connected devices. Evangelistic crusades
are using the internet both as a decision mechanism and as a follow-up
mechanism. Organizations such as Global Media Outreach, Jesus Central,
TopChretien and GodRev specialize in purely online outreach while many churches
and organizations use the Internet as an augmentation of existing outreach
strategies. The Internet is an economical means of proclamation and Internet
missionaries do not need visas!
8. Education: Online education has been a huge success and has revitalized TEE and
distance education. Groups such as MAF Learning technologies are working at
developing highly effective Internet based pedagogy. Many masters and Ph.D.
Programs are now partly or wholly via Internet-based distance education.
9. Mobilization: The Internet facilitates making the connections and the imparting of the
information and motivation necessary for effective mobilization of pastors,
evangelists and missionaries into the global harvest. ChristianVolunteering.org
matches tens of thousands of volunteers with Christian agencies. A ministry
without an online presence will soon find it very challenging to gain new
recruits since for many people the ministry simply will “not exist”.
10. Multiplication: The Internet brings leverage to networks and enables contacts to be made
for the multiplication of house and cell churches, church-planting movements
and small TEE based bible colleges that are resourced via an Internet-based
curriculum.
People
start searching for a new church by going online, people first start their
search for information about God online, and people start forming their
theology online. Missionaries deciding which organization they will serve with,
or students deciding on which bible college to attend - will use online
information to narrow down their choices. The Internet is not the be all and
end all of ministry. But it is quickly becoming the starting point for all
ministry. And without the starting point there are not many other points! I
used to think of the Internet as a tool for outreach, much like having your own
radio program. Now I see the internet as an ocean in which we must sink or
swim.
How to Have a Big Ministry on a Small Budget
Pray – Get God’s Ideas First
Pray - and
ask the Lord what sort of Internet ministry He wants. Ask Him about:
·
The Timing
·
The
Spiritual Tone
·
The Target group
·
The Technology
·
The Name
·
The Branding
Find Your Spiritual Passion
·
What would Jesus do with
your website?
·
How would Jesus treat
visitors to the website?
·
Does the website convey
a sense of the sacred?
·
Does it reach out and
welcome people?
·
Does it extend God’s
Kingdom in some way?
·
Does it meet a need that
Jesus would want to have met?
·
Have you got a word from
God about it?
Put Ministry First
·
See
your website as a ministry that changes lives and NOT just as a
brochure that advertises a church or a corporation.
·
Put
the ministry aspects first and foremost.
·
Give
people a way to be transformed.
·
What
changes do you want to make? Salvation, education, sanctification etc.
·
Tell
stories.
·
Touch
hearts and touch minds.
·
Think
outreach - remember the seeking non-Christian, jargon free.
Be Specific As Possible
·
The
more specific the focus the more people will visit your website! (Look at the
Alexa top 500 to see this)
·
Very
general websites get lost in Google (e.g. a website about “God”)
·
Unique
specific websites rise to the top of the search engines for their keywords
·
Unsuccessful:
Buying groceries online
·
Successful:
Buying vintage wines online
·
The
power of ‘the long tail’
Plan – Do a SWOT Analysis
·
Strengths – internal assets and strengths
·
Weaknesses – internal liabilities and weaknesses
·
Opportunities – external openings and opportunities
·
Threats – external competitors, physical, legal and technological
threats.
Plan – 5 W’s and H
·
Who?
·
What?
·
When?
·
Where?
·
Why?
·
How?
The Learning Curve
·
Allow 3 – 6 months of
trial and error to learn about the technology and the market.
·
You will probably
completely redesign the website at the end of this time.
·
No sacred cows.
·
If it works do more of
it.
·
If it does not work,
then stop doing it.
·
Learn WHO really wants
what you are offering.
·
Learn HOW they want it
delivered to them.
·
Learn WHAT things need
to change in your website design and structure.
·
Make no major
investments during the learning phase.
Be Realistic
Unrealistic: To be the next Christian MySpace
(unless you have a few million dollars to spend on a server farm and
bandwidth). Realistic: To have an online ministry to thousands of NFL
fans.
- Specific
- Unique
- Under
Your Control
- Low
Bandwidth Demands
- Not
Requiring An Army of Volunteers / Staff
- Low
Legal / Administrative Burdens
- Low
Fixed Costs
Where Many Folks Fail
·
Sites requiring lots of other people
to do some work: Wikis, MySpace clones, large specialized forums.
·
Sites requiring constant moderation
and legal alertness e.g. youth discussion sites, chat rooms, video upload
sites.
·
Sites requiring video or audio
streaming or any complex technology that can go AWOL at 2 am in the morning.
·
Sites requiring their own dedicated
server – a server is a lot of hard work.
Keep It Simple Stupid
·
Simple for your users to use and for
you to maintain.
·
Simple and clear in its concept (not
too big and fuzzy).
·
Simple in the amount of work that
needs to be done by users if it is to be a success.
·
Simple in its structure so it can
grow without becoming ‘messy’.
·
Simple and clear in its ‘ethos’ so
that you do not have conflicting groups at war with each other.
Outsourcing High-Cost Services
·
Minimize technical load, bandwidth
cost and legal responsibility by ‘outsourcing’ to free or low-cost services.
·
Use a web-hosting service so you do
not have to manage your own servers e.g 1and1.com.
·
Use Yahoo groups for your egroups.
·
Use Gmail and Google Apps For Your
Domain rather than being responsible for people’s email.
·
Put your video content on YouTube
and let them pay the bandwidth fees and just link to it.
Don’t Re-invent the Wheel
·
9.9% of the time the service or
application that you require has already been done and is out there somewhere -
and is often available for free.
·
It is better to spend 3 hrs
searching on Google than 3 months writing code.
·
Go to forums and ask other people
what they use to do X (the task / function you want done).
·
Sometimes you can add two products
together to get the result that you want.
·
Effectiveness is more important than
uniqueness.
Start Lean
·
Start with just a few services on
your website and then add others as traffic grows.
·
Focus people on to the main things.
·
No one now comes to a website
because it has so many bells and whistles, instead they are confused and distracted
rather than impressed.
·
People leave websites that they see
have many unused forums, etc.
·
Undisciplined areas full of spam
posts look terrible.
·
Do what you can easily maintain,
moderate and keep active and professional looking.
Zero Cost Online Ministry
·
Chat room ministry (in existing chat
rooms).
·
Newsgroup ministry.
·
Blogging –Blogger.com or
Wordpress.com.
·
Writing articles for ezines.
·
Running an egroup such as a Yahoo
group.
·
Volunteering as a moderator on
someone else’s website.
·
Uploading Christian videos to
YouTube.
·
Uploading ebooks to Christian ebook
collections.
·
You produce the content and let
someone else host it!
Low Cost Online Ministry
·
Get a low-cost web hosting provider
such as www.1and1.com ($4.95 a month).
·
Get a domain name from a reseller
such as godaddy.com, enom.com, or 1and1.com.
·
Get a LINUX website.
·
Use LAMP (Linux, Apache, MYSQL, PHP)
software which is often Open source, free, and powerful.
·
Get images from everystockphoto.com.
Media on the Cheap
- Use
Audacity for podcasting.
- Use
other people’s bandwidth for free / low cost.
- Upload
to hosting sites (do not host your own).
- Get
a virtual server if you have a lot of media.
- Host
your media on Gospelcom media server! (Some cost recovery)
Stages for a Website
·
Prayer
·
Planning
·
Web hosting package
·
Register Domain name
·
Branding
·
Initial site design
·
Upload content
·
Search engine optimization
·
Advertising & Free Publicity
·
Visitors Arrive
·
Get Feedback / Web Statistics
·
Evaluation & Improvement
·
Redesign
Getting Ready
- Web Hosting: http://webhostinggeeks.com/
Bluehost, Yahoo, 1and1.com are OK - Domain names: enom.com
, godaddy.com, tucows.com, Register.com
- Get
a domain name that is easy to remember even if it is a bit long.
www.crocodilesarecute.com is better than www.xcfgt.com
Branding
·
Don’t try to appeal to everyone
·
Decide on a ‘look’ that reflects
your core mission and purpose
·
Be instantly recognizable to your
key demographic so they say ‘Yes that’s me.!’
·
Decide of a color combination and a
simple logo
·
Avoid kitsch – flashing gifs,
Amazing Grace, video clips of the Passion – unless you audience likes kitsch.
Initial Site Design
·
http://www.internetevangelismday.com
·
http://www.web-evangelism.com/
·
Keep it simple, easy to navigate and
use.
·
Put only what is working well on the
site when you start off
·
Simple but credible.
·
Contact details, usage policy,
privacy policy, statement of beliefs etc.
·
Always have a How To Become A
Christian link somewhere.
·
Go easy on commercialism.
Uploading Content
·
Use a FTP client such as FileZilla.
·
Upload your files to the www/html/
directory on your server.
·
The main page should be called
index.html.
·
The pages should be arranged in a
hierarchy with the index page at the top of the tree.
·
The hierarchy should only go three
or four layers deep at most.
·
The index page should have the key
links to the most important material on the website.
·
Plan the structure well at the start
as it is very hard to change later on as other people, and search engines will
link to your content.
·
Short directory names, all lower
case, and eight letters or less, are helpful.
Getting Known
·
WebCEo – great FREE search engine
optimization software – submits your URL to hundreds of search engines http://webceo.com/ .
·
Put URL on email signature, business
cards, etc.
·
Advertise (tactfully) in appropriate
egroups and newsgroups.
·
Have a ‘recommend to others’ button
on your website.
·
Email campaigns to opt-in
recipients.
Feedback and Interactivity
- Invite
people to comment, feedback, leave prayer points etc.
- Forms
- Guestbooks
- Forums
- Message
Boards
- Surveys
/ Polls
- Email
Us…
- Live
Chat (only if you have a LOT of traffic)
- http://www.resourceindex.com/ (has
heaps of good website add-ons)
Web Statistics
·
Your web host will probably give you
some statistics.
·
Or you can use a package such as
Awstats.
·
Hits is not as important as unique
visitors, length of time on the website and what pages they are mainly looking
at.
·
Country is important if you are
trying to reach a particular region.
Saving on Software
·
www.openoffice.org – free substitute for Microsoft Office
·
The GIMP – replacement for Photoshop
- http://www.gimp.org/
·
Open Source Software – www.sourceforge.net
·
List of free HTML editors: http://webdesign.about.com/od/windowshtmleditors/tp/free-windows-editors.htm
Volunteers
·
Students
·
Interns
·
Retirees
·
People with at least 2 hrs a week to
spare
·
Clearly defined task.
·
Sense of the overall mission and its
importance.
·
Some autonomy / respect
·
Fun – pizza, coffee
·
Relationship
·
Equipment that works for them.
Funding
·
Paypal: www.paypal.com
·
Ikobo: www.ikobo.com
·
Have a good ministry plan and
funding proposal
·
Relationship based fundraising /
Friend-Raising
·
Do not expect a salary during the
first year (keep your day job)
·
Try www.gobignetwork.com for venture capital
·
Try Generous Giving Marketplace for
grants:http://www.generousgiving.org/marketplace/
Marketing
- Make
your own business cards and brochures.
- Do
press releases for local papers desperate for news & to Christian news
services e.g. ANS.
- Send
faxes to new outlets with big bold headings.
- Try
your denominational magazine.
- Have
a clear newsworthy concept that you communicate over and over again.
- Show
who you are helping and how you are helping them.
- Get
some books & articles on how to get free publicity.
Conclusion
·
A small ministry can have a big
impact for Christ if it is well-thought out and tightly targeted.
·
It is possible to greatly reduce
costs and start-up can be done on even as little as $100 a year.
·
Use the power of other people:
networks, free advice, volunteers, free online services, free press releases,
etc.
·
Cover everything in prayer – God is
your greatest ally and can multiply your ministry!
The
Internet Missionary Society Of 2020
The Internet began to affect our lives in 1994 with the
creation of the World Wide Web and the Mosaic web browser. Shortly after that
Christians began to share their faith with others in cyberspace and Internet
evangelism and cybermissions was born. In this article I would like to jump
another thirteen years down the track and look at what Internet evangelism and
cybermissions might look like in the year 2020.
The Internet is rapidly moving from the personal computer to
the cellphone and it is predicted that the number of Internet users will go
from the current 1.14 billion to over 3 billion by 2010 (just three years away)
mainly due to this growth of Internet-capable hand-held devices (e.g.
cellphones, PDA’s and the Blackberry). Indeed Microsoft has just announced
Phone+ - an initiative to bring TV (as well as everything else) to your
cellphone. Hand-held devices will soon have really useful screen sizes. The
latest Popular Science magazine (May 2007) showcases a five-inch Polymer Vision
flexible screen that “rolls-up” inside the unit . By 2010 this flexible screen
will be larger, in color and be capable of handling web browsing and video. Of
course your hand-held device will also dock with your wide-screen digital TV,
your laptop or any other viewing platform. The included video camera will be
augmented by higher processing power and bandwidth to enable quality video
conferencing from your lounge room.
So we see that highly sophisticated content will be
downloadable to 3 billion personal handheld devices by 2010. The personal
communication device will be how people interact with friends, family and
colleagues and the first place they turn to find out information about the
gospel. It will be the main way people accept information into their lives and
therefore the main way that we will have to communicate the gospel. The
hand-held device would allow streaming video (or text or audio) of gospel
presentations. Enquirers would be able to contact the mission agency on the
Internet, or by SMS (text), email, fax, VOIP (voice over internet protocol e.g.
Vonage, Skype) or by normal mobile or landline voice call.
Progress in information technology is exponential. The
famous formulation of this known as Moore’s Law is named after Gordon Moore of
Intel who observed (in 1965) that the number of transistors on an integrated
circuit for minimum component cost was doubling every two years. This has
largely held true since then and processing power per thousand dollars is now
doubling every twelve to eighteen months. If this continues all the way to 2020
(thirteen years from now) the first glimpses of artificial intelligence will be
taking hold in our lives.
Tech guru Ray Kurzweil (inventor and author of books such as The Age Of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near) uses
this exponential curve to predict that a super-computer will emulate human
intelligence sometime around the year 2013 and that a $1000 computer will
emulate human intelligence in 2029. Previously difficult problems such as image
recognition, speech recognition, handwriting analysis and language translation
are rapidly being solved. A prototype of a translating telephone that
automatically translates between English, French and German was unveiled in San
Francisco in April 2007 and a DARPA software project translated between English
and Arabic at the level of professional translators. Some have predicted that
before 2015 cellphones will contain automatic translation software (probably at
first in a dozen or so major languages) and that soon after we will be able to
use our personal communication device to talk to practically anyone in the
world. This of course will revolutionize the task of missions!
Highly specialized artificial intelligence programs (called
“narrow AI”) will be able to do common customer service functions and
sophisticated computer generated personalities known as ‘avatars’ will interact
with users and act as a type of virtual salesperson. These avatars are capable
of being programmed with the hundred (or more) most common questions that
enquirers ask. They will be endowed with a patient and understanding artificial
personality and be able to lead enquirers through the plan of salvation and
even through some basic pre-baptismal follow-up lessons. We are on the verge of
it already in communities like Second Life where believers are already
witnessing to Christ - as their computer-generated avatars. Sitepal.com already
provides customizable avatars for websites, and the Genesys IP Contact Center
is already using avatars to handle customer service queries for CartaSi - the
Italian credit card company.
By using avatars and information technology our Internet missions agency could
reach tens of millions of enquirers annually with the plan of salvation and
then connect them with local churches in their area. So the evangelism
department of our missionary society in 2020 may well consist of six geeks, a
server farm and four hundred of these computer generated avatars! Each avatar
may well share the gospel with a different cluster of unreached people groups.
Of course there will still be plenty of room for face-to-face missionary
activity such as worship, baptism, communion, counseling, exorcism, small group
bible study and the use of spiritual gifts.
The rise in technology will also mean that average users can
become sophisticated content creators who can make their own video, audio and
text presentations of the gospel. Thus proclamation will become many-to-many as
new believers excitedly share their testimonies and experiences of Christ. As
video-conferencing becomes commonplace these believers will naturally bring
each other together into small groups and virtual churches online. Distance
education and TEE (Theological Education by Extension) will be revolutionized
and technology will allow a missionary to inexpensively conduct large-scale
training by video while being simultaneously translated into dozens of
different languages. Pastors and community leaders will be able to be trained
without being removed from their ministry context. Touch interfaces with
symbols, voice recognition and improved interface usability will make it easy
for non-literates to use technology and to benefit from it.
The power of technology to proclaim and inform needs to be
matched with the power of the local church to disciple and mature individual
believers. Hopefully technology will augment the process of discipleship and
free many Christian workers to focus on being one-to-one mentors. The gospel
will of course remain the same but how it is delivered, who is communicating
it, and the means of responding to it will be profoundly changed.
The
purpose of this article is use broad-brush statistics to help us to do some
first-order prioritization for Internet evangelism and Cybermissions. The
assumption is that Internet evangelism is best used when: the harvest is
plentiful, the conventional laborers are ‘few’, and yet Internet penetration is
adequate. For the initial part of this article I have drawn extensively on
research by my friend Chris Maynard, a British information manager and missions
supporter.
The first
question we need to ask is ‘where is
the Harvest Field, that is where are all the non-Christians?
Diagram by Chris Maynard using data from Operation World
2000
So we can see that 50% of the non-Christians are in just two nations – India
and China. Both India and China have reasonable Internet connectivity in many
of their urban areas. Other nations with large numbers of non-Christians and
significant connectivity include: Indonesia, Pakistan, Japan, Turkey, and
Thailand.
The second
question we need to ask is: ‘Where
are all the Internet users and how do they overlap with the Harvest Field?’:
The
following four diagrams are from Internet World Statistics website (www.internetworldstats.com ). They indicate significant and large numbers of Internet users
in the key areas that we want to evangelize (such as China and India). They
also indicate strong Internet penetration among areas where there are large
numbers of evangelicals (such as the USA) who can become online workers in the
harvest. For instance a Chinese-speaking American evangelical could go online
to help evangelize China, or an Urdu-speaking Australian evangelical could go
online to witness to Pakistan.
So we see
a fairly high degree of overlap between where the non-Christians are and where
the Internet is growing fastest. The next question must be – where are all the laborers for the Harvest
Field? Where are all the Christians? And in particular do these
laborers speak any of the Big Three languages of the Internet (English, Chinese
and Spanish)?
Diagram by Christ Maynard using data from Operation World
2000
We see
large numbers of laborers in the USA, Brazil, Mexico, China, Russia, the
Philippines and India! So perhaps the Christians in China can use the Internet
to reach other Chinese Christians; and the Indian Christians can use the
Internet to reach India for Christ; and the Mexican evangelicals can use the
Internet to reach the Latin world; and the Brazilian Christians can reach the
Portuguese-speaking Internet; and the German Christians can use cyberspace to
reach the German-speaking Internet and so on. Thus the strategy in many
situations becomes: training and enabling the national church in how to use
the Internet to reach its own people, and also in how to reach unreached people
groups who speak the same language (as that national church).
Chris Maynard then took the data
one step further by then asking – what
are the priority harvest fields where the harvest are plentiful and the
laborers are few. His next diagram
is below:
Diagram by Christ Maynard using data from Operation World
2000
Please
note that the scales are logarithmic!
The 38 countries include: ALL six countries in the world with more than 100
million non-Christians ALL 13 sizeable countries where there are more than a
hundred non-Christians to every Christian. (Maldives and Comoros are the
smaller ones not included) ALL 26 countries of the world where there are more
than 10 million non-Christians AND more than 10 non-Christians to every
Christian
All
38 countries are in the 10/40 Window, although not all countries in the window
are on the chart. More than 80% of the non-Christians in the world are found in
these 38 countries – which are less than 20% of countries.
The
chart excludes for example: Russia with 64 Million non-Christians because there
are more Christians than non-Christians (the harvest is plentiful, but there
should be plenty of workers available) Palestinian Authority with 51
non-Christians to every Christian, because there are less than 4 Million
non-Christians in total (the workers are few, but the harvest is relatively
small)
(Note:
the definition of Christian in Operation World is fairly generic and may not
necessarily mean evangelical Christian)
The table
below takes the 38 countries above, re-includes Russia (my personal decision in
light of the low percentage of evangelicals there) and then sorts them by
Internet penetration and suitability for Internet evangelism. The result is
that we find 20 countries where the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are
few, but they are suitable for Internet evangelism. Internet figures are
from March-April 2009 Internet World Statistics (broadband penetration) and
from the ITU when up-to-date IWS statistics were not available
Country
|
Internet Users
|
Penetration
|
Possible Strategies
|
Israel
|
5,263,146
|
74.00%
|
Messianic
Jewish websites
|
Japan
|
94,000,000
|
73.80%
|
Manga,
comics, technology bridge sites
|
Malaysia
|
15,868,000
|
62.80%
|
Malay,
English languages, train Malaysian church in IE
|
Iran
|
23,000,000
|
34.90%
|
Farsi,
websites, chat rooms, security conscious evangelism
|
Russia
|
38,000,000
|
27.00%
|
Addiction
counseling
|
Saudi
Arabia
|
6,380,000
|
22.70%
|
security
conscious online evangelism, Skype, etc
|
China
|
298,000,000
|
22.40%
|
equip
Chinese church to engage in IE
|
Turkey
|
21,000,000
|
21.10%
|
direct
evangelism online
|
Taiwan
|
4,505,800
|
19.60%
|
Chinese
language evangelism, dealing w. relationships, magic
|
Jordan
|
1,126,700
|
18.20%
|
Arabic,
chat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Tunisia
|
1,765,430
|
17.00%
|
As
above
|
Egypt
|
10,532,400
|
12.90%
|
As
above
|
Thailand
|
8,473,000
|
12.60%
|
Thai,
equip Thai church to witness online
|
Syria
|
2,132,000
|
10.80%
|
Arabic,
hat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Indonesia
|
25,000,000
|
10.50%
|
Equip
Indonesian church to witness online
|
Algeria
|
3,500,000
|
10.40%
|
Arabic,
chat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Mongolia
|
268,300
|
10.30%
|
Mongolian
church is in revival, equip to witness online
|
Pakistan
|
17,500,000
|
10.10%
|
Encourage
and strengthen Pakistani church leaders
|
India
|
81,000,000
|
7.10%
|
Train
Indian Christians in online ministry
|
Uzbekistan
|
1,745,000
|
6.60%
|
Direct
evangelism online
|
Bhutan
|
40,000
|
5.90%
|
Difficult,
few online, rare language
|
Libya
|
260,000
|
4.20%
|
Security
concerns
|
Sri
Lanka
|
771,700
|
3.70%
|
Train
Sri Lankan church to witness online
|
Afghanistan
|
500,000
|
1.50%
|
direct
evangelism online
|
Laos
|
100,000
|
1.50%
|
Low
percentage, Strict surveillance
|
Yemen
|
320,000
|
1.40%
|
Arabic,
chat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Morocco
|
390,800
|
1.30%
|
Arabic,
chat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Nepal
|
250,000
|
1.00%
|
Difficult,
train Nepali church to witness online
|
Iraq
|
275,000
|
1.00%
|
Arabic,
chat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Somalia
|
98,000
|
1.00%
|
Arabic,
chat rooms, websites , Skype
|
Mauritania
|
30,000
|
1.00%
|
French-speaking,
few Internet users
|
Mali
|
100,000
|
0.80%
|
French-speaking,
few Internet users
|
Vietnam
|
516,600
|
0.60%
|
Equip
Vietnamese Christians in USA to witness online
|
Cambodia
|
70,000
|
0.50%
|
Difficult,
few users, maybe using French…
|
Bangladesh
|
500,000
|
0.30%
|
Low
percentage but large number and they will be leaders
|
Niger
|
40,000
|
0.30%
|
French-speaking,
few Internet users
|
Tajikestan
|
19,500
|
0.30%
|
Very
small base of users
|
Myanmar
|
50,000
|
0.10%
|
Low
percentage, Strict surveillance
|
North
Korea
|
Data
not available
|
0%
|
Inaccessible
|
Conclusions
So Far
So
we see that there are 20 high-priority nations in the 10/40 Window, where
Internet evangelism could be a very useful strategy: China, India, Indonesia,
Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Egypt,
Thailand, Syria, Taiwan, Jordan, Malaysia, Tunisia, Algeria, Mongolia, and
Israel. Most of these nations place total or partial restriction on
conventional missionary activity among their ethnic majority (for instance
Malaysia and Indonesia forbid conversion of Malays and proselytizing of Jews is
forbidden in Israel) or they have strict ‘anti-blasphemy laws’ such as Iran
& Pakistan. Japan, while permitting missionary activity has been a
‘graveyard’ for conventional missions. However it is open to Cybermissions see: www.internetevangelismday.com/japan-web-evangelism.php
These
20 countries contain respectively well over two-thirds of the world’s
non-Christians. Six major trade languages will be most useful in reaching these
nations; English, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia.
English
language Internet evangelism will have some impact in Malaysia, Pakistan, India
and Israel and to a lesser extent in Japan. Arabic language Internet evangelism
will help reach Israeli Arabs, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt , Syria and
Algeria. Russian IE will reach Russia, Uzbekistan and Mongolia as well as
Russian-speakers in the ex-Soviet Union. The Chinese language will reach China,
Taiwan, and a significant percentage of Malaysia and Indonesia as well as the
huge Chinese Diaspora. Bahasa Indonesia is spoken by 300 million Indonesians
and is understood (in a slightly different dialect) across Malaysia. Japanese
will reach the hundreds of millions of high-tech Japanese.
Finally
French is a good candidate for a seventh language as it will reach
French-speaking colonies in Africa (such as Mali) or in Asia (such as Vietnam)
– most of these French speaking nations are in the ‘marginal’ IE list (marked
in brown above)
Of
course we will need a lot more than these seven major ‘trade languages’! We
will also need Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Hebrew and Turkish at least. Most of
these languages will require special characters known as Unicode or UTF-8;
happily this is becoming increasingly easy these days.
Teams
using these languages can be located anywhere in the world, e.g. here in Los
Angeles. In fact most large churches would have people in the congregation who
are fluent native speakers of these major languages and who are looking for an
opportunity to engage in meaningful ministry of some sort.
Some
Caveats
These
statistics are ‘at the 36,000 foot level’ and do not go down to specific
regional levels or to people group levels. And some significant realities are
missed. For instance Afghanistan has a low average Internet penetration at
1.5%, possibly because of its geography. One would estimate that most of its
500,000 users would be in and around Kabul while very few users would be in
Taliban-held areas. So Internet evangelism would not be a good strategy for
reaching the Taliban! But it might be a great strategy for reaching residents
of Kabul!
These statistics are also not exact. Where possible I have used the monthly
reports used by Internet World Statistics which are generally based on Nielsen
ratings of broadband penetration. Where such statistics have not been available
I have used ITU (International Telecommunications Union) statistics for
‘numbers of Internet users’ in a country. In countries like Sri Lanka where
Internet cafes are common, the broadband penetration might be low (it is only
3.7% in Sri Lanka) but the actual number of people who use Internet cafes may
be many times that number. You would have to count the Sri Lankan users of
email to guess at how many actual users there are.
Despite the above caveats a clear picture is beginning to emerge – that we have
at least twenty nations that are high-priority (large harvest / few workers),
and most of which place restrictions on conventional missionary activity – but
which are open to Internet evangelism and Cybermissions.
The Mobile Platform to the Rescue:
There
are 16 highly strategic countries where the penetration of the ‘landline
Internet’ is minimal (the ones highlighted in brown above: Bhutan, Libya, Sri
Lanka, Afghanistan, Yemen, Morocco, Nepal, Iraq, Somali, Mauritania, Mali,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Niger, and Tajikistan
However
digital media can still reach a large percentage of people in these nations via
the cellphone, here are some statistics showing the growth of cellphone usage
in Africa:
The Africa Mobile Fact
Book 2008 says that 3G (mobile broadband) networks are becoming increasingly
available, even in Africa and will constitute 18.6% of mobile phone subscribers
by 2011. What is true in Africa is even more so in Asia – Hong Kong has a cellphone
adoption rate of 163% and even Bangladesh is seeing a 67% year on year growth
in cellphone adoption adding 34.3 million new subscribers in 2008!
Dave
Hackett’s mobile evangelism wiki: http://mobilev.pbworks.com/ has a good list of
all the various approaches to using mobile phones for digital evaneglism
including SMS messaging, short video clips, MP3 files, ebooks, mobile-friendly
websites and so on. Tony Whittaker’s Web Evangelism Day site also has a great
section on mobile evangelism at: www.internetevangelismday.com/mobile-outreach.php
The
cellphone is also a highly persuasive and personal delivery platform and
Profesor B.J. Fogg of Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Laboratory has said that
the mobile phone is the most persuasive of all current technologies and that we
are more likely to read SMS messages than email or ‘snail mail’ (conventional
mail via the letterbox). Given that the mobile phone is ubiquitous among those
we are most trying to reach, and has a high potential for persuasion and influence
of the culture, it should be among the first tools adopted by prospective
digital evangelists.
Cellphones
have some major hurdles though among them – small screen real estate, multiple
incompatible operating systems, and the often painful task of converting
pervious web content so that it works properly in the mobile world.
The Netbooks
Then along came the netbook! In
particular the tablet PC /netbook combination is starting to take off globally
and prices are dropping fast - from around $250 - $400, the price of a good
cellphone.
The
netbook is a basic affordable personal computer capable of web browsing,
word-processing and basic office functions.
The
netbook can access 3G networks with a plug in module, and has standard wireless
and LAN connectivity. They do not have the processing power to run Vista and so
tend to run either Linux or Windows XP.
Netbooks
use the ‘conventional Internet’ which makes content delivery much easier than
writing specific code for the multitudes of different mobile phone operating
systems (iPhone, Google Android, Symbian (Nokia), Palm Os, RIM (Blackberry),
Windows Mobile, and Linux) .
The
following quote based on data from research firm IDC shows netbooks are rapidly
invading the space for conventional laptops and mobile platforms:
In
Q4 2008, 3.6 million units were sold which represents 20 percent of total
laptop sales and 30 percent of consumer laptops sold during that period. In
other words, the netbook market is worth nearly two third of the business
laptop market in terms of units sold. Netbooks (or as IDC calls them mini
notebooks) have been one of the most sought-after items in Christmas season
last year and represented more than four fifths of the sales volumes in Western
Europe.
My
personal observation is that the netbook has taken off among middle-class
Asians and that the two device model (netbook and cellphone) will be with us
for some time. Netbooks also often come equipped with Linux which is the
operating system of choice in some African nations.
It
is too early to tell whether the netbook will be adopted at a fast enough rate
to be a major platform for reaching the nations via digital evangelism. My
guess is that unless cellphones get much easier to use (and to develop for)
that people will vastly prefer to browse the web and do their work on a netbook
than on even the coolest 3G cellphone.
Netbooks
also have the potential to be a major educational tool (such as the One Laptop
Per Child project) with a vast penetration of the youth market which is often
the easiest to evangelize via media. Low-priced netbooks also increase the
economic viability of Internet cafes, which are major point of information
delivery in the developing world.
Between
netbooks and 3G cellphones in Africa and Asia we will see a rapid growth in the
numbers of people coming online between now and 2012. The Internet may well
grow from the current 1.6 billion users to double in size to 3.2.
To do this
we need to overcome a limited and dated view of evangelism - that says that you
just present the gospel online (the 4 Points, or whatever) - rather than using
all sorts of culturally relevant ‘bridge strategies’ to drill down to where the
non-seeking non-Christians are. There is a desperate need for highly
contextualized online ministry.
Where We Go From Here?
We train
the nations to reach the nations using digital evangelism, with an initial
emphasis on the twenty countries and seven main trade languages mentioned
earlier. We raise up the Chinese to reach China, the Indians to reach India,
the Arab Christians to reach the Arab world and the Indonesian Christians to
use computers and the Internet to facilitate the Great Commission among the
islands of Indonesia.
We
do so prayerfully and carefully, with proper regard to both the spiritual
dimension and the need for proper cyber-security – because we are in an End
Times battle zone in which our technology is only a tool and where the power is
from God.
Finally
we pay great attention to issues of contextualization so that the message is
communicated with optimal relevance to each culture in cyberspace, without
undue confusion. We move under the wise guidance of the Holy Spirit to reach
the least reached with the gospel using computers, mobile phones, netbooks,
radio and various forms of digital media – all for the glory of God!
And How To Share Christ There…
The
Traditional Internet Has Peak
The
traditional Internet = desktop PC + landline (or cable) in a home or workplace
The
number of traditional Internet subscribers is now very close to the number of
landlines
Landline
growth has stalled.
Growing the Edges
Now
the logistical task is to get Internet access to people who do not have
landline or cable and who may be earning $500 a month or less
The
spiritual task is to share the gospel with these new users ‘on the edge of
cyberspace’.
Many
of these are in developing nations such as China, India and the Middle East
–where gospel proclamation is most needed
The
‘next billion’ will come online in the
next two to three years and the Internet will DOUBLE in size!!!
Things May Be Different
The
next billion Internet users will not be Westerners
The
next billion Internet users will not have computers connected to landlines
They
will not speak English as their first language
Most
of them will not come from Christian religious backgrounds
The
God they seek may be very different from what we expect…
First
let's look at the technology they will be using…..
Stages of the Internet
Pre-1993
– Bulletin boards, email
1994-1997
Early HTML
1997-2002
HTML plus widgets
2002
- 2005 Web 2.0
2005
– 2007 Death of Web 2.0, emergence of the media driven web
2007
-2010 - The mobile Internet & the
developing world Internet
The Mobile Internet
In
July 2007 global mobile phone subscribers surpassed the 3 billion mark…. 3.25
billion by year's end…
Soon
many of these phones will be Internet capable – but will offer a different
‘kind’ of Internet – how can we reach them?
In
Japan, Korea and China mobile users regularly access the Internet
Google's
CEO Eric Schmidt, says the future of the internet is mobile.
Larger and More Flexible Screen
Mobile
screen technology is rapidly advancing
A
7” x 5” mobile screen that rolls out was recently announced
Large
flexible screens that roll out (like a bible scroll)
Some
are like ‘bricks’ that click together to form a larger screen (Brix phone
illustration)
Starting in Mobile Flat-form Ev.
http://www.internetevangelismday.com/mobile-outreach.php - the mobile evangelism page on
the Internet Evangelism Day website
http://mobilev.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
MobileEV - a mobile evangelism wiki
http://mobileministrymagazine.com/
Mobile Ministry Magazine
SMS
In
the Muslim world SMS messages are the
PREFERRED method of responding to the gospel
Text
2 Email gateways are now becoming a critical part of evangelism!
Soon
crusades will have a number you can text to indicate a decision to follow
Jesus.
A
URL for follow-up can be sent by return SMS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways
Podcast and Audio Blogging
http://www.internetevangelismday.com/podcasting.php - outreach potential of
podcasting
https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/podcasts/id26 - iTunes
podcast directory
http://www.podcastalley.com/ -
Podcast Alley - thousands of podcasts...
http://www.christiantuner.com/ -
ChristianTuner.com - Christian Internet radio stations
Short
audio clips (under ten minutes, preferably under 3 minutes) can be a powerful
witness
Audio
is personal and persuasive
Audio
better than video in low bandwidth areas.
Can
be streamed as Internet radio
Testimonies,
gospel presentations, music, prayers etc.
WebTV
Short
videos
YouTube
popularized it
GodTV
– Christian version: http://us.god.tv/
www.blogtv.com Blog TV
www.videochurch.org Video Church
Has
great evangelistic potential if done really well.
Bandwidth
limitations
RSS Feed
RSS
is Really Simple Syndication and is slowly changing the Internet from a ‘pull’
medium driven by search engines to a ‘push’ medium driven by RSS subscriptions
RSS
plus mobile devices
RSS
plus podcasts and video pods
RSS
plus news feeds, weather info etc
Evangelistic
content needs to be linked to an RSS feed
Second Life / Virtual Worlds
Virtual
worlds are rapidly growing
Second
Life has gone from 1 million subscribers to 10 million subscribers in just over
12 months.
Internet
is now participative and experiential not just informational
Churches
in Second Life
Internet Cafes
Internet
cafes can be found in most cities in the developing world
They
are and will continue to be a main source of the Internet for many
They often have restricted bandwidth
How
can we reach their users for Jesus?
Extreme Locations
VHF
store and forward (single-side band COBAN radios)
Stored
Internet (on a local area network) plus email, as hard-drives approach 1TB
storage capacity this becomes quite feasible
Satellite
and microwave links
Technological
advances are allowing detection of weaker signals and increased range
WiMax
WiMax
is Worldwide Interoperability
for Microwave Access
Crudely
put it is a long-range version of WiFi
It
can use both licensed and unlicensed spectrum
WiMax
towers are becoming popular in developing nations
Meraki Routers
Meraki
routers are powerful wireless routers that can ‘mesh’ together to cover a large
area.
One
access point, plus a bunch of Meraki routers can blanket a whole village with
WiFI
The
routers cover 100-250 meter radius each (compared to 10-30 meters for a normal
router)
They
are weatherproof
Say Goodbye to Privacy
The
Internet is being watched
Keystroke
loggers
Splitting
of fibre-optic cables
Download
monitoring
Rapid
‘reading’ and storing of website content by computers
Any
mention of politics or local organizing will get you instantly banned in over a
dozen countries
Wisdom
is essential
The Next Billion Internet Users
Average
income will be $2000 - $5000 a year
Many
will live in urban slums and be using Internet cafes
They
will want HOPE
They
will want practical information as well as entertainment
About
20 major languages will cover 95% of them….
The Next Billion – Logistics
They
have cell phones and TVs but not cars or
computers or telephone lines
The
Internet will be on a cell phone or icafe
They
will probably want an SMS response
They
will be highly family centered and 80% will be under 30
Many
will NOT be very postmodern
Many
will be single
The Next Billion – Aspirational
They
will be highly aspirational & tech hungry
Want
employment and business opportunities (business as mission)
Online
business plans and online business mentoring as ministry?
Online
Christian franchises and micro-franchises and micro-finance?
The Next Billion – Holistic
Holistic
approach to life and ministry
Want
to know ‘how to’ do a wide range of community development tasks as part of
ministry
HIV
/ AIDS Education
Water
purification
Simple
church construction
How
to set up a Christian pre-school
The Next Billion – Independent
Proud
of their own culture and own way of doing things
Will
not appreciate our denominations, “Christian culture” or national politics
Want
equal partnership (not Western ownership)
Want
to make the on-the-ground decisions
Have
alternative church structures
The Next Billion – Ministry
House
church movements
Will
often be Pentecostal Christians
Seekers
from animistic backgrounds who need deliverance
Extended
families
Shame
based cultures
Converts
from Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism
Pastors
with little formal training needing mentoring
Prosperity
teaching very popular
Questions
about corruption, poverty, and injustice: ‘why are we so poor’
Coping – Technology
Interactive
Participative
Experiential
Non-computer
based (cellphones!!)
Non-literate
– verbal / audio
Brief & Compressed
Holistic
Tagged
/ RSS
Multiple
languages & cultures
Multiple
bandwidth versions
Coping – Design
Internationalize
Clarity
Reduce
idomatic expressions
Be
hopeful and aspirational
Explain,
explain, explain…
We
will have on billion ‘newbies’ online within the next three years!
It
will be the total re-birth of the Internet and of web page design
Offer
a helpful handshake to the new Netizens…
Coping – Attitude
Scripture
rather than culture
Spirit
rather than method
Compassion
rather than just content
Trustful
connection rather than just ‘customer service’
‘Come
into our community’ rather than just ‘pray the prayer and go away please’
Engaged
with the whole of life rather than cerebral, engaged with a ‘bunch of concepts’
Coping – Love Newbies
If
the user is made to feel dumb they just go away
If their problems are ignored they will resent you
But if people feel they are helped quickly they will
become loyal
If
the user feels empowered they build enthusiasm
If
a user feels ‘’hey I am cool I can do this’ they build pride and tell others
Coping – WWJD
What
would Jesus do?
Sure
these changes are hard but how many people will they help us reach?
But
I like the Internet the way it is!!
Why
can’t they just be like us?
This
is way too complicated?
Get
help
Build
teams
Let
God guide you
Coping – Local Networks
Develop
in-country networks
Cultivate
local leaders
Pay
for translation, use locals, use the translation process to build relationships
Give
people an aspirational career pathway within your ministry
Volunteer
– Senior Volunteer – Part-Time Paid – Full-Time Paid
Delegate
real authority and the right to contextualize your ministry
Coping – Be First to Market
Be
first to ‘market’ – be one of the first in a particular language group
This
gives you great prestige and influence
It
also introduces you to early adopters and to leaders in that culture
Partner
with missions agencies and churches overseas
Coping – Calling Home
There
are huge international connections between migrants working overseas and their
home communities
They
‘call home’ for news and in return can share the gospel
The
next billion Internet users will have friends and relatives in America
We
can recruit these people as volunteers
Ethne
To Ethne – those people with the gospel reaching those without the gospel - via
the Internet
Coping – Partnering
Sharing
translation resources
Sharing
follow-up systems
Sharing
strategic information on people groups
Sharing
good podcasts and other content
Partnering
for on-the-ground church planting and holistic ministry efforts resulting from
cyber-ministry
Coping – Prayer
The
next billion will be a spiritual warfare context
Ministering
to animists, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists will require much prayer and
intercession
Your
computer will break down if you don’t pray!
You
will break down if you don’t pray!
Conclusion
The
Internet will double in the next three years as cellphones become Internet
capable
The
next billion users will be ‘newbies’ from the developing world
These
are people for whom Christ died and that missionaries long to reach
If
you get on board early you can be part of completing the Great Commission
Cybermissions – Where to Start?
The
following forty-three nations may represent good opportunities for
cyber-missions as a main mission strategy because:
1.
They are hard to reach by conventional means because of remoteness, war, kidnapping, or because of
prohibitions on evangelism.
2.
They have sufficient Internet
access to permit the development of a church-planting movement. Only
a few thousand users are needed if the tunnel and blast strategy is used of
"tunneling in" to find "man of peace" online then supplying
that person with information about Christ and working through training and
equipping that person to start a church-planting movement which becomes the
'blast" of the gospel.
3.
Note - A few easy to reach nations are
included because they have a very high ratio of internet users to general
population and other efforts at mission have not succeeded that well (e.g.
Israel, Thailand, Japan)
4.
China has 45.8 million internet users
and is a huge harvest-field just waiting to happen. If you are a Chinese church
in the West please consider forming a cyber-mission team with half a dozen
young people under the general supervision of the pastor.
5.
Other excellent starting points include:
India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Turkey, Russia, Japan, Oman, Cuba,
Thailand and Bahrain, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.
6.
See also articles that will help you
understand some of the setting up, ideas and techniques in cybermissions and Tony Whittaker's excellent web evangelism guide
7.
PRAY for God's guidance as to where to
start.
8.
Then go to our mission links site and do some research on your
chosen nation at any of the mission portal sites listed there e.g strategicnetwork.org.
9.
Then make a start! Get going, try
anything! Start sharing the gospel and be open to the Holy Spirit's leading as
you go along. Learn by doing!
10.
If you need web space try YourChristianWebHost which hosts the AIBI and has given us
reliable affordable service for years.
Table
Of The Most Strategic Nations For Cybermissions
Nation
|
Population (millions)
|
Number with Internet access (thousands)
|
Comment
|
1.
Azerbaijan
|
7.8
|
25
|
Islamic
|
2.
Bahrain
|
0.656
|
140
|
Islamic
|
3.
Bangladesh
|
133.3
|
150
|
Islamic
|
4.
Belarus
|
10.44
|
422
|
Partly Islamic, kidnapping
|
5.
Bhutan
|
2.1
|
2.5
|
Buddhist, closed
|
6.
Brunei
|
0.35
|
35
|
Islamic
|
7.
Burma
|
42
|
10
|
Buddhist, closed
|
8.
China
|
1,300
|
45,800
|
Communist, huge potential for cybermissions
|
9.
Cuba
|
11.2
|
120
|
Communist
|
10.
Djibouti
|
0.472
|
3.3
|
Islamic
|
11.
Egypt
|
70.7
|
600
|
Islamic
|
12.
Georgia
|
4.96
|
25
|
Partly Islamic, unstable
|
13.
India
|
1000
|
7000
|
Hindu - potential
|
14.
Indonesia
|
231
|
4,400
|
Islamic
|
15.
Iran
|
66.6
|
420
|
Islamic
|
16.
Iraq
|
24
|
12.5
|
Islamic
|
17.
Israel
|
6.0
|
1,900
|
Jewish, restricts evangelism
|
18.
Japan
|
127
|
56,000
|
Buddhist, Shinto
|
19.
Jordan
|
5.3
|
212
|
Islamic
|
20.
Kazakhstan
|
16.7
|
100
|
Islamic
|
21.
Kyrgyzstan
|
4.8
|
51.6
|
Islamic
|
22.
Libya
|
5.2
|
7.5
|
Islamic
|
23.
Malaysia
|
22.6
|
5,700
|
Islamic
|
24.
Mali
|
11.34
|
30
|
Islamic
|
25.
Mongolia
|
2.7
|
40
|
Communist & Islamic
|
26.
Nepal
|
25.87
|
60
|
Hindu
|
27.
Niger
|
10.6
|
12
|
Islamic
|
28.
Oman
|
2.7
|
120
|
Islamic
|
29.
Pakistan
|
147.6
|
1,200
|
Islamic
|
30.
Qatar
|
0.793
|
75
|
Islamic
|
31.
Russia
|
145
|
18,000
|
Restricts evangelism
|
32.
Saudi Arabia
|
23.5
|
570
|
Islamic
|
33.
Senegal
|
10.589
|
100
|
Islamic
|
34.
Sudan
|
37
|
56
|
Islamic
|
35.
Syria
|
17.15
|
60
|
Islamic
|
36.
Tajikistan
|
6.7
|
5
|
Islamic
|
37.
Thailand
|
61.8
|
4,600
|
Buddhist
|
38.
Tunisia
|
9.81
|
400
|
Islamic
|
39.
Turkey
|
67.308
|
2,500
|
Islamic
|
40.
Turkmenistan
|
4.6
|
2
|
Islamic
|
41.
Uzbekistan
|
25.563
|
100
|
Islamic
|
42.
Vietnam
|
81.098
|
400
|
Communist/Buddhist
|
43.
Yemen
|
18.7
|
17
|
Islamic
|
How a Local Church
Can Have A Global Presence
Through Cybermissions
Summary: How your church can have a
volunteer team of cyber-missionaries that can minister cross-culturally to
unreached peoples at a total cost of between $1000 to $5000 a year and see
between 100 and 1100 decisions for Christ in that people group.
Cybermissions - is the front-line use of the Internet for
cross-cultural evangelism, discipleship, church-planting and training.
Some
Statistics
Worldwide
Internet Population:
445.9
million (eMarketer)
533
million (Computer Industry Almanac)
Projection
for 2004:
709.1
million (eMarketer)
945
million (Computer Industry Almanac)
Online
Language Populations (September 2002)
English
36.5%; Chinese 10.9%, Japanese 9.7%, Spanish 7.2%, German 6.7%, Korean 4.5%,
Italian 3.8%, French 3.5%, Portuguese 3.0%, Russian 2.9%, Dutch 2.0% (Source:
Global Reach)
From the
above statistics it is clear that the Internet is no longer predominantly an
English speaking medium and that Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and
Korean now occupy a significant portion of cyber-space along with major
European languages such as Spanish., Portuguese and French.
There are
over 275 million Internet searches each day and 80% of all Internet sessions
begin at a search engine (Internetstatistics.com). Religion is one of the main
topics people search for. Pew Internet surveys found that 28 million Americans
get religion information online, that three million do so daily, and that 25 %
of net users search for religion-related topics. Barna Research estimates that
up to 50 million Americans may worship solely over the Internet by 2010. There
is every indication that the Internet is a major source of religious information
where people of many cultures and languages collect their spiritual facts and
opinions in private. Thus it’s a place where missionaries must be.
What Is The Role Of A Local Church?
Local churches can create a Cybermissions Project Team (CPT) that uses the
church website, chat rooms and email to reach a specific ethnic group for
Christ. A well-run cybermissions website can see three people a day or about
1100 people a year make commitments to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
This is
because the website is a “perpetual evangelist” that works away 24/7 witnessing
to seekers about Christ. The Internet is seeker-driven. People using the
Internet are seeking information via search engines and links on other sites.
When people arrive at your website it's not an accident. They have typed a
query into a search engine and arrived there. People not interested in God
simply don’t arrive at your church website – they end up somewhere else,
reading the weather or the news. So virtually 100% of the people you minister
to will already have some level of interest. This makes evangelism so much
easier! You can witness, via the Internet 24/7 to people who are already
interested in finding out about God!
OK... how
do I start?
1. Form a small group of say 6 to 8 people which should include a
few “techie” computer types, a few “bible” types and someone with enthusiasm
for missions. The pastor does not need to lead the group, he/she can just give
it some guidelines and get a monthly report. The group should be led by someone
with a passion for missions on the Internet. The group can fit into the church
structure in a similar way to creative ministry teams.
2. Read
the articles on cybermissions at http://www.aibi.ph/missions/ for some ideas to get you started.
3. Get
some web space. You need a domain name “yourchurch.com” and some space on a
server. We use ChristianWebHost.com and have found them to be both affordable
and reliable.
4. Pray
about what people group you should be ministering to. For a list of the 43
nations most suitable for a cybermissions strategy click here. Then go to our mission links site and do some research on your chosen nation at any of the mission portal
sites listed there e.g strategicnetwork.org.
5. Decide
on an initial strategy (you can tweak it later) and start designing the
website. Use the articles in point 2 above for some ideas.
6. Spend
at least four hours a week working on the website and improving it.
7. Reply
to the emails that come in promptly and start ministering to people in your
target group.
8. Become
a member of Cybermissions.Org and hang out with other people doing
the same thing - it's free. (Cybermissions.Org will open
officially on 12th August 2003 as a web portal for cybermissionaries.)
How
Much Does Running A Cybermissions Project Team Cost?
You will
probably pay around $19.95 a year for the domain name.
Then
around $10 a month for reliable ad-free hosting and $29.95 a month for
broadband access at your home or church office. ($480 per annum)
Then work
on replacing a computer every two years so - $1000 p.a.
Then maybe
you want some expensive software - $1500 a year
And you do
some online advertising at $150 a month - $1800
Total
costs = $4800 per annum. Or around $5000 per annum for a well-equipped active
evangelistic outreach that may well bring between 100 to 1100 people to Christ.
On A
Shoe-String Budget?
You can
start for $ 1000 per annum, $500 for the basics, (website, domain name,
broadband) and $500 for extras. For good free open-source software go to http://www.sourceforge.net
What
Sort Of Things Can The CPT Do?
·
Share
testimonies in the target group’s language.
·
Have
a chat room/bulletin board
·
Have
a pen-pals page
·
Have
a “pray for healing” page so they can ask the church to pray for sick
relatives.
·
Have
cross-over articles say on an area of secular interest (say camel-racing if you
want to reach Saudi Arabia) then tag a short Christian message at the end or a
link to an evangelistic page.
·
Address
the spiritual questions they have: demon-possession, sacrifices to idols,
magic, how to endure suffering, who is really God, etc
·
Online
artwork that is culturally appropriate.
·
Christian
songs in their national language.
·
Recipes
for the favorite foods of the target people group.
·
Have
a “personal advice” column and articles on family life, relationships,
loneliness etc.
·
Share
bible portions, tracts and brief evangelistic sermons.
·
Have
news and weather of that country.
·
Have
a membership section so they keep coming back.
Online-Offline Synergies That Dramatically Increase
Evangelistic Effectiveness
Online-offline
synergy is when "offline" activities such as an outreach or a crusade
are closely coordinated with a website or vice-versa. It is the intentional
connecting of the online and offline worlds. It is the nexus between physical
incarnation and "presence" - and information and explanation and
community and forums online.
In the
Philippines a Catholic charismatic ministry sends worship teams into Catholic
schools - where they are often restricted from teaching about being born-again.
But the worship team of fun young people heavily promotes their "Genrev" website and it is there that
the kids convert to Christ are followed up in the forums and eventually come to
the Tuesday night meeting. With 2 million hits a month and hundreds of
conversions it is a great example of online-offline synergy.
Joepix is a major event outreach that send
photographers around to do group photos for free. The photos are put on a
website and the people in the photo are given a key they can use to log on -
and invite friends to the website. The website presents the gospel.
Non-Christians and inviting other non-Christians to a Christian website to view
their photos!
It’s tough
to present the gospel in some Catholic schools, and nearly impossible to get it
through in a five-minute photo shoot without looking really weird. The
ministries above build the RELATIONSHIP off-line - and deliver the INFORMATION
online.
Let’s play
this out a bit more, say your church sends 45 young people in a bus to Mexico
for a 3 day outreach. They have a great time, make many friends and come home
excited and sad. It wasn't really long enough for effective ministry - or was
it?
·
What
if they were encouraged to make email pen-pals?
·
Or
gave out literature to a Spanish language Christian website?
·
What
if the church got some of its Hispanic members to have an evangelistic web page
in Spanish with photos of the weekend and lots of friendly faces?
·
Or
if there were forums using PHPBB2 or similar software to answer questions?
·
Or
even just a blog about the weekend?
The possibilities are endless and the Mexican young people can go into a nearby
Internet cafe and keep in touch with their American friends and get their
questions answered about being born-again. The new converts could be
effectively followed up and the seekers led to the Lord. The spiritual results
could be doubled!
The
Introduction is made "offline", the gospel or other Information is
presented "online" and questions are answered in cyberspace and
relationship are built, then the Invitation happens as the website advertises
another event, and finally Inclusion happens as they become part of both the
online and offline communities. Then more Introductions are made and so on...
1.
Introduction - offline -outreach event
2.
Information - online - website /forums, gospel
presentation, questions answered
3.
Invitation - online - invited to another event,
church service etc.
4.
Inclusion - both offline and online - becomes
part of the community
5.
Introduction - new members in turn introduce
others...and around it goes
A common
mistake is to expect the website to do the initial introduction. People don't
trust the internet enough for that yet. In the main they still need a smiling
face. The gospel still has to be incarnated in flesh and blood. However people
are very happy to find information online or be an email pen-pal with someone
they already know from the real world. So do the introduction and initial
relationship building offline, and leave presenting the information to the
website. This also takes a lot of the pressure off the relationship.
POINTS
TO PONDER:
1.
How
can you build relationships offline that lead to information online?
2.
How
can you build a website to back-up an outreach effort?
3.
How
can you use the Internet to answer common questions that arise during
face-to-face ministry?
4.
How
can a website help do the evangelizing for you?
Paul vs. John – Information Security Then and Now
(Why Paul Got More Press But John Lived Longer)
Differing
approaches to missionary security go back as least as far as the New Testament.
On one hand we have Paul, whose incredible boldness caused concern to others
and who had to be rescued from rioting mobs on numerous occasions. Paul
attaches long lists of names to his epistles, freely discloses his travel plans
and is 'completely out in the open' as far as information security goes. He
even goes to Jerusalem despite the warnings of close friends, prophets such as
Agabus - and to the obvious discomfort of James and the brethren. For Paul
security was simply not a major concern.
On the
other hand we have the apostle John. His brother James is beheaded by Herod
(Acts 12:1,2); next, his good friend Peter is arrested and put in jail,
awaiting execution. At this point John is the only 'free' member of the three
apostles who were closest with Jesus (Peter, James and John), and so John
'vanishes' from the record of Acts, and even from the greetings at the end of
Paul's epistles - which is rather strange considering both men ministered in
Ephesus! For forty-five years or so we hear nothing of John until his gospel,
epistles and Revelation appear in the eighties and nineties AD. And when they
do appear they are coded and cryptic, they do not have long lists of names and
personal greetings nor do they give detailed travel plans. They say things such
as: 3 John 1:13-14 MKJV I had many things to write, but I will not write to
you with pen and ink, (14) but I trust I shall shortly see you, and we shall
speak face to face. Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends
by name.
John seems to have been much more
security conscious than Paul – and yet both were undeniably apostles and very
great men of God who helped shaped both the Scriptures and the Church. As one
wit remarked when I pointed this out, ‘Paul got more press, but John lived
longer!'
Undoubtedly
personality, theology and temperament had a lot to do with their approaches,
but the type of persecution each faced was significantly different. Paul's
early experiences of persecution were from bands of Jewish agitators who had
limited ability to intercept his letters to the churches. There is no N.T.
record of systematic, government-level persecution of Paul (who seems to have
easily made friends with Roman officials).
For Paul,
standing up to the agitators who were trying to silence both him and the gospel
was the correct thing to do. Paul also had the context of being single ( 1 Cor
7:8) and thus did not have to consider protecting his family.
In
contrast, John's experience of persecution was at a government level – first
the insane Herod, and later the persecution of Diocletian where any misspoken
phrase or loose scrap of paper could lead to someone being burned alive. For
John, keeping the Church safe from inadvertent catastrophe was the priority.
John was also probably married (1 Cor 9:5), and that would have been a
contributing factor to his security-consciousness. Both approaches to security
are found in missions work today –sometimes in the same organization, and this
can result in some very significant tensions.
This may
be going a bit far, but I think the very different approaches that Paul and
John had to information security largely prevented their networks from working
together, even when in the same city (such as Ephesus). John's network leaders
would simply have felt unsafe around Paul and his disciples. While they would
have preached the same Christ, they would have had different leadership
structures, different house churches and baptism policies (Paul baptized on the
spot, but there is much evidence that in other areas there was a long testing
period to weed out false disciples first) and different methods of operation.
In time Paul's networks combined with Peter's and coalesced into the Western or
Roman church, while John's network remained distinct and became the Orthodox
Church of today.
Differing
approaches to security may also have been part of the reason for the historic
WEC/UFM split towards the end of the life of missionary pioneer C.T. Studd.
Even today there are tensions both within and between agencies. Trust is broken
easily and takes a long time to build. A head office wire transfer containing
too much detail e.g. 'for Bibles' can alienate the field staff whom it impacts.
And a single foolish mistake by an unwise youth on a short-term missions
trip can result in that whole agency being 'blacklisted' by other agencies
working in the same country.
In the
rest of this article I will focus on 'information security' – that is, how we
separate out the information we keep secure from that which we keep out in the
open for all the world to see. And I will also ask the question: “How do we
create a culture of caring about the consequences of communication?” Because,
as the WW2 poster used to say, “Loose lips sink ships.'
What Is
Information Security?
Information
security, computer security and information assurance are closely related but
different terms.
Information
security is wider than computer security and deals with information as a whole
and so may concern something written by hand or even oral communication.
Information security will include the terms and language you use, as well as
all the communication media – landlines, mobile phones, Skype, laptops, PCs and
various hand-held devices.
Information
security experts use terms such as confidentiality, integrity, authenticity,
possession, utility and availability of information. I will boil all this down
to the identification, separation and preservation of confidential
information that could potentially compromise your ministry. Identification
means you have policies that help people accurately identify what is
confidential (finances and specifics such as names, places, and meeting venues)
and what is not confidential (general publicly available information about your
agency). Confidential information is any specific, real-time information (in
contrast to general statements) that can form a basis for action by an enemy.
Separation
means you wall the information off so that (supposedly) only those who should
see it, do see it. A safe or an encrypted hard drive is a simple form of such separation
as is a locked file cabinet or an old briefcase used just for confidential
papers. Preservation means that the information is kept intact and can be
retrieved in an intelligible format. This includes such things as backups,
decryption keys, virus-scanning to prevent data corruption, and checking of
physical media to ensure that data is not scrambled.
What Missions Are Currently Doing In This Area
I did some
research into this issue in the form of an online survey that was answered by
62 people (full survey analysis available upon request). In brief, the most
security conscious were listed as being: a) Western missionaries, b) the IT
staff and c) those in creative access ministries. Those who were least security
conscious were listed as being: a) older missionaries, b) head office
bureaucrats, c)those who preferred to 'just trust the Lord', d) those whose
work computer was also their home computer, e) supporters back home, f) partner
ministries that use inappropriate stories in publications and g) some national
missionaries.
Many of
the responses indicated a high level of emotion among many of the survey participants
with some 'us vs. them' polarization occurring between the most security
conscious and least security conscious groups due to their differing age, as
well as their cultural and theological perspectives. People reported anger and
confusion around the implementation of information security policies and people
divided between 'we trust God and pray' and those who want absolutely every
possible security contingency covered (which is not practicable).
The following question was asked about the kind of security policies that were
in place: Do you have specific policies for security in regard to: (tick all
that apply) (Statistics were only taken from completed responses)
Email -
71%
Viruses,
malware, phishing, scams - 58%
Server
network security - 50%
Web
browsing - 47%
Laptop
security -42%
Use of
Internet cafes - 37%
Hard-drive
encryption - 26%
USB /
Thumb drives - 26%
Other -
please specify - 24%
I have
no idea of what policies we may or may not have - 16%
We do
not have any information security policies - 11%
I found it
remarkable that over a quarter (27%) either had no information security
policies or had no idea of what such security policies were. Email, viruses and
server security seem to be the main concern of the security policies that did
exist.
Covenanting
To Keep Each Other Safe
Because of
the Internet, links between missionaries in different agencies are now very
extensive, and missionaries in an agency with good security practices may be
compromised by a missionary in another agency with very poor security
practices. Security is only as good as the weakest link, and the weakest link
is often in the publicity department at mission HQ! The dramatic stories that
are good for fund-raising are also the material that can cause serious problems
on the field. We have to covenant to keep one another safe.
At a
recent large missions gathering in Thailand, the story was told of people
visiting a certain closed country on a short-term missions trip, who were
expressly told not to hand out tracts. On the way home one woman felt it was
her duty to start throwing tracts out the bus window. They were soon arrested
and taken for interrogation by the secret police. Within twenty minutes they
were crying on the floor and within thirty minutes they had divulged the names
of the local pastors and Christian leaders.
We have to
do better than that! We have to care deeply about those who may be affected by
our actions, and that should give us a 'holy restraint' that stops us doing
things like throwing tracts out bus windows in closed countries! That is why I
advocate for organization-wide policies that are understood and signed off on
by everyone from the board chairman to the bus driver on the short-term mission
trip. Detailed information security policies need to be created by each mission
organization to suit its own particular requirements. These policies should be contained
in a single concise document that should be personally reviewed and signed off
on by all staff in each organization, including the leadership.
Of course,
everything must be held in balance. There are good missionaries who recognize
their lack of understanding, and are trusting the Lord to provide needed
protection. They would love to act on the basis of more understanding... yet
one thing was stated quite strongly: the basis of our security is Christ, not
policy. No policy can be allowed to determine what we will or will not do.
How do we
then proceed, given that in many contexts some increase in information security
is desirable? First, information security practices might need to be greatly
simplified to make them more user friendly. As far as possible, information
security should be 'automatic' and built into the software, email systems and
server systems used by missionaries. While it is acknowledged that perfect
information security is impossible, greater security can be achieved by the
thoughtful development of simple yet effective information security processes.
Some of these simplified information security practices could include:
BASIC SECURITY (All missionaries everywhere, even in free
countries)
1.
Using free firewall software such as
ZoneAlaram, and free anti-virus software such as AVG or Avira antivirus and
free spyware and root-kit detectors such as Spybot Search & Destroy and
AdAware – and regularly updating them.
2.
Use CCleaner to remove cookies,
browser history and general compromising 'junk' from your computer.
3.
Give some consideration to using a
non-Windows operating system such as Apple OSX, Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenSolaris.
You can still run your Windows programs by using a 'virtual machine' such as
VMWare and they will run quite quickly. These non-Windows operating systems are
generally quite secure and are far less targeted by hackers and virus writers.
4.
The use of encrypted PDF files (for
example PDFCreator for free software that does this easily) to store
confidential information - especially when sending attachments. Having to use
simple passwords to open files reminds the reader that they are confidential. For
further security the ability to print, or to copy, cut or paste can be turned
off in a PDF file.
5.
Use strong passwords – longer than 12
characters and involving uppercase letters, lower case letters, numbers and
punctuation. The more scrambled up the better. For instance get a bible verse
and take the numbers and jumble them up between the letters and add some
punctuation on the end to get at least 12 characters - so John3:16 might become
J3o:h1n6!?@> a much stronger password.
6.
Do not get the 'latest and greatest' -
wait at least six months until the security issues have been found and patches
fixed. For new releases of MS Windows or Microsoft Office, wait one year.
7.
The use of the same free / low-cost
'seamless' encrypted email across all members of the organization (it is then
as pain-free as sending a normal email).
8.
The regular use of Google and other
search engines to check what is 'out there' in cyberspace about the ministry -
and even to ask people to remove confidential information from a website. It
may also be wise to Google for any sensitive email addresses.
9.
Training all staff and partners in the
difference between what is 'confidential' and what can be shared freely,
especially when fund-raising or in newsletters.
10.
Merge with your context. For instance,
using Linux in Africa or China is fine because it has a strong following in
those places but in some other countries it may look 'geeky' and attract
attention. Also, selecting unusual hardware or software means that a typical
user is a) less likely to understand how it works; b) less likely to have a
community of friends who can help them use their technology well; c) more
likely to be identified as an "outlier" simply on the basis of the
unusual tools they use. It's worth considering the selection of tools that fit
in well with those in the neighborhood (whatever that may mean). This applies
not only to OS but also to email practices.
11.
Stay away from politics in all
publications and communications both on-field and at HQ, as it is often a
brochure with a strong political statement that alerts a government to commence
surveillance of the organization.
12.
Do not publish sensitive conversion
statistics, particularly of Hindus or Muslims, as this will cause them to
defend their religion - by finding and persecuting the converts in that area.
13.
Do not keep any confidential
information of any sort on servers connected to the Internet.
14.
Use a high-quality shredder for all
financial and confidential paperwork.
MODERATE
SECURITY (Most
missionaries in the 10/40 Window, occasional light surveillance)
15.
“Need to know' basis for information
sharing. This includes yourself. Evaluate whether you really need to know a
particular piece of information.
16.
Be 'semi-paranoid' and make people
earn your trust.
17.
Do not use Skype. It has been
compromised by most governments.
18.
Do not use Internet cafes - not only a
high virus infection risk but key-stroke loggers are common and can record
everything you type and send it to those watching you.
19.
Do secure web browsing using Sandboxie,
Green Border or multiple proxy servers.
20.
Do not use cellphones in some
countries, particularly in police states, as mobile phones can not only be
listened in on, but their microphones and cameras can be turned on remotely.
Removing the battery is the only safe way to prevent this.
21.
A forest is a great place for a
sensitive conversation. It is very hard for others to listen
undetected,
even using wireless electronics (which do not work well in greenery).
22.
The use of free software such as
TrueCrypt as a way to create encrypted hard-drives or encrypted 'file
containers' within hard-drives – and the use of these encrypted partitions for
all highly confidential data. It just takes a little practice.
23.
Generate as little confidential
information as possible. Do not ask for specifics (such as full names
addresses, etc) that might compromise people.
24.
Keep a low profile, be useful,
friendly and non-annoying. Take care with financial transactions so that no one
is ever burned or gets a grudge against you (and thus has a motive to betray
you).
25.
Do not have large, obvious meetings.
Do not have all the converts or church leaders in one place at one time (so
they can all be arrested at once).
26.
Train your memory so that records of
appointments and other compromising information does not have to be kept on
paper in sensitive situations.
27.
Use a "split messages"
policy. If you need to share a confidential message, break it apart and send
via different paths. You might send one element (e.g. date or location) by
email, then make a phone call or fax to send the rest.
28.
Appoint someone in your team to be
your 'security consultant' who updates computers regularly and who does the
necessary nagging that is required to keep people secure.
HIGH
SECURITY (Really
tough places, extensive government-level surveillance)
29.
There are no effective technical
counter-measures that a missionary can take to counter determined government
surveillance. The missionary must carefully evaluate whether God has called
them to such a situation and the risk they may pose to themselves, their family
and the national church. Western missionaries can unfortunately draw unwanted
attention to those that they meet with in such countries.
30.
A wise, consistent respectful,
God-honoring lifestyle is generally good security anywhere.
Proposal For A
Postgraduate Course
in Cyber-Missions and
Internet Evangelism
Proposal: To equip leaders for mission and
evangelism in an ever-changing world through a degree program in
“Cyber-Missions and Internet Evangelism”. With the growth of the Internet and
web ministries, the Christian educational establishment needs to provide global-level
leadership in this developing area of missiology. Although formal programs
exist for communication, radio evangelism, writing, journalism, and
media-strategy, no curriculum exists covering this emerging ministry field.
Definitions
Cyber-Missions refers to the front-line use of
the Internet in missions – for networking, team-building, counseling and
education.
Internet
Evangelism is the
specific application of the Web for outreach, through evangelistic websites,
church pages, chat rooms, and email. It has great potential both in the West
and the 10-40 Window. Internet Evangelism is an effective method of reaching
unreached people groups in the 10-40 Window, and can also target very specific
groups in the Western world.
There two
disciplines overlap, and terms may be used interchangeably in this document.
Distance
learning?
Although
the curriculum outlined here could be taught within a residential
establishment, the developments in online education would enable such a course
to be offered online, though validated and overseen by a recognized educational
center. Advantages:
·
Low
cost
·
Students
can be located anywhere in the world
·
Course
can be self-paced, and studied on a part-time/evening basis
·
There
are a limited number of qualified practitioners qualified to be the faculty
teachers and supervisors for this course, and they are in a range of locations
around the world.
Online
education has come of age with many of the software, security and pedagogical
issues being ironed out over the last two years. Discussion in online forums
and the use of email between student and supervisor have proven practical and
useful in facilitating graduate degree courses requiring reflection on
practice. It is therefore the optimal method of delivery for many subjects.
This is especially true for a discipline focused on the online environment and
where the participants may be dispersed geographically with many prospective
students living internationally.
Prospective
Students
Current
practitioners in cyber-missions and web-evangelism and those wishing to enter
this area, as well as field-missionaries seeking new methods to evangelize and
disciple unreached people groups.
Is This
A Needed Area Of Study?
Internet
evangelism and cyber-missions are rapidly emerging areas of missions. Even
though there are relatively few full-time practitioners, Internet ministries
are gaining acceptance in the missions community. Cyber-missions departments in
major missions organizations are developing. In Web Evangelism, some post-modern
churches find most new members coming in through their websites. The Internet
has enormous potential for reaching closed countries, for targeting unreached
people groups, for training of lay leaders and for evangelizing those who
cannot or will not approach a local church. As the potential of this discipline
becomes recognized, trained and equipped leaders will be needed, who can in
turn train and envision others.
What Is
The Size Of The Potential Student Population For This Course?
Formal
research does not exist at this time, however this is an emerging area and
journal articles on cyber-missions and Internet evangelism have a high level of
interest. The concept of such a post-graduate course was considered by some Internet
Evangelism Coalition leaders recently and generated a high level of
enthusiasm.
What
Other Courses Such as This Exist?
IEC (Internet
Evangelism Coalition) and Campus Crusade both offer brief non-formal
courses. Some courses on post-modernism address the Internet extensively as a
cultural medium. However there do not seem to be any regionally-accredited
graduate level course designed to equip full-time practitioners and strategists
in cyber-missions and Internet evangelism.
Are
There Any Text-Books Available?
Many
textbooks have been published exploring sociological aspects of the Internet
and general evangelistic and missionary communication. Andrew Careaga and
others have written on E-vangelism and Tony Whiaker has compiled an online
resource web-evangelism.com which includes study questions. Many secular books
and online resources cover technical, design, and usability issues.
Who
Would Comprise the Faculty?
There are
perhaps 50 key people available in this area at the moment with perhaps a dozen
of these having suitable doctorates and about the same number with M.Div. /
M.A. degrees and extensive online experience. The originator of this course
proposal, John Edmiston, is available to be a course administrator, and has
contacts with many other potential faculty.
What
About The Technical Aspects?
Students
could develop an emphasis on content, or on the technological aspects, but all
students would be required to know something of both sides of the discipline.
Issues such as accessibility, online security, types of websites, the strategic
use of web databases, bandwidth limitations and designing with the end-user in
mind should be part of the training of all students.
Why
Now?
The areas
of cyber-missions and Internet evangelism have so far evolved in an ad hoc
fashion. Practitioners have now accumulated a sizable body of common practice
and knowledge. As this field grows, there is a clear need for formal training
and for systematization. Any Christian establishment developing such a course
now will have the opportunity to pioneer formal training in an emerging
ministry field.
Overheads
Minimal as
classes would be online.
Scholarship
Fund
Could
possibly be funded by tapping into the Christian business and technology
community.
Anticipated
Course Structure
1.
Preferably
an entirely online course using adult-learning strategies. Local proctoring of
tests by an on-the-spot supervisor can ensure student work integrity. Much of
the course will be on a practical project-learning basis.
2.
If
some residency is required, this may be able to be achieved with regional
residency programs.
3.
The
course would accept both M.Div. and M.S. (and other suitable) graduates. M.Div.
graduates would be required to acquire some I.T. competencies and M.S.
graduates some theological and missiological understandings.
4.
The
modules would include topics such as: Research Methodologies, Dissertation
Writing, A Theology of Cyber-Space, Ministry-Focused Website Construction,
Cross-cultural Communication and Cultural Sensitivity, Online Communication, Approaches
To Internet Evangelism, Targeting Special Interest/Affinity Groups by the
Bridge Strategy, Website Architecture and Usability, Understanding HTML and
CSS, Effective Graphic Design, Content Management, Reaching Members of World
Religions, Overview of Cyber-Missions, Database Construction and Management,
Virtual Teams, Reaching Post-Moderns Via The Internet, Counseling In
Cyber-Space, Website Promotion Strategies, Building Online Community, The
Construction and Funding of Christian Community Internet Cafes, Issues in
Cyber-Ethics, Catering For Accessibility, Poverty and the Digital Divide,
Developing A Cyber-Missions/Internet Evangelism Department In Your
Organization, Email/Web Security for Missions.
5.
Dissertation
– either research-based or project-based.
6.
Cyber-Missions
dissertations would be expected to have a strong missiological and developing
world emphasis.
7.
As
an online course it could be taught using adjunct faculty within USA and the
West.
Implications
For Missions/Evangelism As a Whole
Development of an
M.A./Ph.D. qualification in this emerging area of missions would help to both
validate and systematize the areas of Cyber-Missions and Internet Evangelism.
It would produce a group of highly trained leaders who could implement Cyber-Missions
departments in mission agencies and Internet Evangelism departments within
mega-churches and denominational evangelism divisions. This unleashing of the
power of the Internet to serve the Gospel would enable a major leap forward to
be made in the achievement of the Great Commission.
Final
Thoughts
This paper
is a brief overview and a starting point for further discussion and reflection,
rather than a final formulation. Its originator, John Edmiston, and other
qualified commentators, are very happy to enter into dialogue to develop an
optimal course structure.
Technology As Part Of
the Image Of God
And Task Of the
Church
(A Christian perspective on how we can
integrate technology and spirituality.)
Technology and The Image of God
God is a
highly competent technician. He created wing structures, eyes, chemical
factories like the liver, lightning bolts and even nuclear furnaces called
stars –long before man was there to advise Him. He even created and
designed the human brain – a self-replicating, fuzzy logic, multi-media,
self-programming, organic computer. If we are to be in the image of God then we
will share His excellence in design, invention and implementation. The notion
that technology is alien to spirituality is false. Technology is the expression
of spirituality. Technology and spirituality are integrated with each other,
technology is our means of expression of the image of God within us.
Ezekiel
1:19-21,25-28 BBE (19) And when the living beings went on, the wheels
went by their side; and when the living beings were lifted up from the earth,
the wheels were lifted up. (20) Wherever the spirit was to go they
went; and the wheels were lifted up by their side: for the spirit of the living
beings was in the wheels. (21) When these went on, the others went;
and when these came to rest, the others came to rest; and when these were
lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up by their side: for the spirit
of the living beings was in the wheels…… And there was a voice from the expanse
which was over their heads, in their standing still, and they let down
their wings. (26) And from above the expanse that was over
their heads was a likeness like a sapphire stone, the likeness of a
throne. And on the likeness of the throne was a likeness looking like a
man on it from above. (27) And I saw Him looking like the
color of polished bronze, looking like fire all around within it. From the
likeness of His loins even upward, and from the likeness of His loins even
downward, I saw Him, looking like fire, and it had brightness all
around. (28) As the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain
looks, so the brightness all around looked. This was how the likeness of the
glory of Jehovah looked. And I saw. And I fell on my face, and I heard a voice
of One speaking.
In
Ezekiel’s vision the throne of God is being carried by four living beings on a
chariot of fire with four immense wheels. These wheels are directed by the
spirit of the living beings “for the spirit of the living beings was in the
wheels”. This living being-wheels-throne-expanse of crystal arrangement
was full of energy and fire. It was a high-powered, mobile,
spiritual-technological complex that carried the very Presence and authority of
God. Thus God was not separated from technology – but rather was enthroned upon
it. And the technology was not separate from the spiritual world – but
indwelt by it.
This
integration of spiritual indwelling and technical excellence is evident in the
first passage in Scripture that tells us about being filled with the Holy
Spirit. As Bezalel is filled with God’s Spirit the result is technical
excellence and fine craftsmanship.
Exodus
31:1-5 ASV And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, (2) See, I
have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of
Judah: (3) and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom,
and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
(4) to devise skilful works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in
brass, (5) and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of
wood, to work in all manner of workmanship.
The Spirit
is often associated with fire - the main symbol of technology and power and His
indwelling teaches us and give us wisdom in all things including technology. (1
Corinthians 2:9-16, 1 John 2:20,22) Indeed the prophet Isaiah tells us to pay
close attention to God’s wisdom and teachings which even include practical
details of farming life:
Isaiah
28:23-29 MKJV Give ear and hear my voice; listen, and hear my
speech. (24) Does the plowman plow all day to sow? Does he open and
break the clods of his ground? (25) When he has made the face of it
level, does he not cast out the dill and scatter the cummin, and throw in the
choice wheat and the chosen barley and the spelt in its border?
(26) For his God instructs him to do right; his God teaches him.
(27) For the dill is not threshed with a threshing instrument, nor is
a cart wheel turned on cummin; but the dill is beaten out with a staff and the
cummin with a rod. (28) Bread grain is crushed, but not always does
one thresh it with threshing. And he drives the wheel of his cart; and
his horses do not beat it small. (29) This also comes out from
Jehovah of Hosts, who is wonderful in wisdom, making sound wisdom great.
The point
of Isaiah’s statement is that God’s wisdom is not just some esoteric morality
or irrelevant philosophy but covers all of life including farming and the technology
needed for earning of our daily bread. God’s wisdom penetrates into all
the details of everyday life – including showing the farmer the best way to
thresh cummin.
Jesus –
who is always our model, was a carpenter – a user of tools and technology (Mark
6:3). He was not an ascetic philosopher who just read books and taught.
He was not ‘so spiritual’ that He floated around unable to fix a light bulb or
wash dishes. The image of God in Christ, the perfect image was of a practical
tool-using man. For Jesus, who is the very image of God,
there was no split between spirituality and technology. Peter,
James and John were fishermen, Paul was a tent-maker, they were all people who
used technology. The Christian model does not involve a retreat from technology.
Christianity sees practicality as a positive human attribute. Technical
excellence is desirable and is part of the wisdom God imparts and part of being
fully in the image of God.
Socio-Technical
Humanity
But
technology is not ultimate - Jesus left His workshop and Peter left his
nets – to preach the gospel. Technology is a means not an end -and there are
times when we have a good practical reason to leave the toolshed and go preach
a sermon. The aim of the Christian life is the development of the human
character in love, not the development of technology. Yet technology
helps us express our love. If you love a sick person you want the best possible
diagnosis and treatment. This may involve the development of X-Ray machines,
MRI, better scalpels, or better disinfectants – all because we want to
love, heal and help sick people. The technology takes the loving impulse
and turns it into a practical reality. All the loving impulses in the
world cannot make up for an inaccurate diagnosis, a blunt scalpel or an
unhygienic ward. If love is to achieve its aims it needs to use
technology to do so.
Thus
technology is a means, not an end, technology is the means by which we express
our love and incarnate it in the world of tangible things.
Thus we are
socio-technical beings. That is we are social beings who express themselves
through technology. This is no accident of culture or a sudden invention of the
last few years. For, as we saw in Ezekiel, God Himself is a
socio-technical being, a loving Trinity enthroned on an awesome chariot of
fire.
The
construction of the Temple gives us some idea of what Spirit-indwelt technology
can look like. The Temple was the construction of human craftsmen inspired by
God working to a construction plan given to David by the Holy Spirit (1
Chronicles 28:11-19). Here technology is clearly in the service of God for the
glory of God and its result ends up being personally indwelt by God.
Many bible
commentators have noticed that humanity starts in a Garden but ends up in a
city – the city of God. Living in a city involves roads and buildings and
communications. The city, the place of technology, is our final home because
there we will use the technical skills given to us by God and be inventive,
artistic and creative. We don’t go back to a garden, we have outgrown Eden, we
have now mastered fire and steel and music and art and we are socio-technical
beings who will dwell in a socio-technical city indwelt by God. (Revelation
chapters 21,22)
The
Spirit Of The Living Beings Was In The Wheels
In the
Ezekiel passage above it says "for the spirit of the living beings was in
the wheels". This says two things - firstly that technology can be indwelt
by God, or by other spiritual beings, and secondly that our "spirit"
our culture can be expressed in our artifacts and technology.
God can
"dwell" in a Temple. And our cultural spirit has its temples -
shopping malls, B2 bombers, racing cars and skyscrapers. These technological
constructions express the spirit of the nation or culture. From the Gogodala
canoe race with its chanting and spells to the elegance of the Concorde we feel
our technology captures our spirit and expresses it.
So what
has happened to the spirit of a nation that builds too many malls or suddenly
wants to build nuclear bombs? Or when a nation builds great skyscrapers and
commercial buildings while its poor go without housing? Greed and violence have
entered in and compassion has left. But the changes can be positive! In London
after the great revivals pubs closed down, the slums were made attractive, and
technical colleges and schools went up. When a revival affects construction
work - then it has truly taken hold! And what does it say when we see a nation
taking environmentalism to heart and building recycling plants and creating natural
parks, museums and works of art? Our technology expresses both the best and the
worst of our spirit.
Biblically
there is one artifact of the spirit that keeps recurring - the ark!
The
Ark: Technology and Salvation
Noah saved
the world by building an ark. Technological skill in the construction of large
vessels was needed and God gave a design to Noah which apparently is along the
same proportions of the oil tankers of today (the ark would have carried around
50,000 tons).
Genesis
6:12-19 MKJV And God looked upon the earth. And, behold, it was
corrupted! For all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. (13)
And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is
filled with violence through them. And, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (14) Make an ark of cyprus timbers. You shall make rooms
in the ark. And you shall pitch it inside and outside with pitch.
(15) And this is the way you shall make it. The length of the ark
shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it shall be fifty cubits and its
height thirty cubits. (16) You shall make a window in the ark, and
you shall finish it above to a cubit. And you shall set the door of the ark in
the side of it. You shall make it with lower, second and third stories.
(17) And behold! I, even I, am bringing a flood of waters upon the earth
in order to destroy all flesh (in which is the breath of life) from
under the heavens. Everything which is in the earth shall die.
(18) But I will establish My covenant with you. And you shall come into
the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.
(19) And you shall bring into the ark two of every kind, of every
living thing of all flesh, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and
female.
The
“constructed ark” and salvation theme returns later in the ark that saved
Moses: Exodus 2:3 MKJV But when she could no longer hide him, she took an
ark of papyrus for him, and daubed it with bitumen and with pitch, and put the
child in it. And she laid it in the reeds by the river's edge.
The ark is
also the theme of the ornate “ark of the covenant” which was the centerpiece of
the tabernacle. Exodus 25:10-13 MKJV And they shall make an ark of acacia-wood. Two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide and a cubit
and a half high. (11) And you shall overlay it with pure
gold. You shall overlay it inside and out, and shall make on it a crown of gold
all around. (12) And you shall cast four rings of gold for it, and
shall put it on its four feet. And two rings shall be in the one side of
it, and two rings in the other side of it. (13) And you shall make
staves of acacia-wood, and overlay them with gold.
This ark
of the covenant was Spirit-indwelt power technology where God and man met.
Exodus 25:22 MKJV And I will meet with you there, and I will talk with
you from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubs on the ark of the
testimony, of all things which I will give you in commandment to the sons of
Israel.
But the
ark was also holy, powerful and dangerous: 2 Samuel 6:6-7 MKJV And when
they came to Nachon's threshing-floor, Uzzah reached out to the ark of God, and
took hold of it; for the oxen upset it. (7) And the anger of
Jehovah was kindled against Uzzah. And God struck him there for the error. And
he died there by the ark of God.
Spirit-indwelt
high-power technology is not to be taken lightly. The technology that
saves can be the technology that kills. Yet technology is part of the salvation
story, either in its perfection in the Ark of The Covenant or in its death and
twisting in the Cross.
The
Cross: The Death of Technology
The cross
is the simplest possible construction – two straight sticks nailed together.
The cross is inelegant, rough, crude, the very opposite of the artistry
of the Ark of the Covenant. It's not efficient like a guillotine or merciful
like a lethal injection. The cross is technology brutalized, technology used
for cruelty, technology subverted and made primitive, ugly and dead. From the
cruel whip of thongs the soldiers used, to the rod Jesus was beaten with to the
crown of thorns -we see the technology of torture, brutality and cruelty.
Technology in the hands of sadists in the service of Satan. Inventing
instruments of torture and cruelty is the work of sick minds and it is the
death of technology. God does not sit on His throne thinking about how best to
torment people. In fact such cruelties do not enter His mind at all. Jeremiah
7:31 ASV And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the
valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the
fire; which I commanded not, neither came it into my mind.
Technology
employed for the purpose of cruelty is technology in the service of the Devil,
not of God. Napalm, torture chambers, sweat-shops, inhuman working
conditions, Satanic ritual abuse, death camps, the gas chambers in
Auschwitz, and the Nazi experimentation on people are all demonic uses of
technology. They are dark, evil, the perversion of human inventiveness and a
twisting of the image of God.
Idols:
The Worship Of The Wrong Spiritual Technology
Technology
is also distorted from its God-given purpose when it is used for idolatry.
Leviticus 26:1 ASV Ye shall make you no idols, neither shall ye rear you
up a graven image, or a pillar, neither shall ye place any figured stone in
your land, to bow down unto it: for I am Jehovah your God.
An idol is
spirit-indwelt power technology of the wrong kind! Its technology indwelt
by demons. 1 Corinthians 10:19-21 ASV (19) What say I then? that a
thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?
(20) But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they
sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have communion
with demons. (21) Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup
of demons: ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of
demons.
However
powerful idolatry may be it is far less powerful than God as is illustrated by
the clash
between
the Philistine idol Dagon and YHWH.: 1 Samuel 5:1-4 ASV Now the
Philistines had taken the ark of God, and they brought it from Eben-ezer unto
Ashdod. (2) And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it
into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. (3) And when they of
Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the
ground before the ark of Jehovah. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place
again. (4) And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold,
Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of Jehovah; and the
head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut off upon the
threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.
When
technology becomes clearly idolatrous God will humble it and cause it to fall
down before Him. Then if it does not get the message it will be amputated!
Pressing
the Pause Button: The Sabbath
Technology
should not be not allowed to drive us relentlessly. There must be some sacred
space in our culture. Days off, holy days, green belts, places of rest and
recreation. There must be some areas beyond the intrusiveness of
"work", the Market, and high speed 24/7 "always on"
technological madness.
In the
Bible both people and the land were to have Sabbaths. The people, once very
seven days, the land once every seven years. During the Sabbath people were not
to work or use technology - it was "tools down" time. During the
Sabbath on the land it was not to feel then plow but rather it was to be left
fallow.
Exodus
20:10-11 ASV but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou
shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant,
nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy
gates: (11) for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the
sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Leviticus
25:3-5 ASV Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy
vineyard, and gather in the fruits thereof; (4) but in the seventh year shall
be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto Jehovah: thou shalt
neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. (5) That which groweth of itself
of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes of thy undressed vine thou
shalt not gather: it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.
Six days
we can use our technology - then we need to give ourselves and our environment
a break. Even God rested from His creative labors on the seventh day. Part of
being a socio-technical being is knowing when to let go of the need to work and
to simply rest and enjoy relationships. We need to create Sabbath spaces when
we, our culture and our technology "slow down" and our full humanity
can be refreshed.
Technology
Redeemed: The Technology of Worship
Music is
the use of technology to produce harmony – whether it is a harp, a pipe organ
or a computer that produces the sound. Skill with the instrument is an
essential part of musical ability and of contributing to worship: 2 Chronicles
34:12 Darby (12) And the men did the work faithfully. And over them
were appointed Jahath and Obadiah, Levites, of the children of Merari, and
Zechariah and Meshullam, of the children of the Kohathites, for the oversight;
and all these Levites were skilled in instruments of music.
The Psalms
list large numbers of musical instruments used in worship such as harps, lyres,
viols, drums, trumpets and cymbals (Psalm 150) and King David is credited with being
an inventor of musical instruments. (Amos 6:5)
In worship
the technology is secondary and the worship of the Lord is primary. Technology
takes its place as a servant of the glory of God. In worship music the
technology brings people together as one and unites them in thought and spirit.
The musical instrument well played, in humble service to God is a key element
in experiencing the presence of God. In worship we are socio-technical beings
giving glory to God both in our social relationships and with our musical
instruments. Similarly we are to integrate our modern worship technology - our
sound systems, PowerPoint presentations, and lighting – into a seamless
harmonious whole that gives glory to God and does not draw attention to the
technology per se.
Technology
And Evangelism
There has
always been an adopting of technology by those interested in evangelism.
The technology can be as simple as the printing of tracts and bibles or
using a megaphone, as expensive as radio and TV evangelism or as far-reaching
as satellite broadcasts and cybermissions. The power is in the gospel, in
the proclaimed word of God, not in the technology (Romans 1:16). However the
technology allows the proclamation to reach more and more people and for it to
be translated into languages and formats they understand – such as Braille. By
teaching on the Internet I reach 4000 students a month- far more than I would
teach in most bible colleges. Not only that but the web site is
“teaching” them when I am asleep, traveling or even on holiday!
Technology even enables me to teach people in over 25 countries simultaneously!
Technology does not increase the truth of what I say or its power to save
(which is Christ’s alone) but it does make it cheaper and more accessible to
those who seek it. It only costs me about $5 per year per full-time student at
the AIBI! (www.aibi.ph).
Paul
varied his missionary approach so that he might “by all means save some”: 1
Corinthians 9:22 MKJV (22) To the weak I became as the weak, so
that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men, so that I might by
all means save some. Thus the means adopted are to be tailored to those
needing salvation – Braille bibles for the blind, hand-cranked tape
players for remote rural villages, Internet chat rooms for the wired
post-modern generation. The technology is only glorious if it is appropriate
for getting those particular people saved and discipled.
Conclusion
We are
socio-technical beings made in the image of God who are to use technology to
love one another and carry out the Great Commission with wisdom and
effectiveness. Technology can be Spirit-indwelt and powerful and an
intrinsic part of the glory of God – such as the ark of the covenant or the
wheels of Ezekiel. Technology is a means not an end and is not to be subverted
into idolatry or used in inhuman and cruel ways. Neither is technology to be
used to relentlessly drive us but rather is to be restrained by "Sabbath
spaces' of rest that we create in the culture. Technology is to be harnessed
for serving one another, for worship and as part of the expression of the
spiritual wisdom of God as it is incarnate in the physical world. Spirit-filled
Christians will be “skilled craftsmen” and technologically competent as well as
of good Christian character. This wisdom will cause them to be able to dwell in
the city of God, the perfect God-indwelt socio-technical community.
Can You Really Have an Internet Church?
Provocative Thoughts
·
50% of American Christians will worship solely
online by 2010?? (Barna Research)
·
Churches will go the way the same way as the retail
shopping world. The local “mom and pop” general grocery store (local church)
will be replaced by:
Mega-churches (Big Box)
House churches, ethnic churches, niche churches (Boutique / specialty stores)
Cyberchurches (Internet commerce)
The
Unchurched Church
·
Many Christians are drifting around without regular
participation in a local church
·
Disillusioned – those burned by church
·
Disabled – those physically unable to get there
·
Disobedient – avoiding God
·
Discarded – rejected by churches, unable to cope with
large groups socially etc.
·
Some of these actively seek fellowship online
·
We need to help these people find a spiritual home
where they can (online)
·
Will this be adequate…?
·
Can it help them at all?
Heresy!
·
The Rev. Ian Paisley condemned Mel Gibson's “The
Passion” saying: “the gospel should only be preached from the Bible, in a registered
local church and by an ordained minister”.
·
Many people think that the gospel should be not be
proclaimed online
·
Cyberchurch is seen as a threat to “real church”
which is seen as the neighborhood (parish) church alone.
The
Cyberchurch is the Constant Church
·
People do not leave the neighborhood church for a
cyberchurch.
·
People ADD the cyberchurch to their neighborhood
church Christian experience.
·
Then they move, or change churches, or fall ill and
thus leave the parish church.
·
The cyberchurch remains constant while the
neighborhood church changes.
·
CLF has been a “constant” in my life since 1995 –
through three different countries and five different churches.
Part 1:
The Nature of the Church in Cyberspace
What is
a Church?
From Wayne Grudem “Systematic Theology”, the Church is the community of
all true believers for all time. (p.853)
We may conclude that the group of God's people considered at any level
from local to universal may rightly be called a “church”. We should not make
the mistake of saying that only a church meeting in houses expresses the true
nature of the church, or only a church meeting at a city-wide level can rightly
be called a church, or only the church universal can rightly be called by the name
“church”. Rather the community of God's people meeting at any level can be
rightly called a church. (p. 857)
What is an Online Community?
“Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net
when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with
sufficient human feeling, to forms webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.
(Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community) (revised ed.) p. xx
What is
a Cyberchurch?
A church on the Internet emerges when a number of true Christian believers
meet online in Christ's name, for long enough, and with sufficient human
feeling, to forms webs of sanctified personal relationships in cyberspace that reflect
the common presence of the Holy Spirit.
Emerges…
·
Church arises out of real human connections.
·
It is not identical to a particular web site, online
forum or e-group.
·
It takes time.
·
It takes persistence in discussion.
·
There needs to be “sufficient human feeling”.
·
There needs to be a sense of “in Christ's name”.
·
The group recognizes that “something has emerged”
from their interactions.
A
Called-Out Gathering
·
The church is an ekklesia (a term originally used
for a Greek democratic political assembly) which means “called out” as in “assembled
by the call of the town crier”.
·
The church members are called out of the “world”
(sinful areas of cyberspace?) into fellowship with one another.
·
They are also specifically “gathered” around Christ.
·
It is a sanctified gathering – dedicated to God, and
separated from worldliness and idolatry.
But
What About...
·
Worship
·
Baptism
·
Communion
·
The Laying On Of Hands
·
Tithes and Offerings
·
Healing & Exorcism
·
Footwashing
·
Hospitality
·
Marriages
·
Funerals
Degrees
of Community
·
The fullest expression of community was between
Jesus and the Twelve and later in the Jerusalem Church (Acts 1-8).
·
Since then the degree of genuine Christian community
in the local church has varied greatly (almost from zero to infinity) but it has
still been “ the church”.
·
A good cyber-church should aim to also meet
physically from time to time to enhance Christian community.
·
Such meetings (perhaps quarterly) could share
communion, have baptisms, etc.
Gathered...
·
Is a person in the back row of a megachurch who
comes and goes each week with no personal interaction with other Christians “gathered”?
·
Is someone watching a TV evangelist “gathered” in
community? [No – because they cannot interact with others]
·
“Gathering” involves being able to practice some of
the “one another” commands of the NT – love one another, encourage one another,
etc.
Gathering
In Cyberspace
Christians
in an active online community can:
·
Encourage one another.
·
Exhort one another.
·
Pray for one another.
·
Edify one another.
·
Teach one another.
·
Rebuke one another.
·
Love one another.
·
Give to one another.
…And sometimes they do these things MORE often than in a face to face
fellowship.
Cyber -
Equivalents?
·
Is a YouTube video of a sermon equivalent to
listening to one “in church”?
·
What about a written sermon?
·
Is the Bible read online “the same as” the Bible
read in Church?
·
Can you have communion together online?
·
Can you have Internet clergy?
In The
Beginning Was the Word
Salvation is via an encounter with the Living Word of God, in Christ, in
His Scriptures, and through the Holy Spirit, or, through the prophets. The
gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not our personalities, systems, or
even our technology.
The
Location Of The Word
·
Jesus showed that the Word could encountered outside
of the Temple, outside of the priestly hierarchy and outside of the social
boundaries of Judaism.
·
Jesus showed the Word was active and living among
ordinary people in fishing boats, weddings, mountainsides, and the wilderness, even
in homes of tax-collectors, and among lepers, demoniacs, Samaritans and
Syrophoenicians.
The
Word in Cyberspace
·
So God's Word can be living and active in cyberspace.
·
Salvation can and does occur in cyberspace.
·
The Internet liberates God's Word to act outside of
normal ecclesiastical structures.
·
Thus the Internet may produce non-conventional forms
of Church.
·
The Internet allows God's Word to reach many people
who would never encounter it by normal means.
·
Prayerful Internet ministry brings about encounters
between religious surfers and the living, active Word of God.
·
This is more than just sharing Bible verses.
The
Seeker and The Word
·
People searching for religious information will often
start by entering a query in the search engine.
·
The search engine connects the religious seeker with
information that promises to answer exactly that query.
·
So when someone arrives at a Christian website they
are expecting an answer to their query that they typed in the search engine.
·
It is at this point that we must help them to encounter
Christ the Living Word.
·
The web is designed to assist people seeking information
– including religious information and we must be there for these people!
The
Word Forms Community
·
The early Christian communities were the result of
apostolic preaching.
·
The Church is formed by the Word.
·
Online communities form around a certain specialized
'message' – whether it be Star Trek fans or computer security geeks.
·
To form community we need to have a clear declared
message.
Communities
Form Beliefs
Most of our beliefs are formed in us by the communities that we belong
to:
·
Family
·
School
·
Church
·
University
·
Military
·
Seminary
·
Political Party
Cyberchurches are places of shared stories, ideas and the formation of Christian
beliefs.
Emerging
From The Word
Cyber-churches need to be online spiritual communities which emerge out
of living encounters with God's Word online and which are centered around a
gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.
Liberated
In Order To Emerge
God has liberated the gospel in cyberspace so that it might create new
communities of faith which will emerge from the gospel's proclamation outside
of the normal ecclesiastical structures and channels.
Communities
vs. Converts
·
In Acts we see the apostles creating new communities
of faith and appointing leaders for them.
·
The gospel creates communities of faith, not just individual
converts.
·
We need to BOTH.
a) Get people saved online.
b) Form them into living, active, Spirit-filled
cyber-communities of grace.
Cyberchurch
to Neighborhood Church
·
Can people converted online be channeled into local
neighborhood churches?
·
Not a matter of “either/or” but rather is “both/and”.
·
People can belong to both a cyberchurch and a
neighborhood church.
·
Churches need to have websites that appeal to those
seeking a neighborhood church experience
Web-Enabled
House Churches
·
House churches linked to a central website that
provides teaching material, resources, discussion forums, etc.
·
House church members can contribute to the website.
·
Enables house churches to benefit from a wider range
of gifted people.
·
Intimacy of wide-ranging theological discussion
online.
·
Intimacy of worship and personal ministry in house
churches.
Part 2:
Cyberchurches – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
Strength
– Specialization
·
The Internet allows geographically dispersed
specialists to consult with one another.
·
Communities can be built around a single narrow
topic e.g. Missionary work in a certain UPG (unreached people group).
·
Cyberchurches can cater to specialized and neglected
cultural and sub-cultural groups e.g. Filipinos working overseas, or people
with a certain disability.
Strength
- Lack of Forms
·
People enjoy cyberchurch because they do not have to
dress a certain way or act a certain way.
·
People are not judged by how they look but by how
they interact with others.
·
Age, race and gender issues are far less prominent.
Strength
– A synchronicity
·
You do not have to meet all at the same time and in
the same place.
·
Shift workers can answer their emails when it suits
them.
·
People can take time to think about an answer or
response.
·
Church is “always on”.
Strength
– Anonymity / Security
·
It is much easier to arrest a group meeting
in a building than to round up twenty people known only as joe1234@yahoo.com.
·
While the Internet is never perfectly secure, it is
more secure than practically any other alternative.
·
China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia may be
exceptions to this rule.
Strength
– Seeker Driven
·
Because most people who will arrive at your cyberchurch
website will get there through a search engine they will be already somewhat
interested.
·
Thus you can tailor a cyberchurch to a very specific
interest and rely on search engines to bring you people who seek that specific thing.
·
In fact the more unique and specific you are, in
general, the more visitors you will receive.
·
When this works it produces homogeneous groups of
interested and motivated people.
Strength
- Good Content
·
A cyberchurch can have an enormous amount of
high quality content available in articles, podcasts and videos.
·
Content can be created by all members not just a
single minister.
·
People can access high quality content outside of
“Sunday morning and Wednesday night”.
·
The content can be discussed all week long.
Weaknesses
– Lack of Commitment
·
Few people are as committed to life in a cyberchurch
as they are to life in a neighbourhood church.
·
At this point the cyberchurch is still “virtual” and
is “not really real” for most people.
Weakness
– The Word Is Not Made Flesh
·
“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among
us..full of grace and truth...”
·
This “word made flesh” aspect does not happen in a
pure virtual cyberchurch. No one hugs you, anoints you with oil, baptizes you,
or lays hands upon you in prayer.
Weakness
– Lack of Accountability
·
Cyberchurches cannot hold members accountable for
their lifestyles.
·
There are few mechanisms for effective church
discipline.
·
Cyber-Christians can effectively hide sinful and
embarrassing parts of their lives from others.
·
Accountability can be very helpful to Christian
growth and is generally absent in cyberspace.
Weakness
– Corporate Worship
·
Cyberchurches lack the corporate worship experience,
sitting at the computer listening to an MP3 it is not quite the same as singing
“How Great Thou Art” with hundreds of other believers!
Dealing
with the Weaknesses
·
Cyberchurches can hold quarterly “gatherings” or
arrange neighborhood cell groups / house churches to bring the incarnational, personal,
“one another” elements of the Christian faith.
·
Cyberchurches can encourage people to become prayer
partners by phone / Skype to encourage sharing and accountability.
Opportunities:
Mission
·
A cyberchurch can reach out to people in many countries
of the world, sharing the gospel in a peer-to-peer manner without the
encumbrance of having to get air tickets, visas, worry about diseases and
security etc.
·
A cyber-ministry can reach places closed to more traditional
forms of mission.
·
Can disciple people who otherwise could not be discipled:
Muslim nations, remote areas, shut-ins, introverts, skeptics, etc.
Opportunities:
Seniors
·
Those seniors who do use the Internet tend to spend
more hours in cyberspace than anyone else - over twice the time of young people
who “dive in and dive out”.
·
Many of these seniors do not have good health and do
not enjoy going to a neighborhood church but have much wisdom and love the Lord.
Opportunities:
The Unchurched Church
·
Many Christians have left the institutional church –
for a wide variety of reasons and now “float around” seeking spiritual nourishment
here and there.
·
Unchurched Christians can benefit greatly from a friendly
and accepting cyberchurch which can help them to rebuild their trust in the
Christian community.
Opportunities:
Micro-Churches
·
The Internet can draw together small groups of
people around very specific doctrinal or practical interests.
·
You could set up an Internet church for HIV+ people,
or for folk with a hearing disability.
Opportunities:
Social Networking
·
Christian social networking
·
Christian alternatives to MySpace
·
Bringing friends together to meet Christ and enter
into salvation together
·
www.boc.org
·
www.mypraize.com
·
www.mybattlecry.com
·
www.storyspot.com
·
www.meetfish.com
Opportunities:
New Technologies
·
Podcasting
·
Videocasting
·
Cell phones
·
Ebooks / Downloads
·
Injecting web based content into normal Christian community
Opportunities:
Web to Local
·
Databases of local churches “Find A Church”
·
Google local – church plus zip code
·
Connect web communities to neighborhood churches
that respect that paradigm
·
Church based face to face events for web communities
Opportunities:
Game Communities
·
Game communities - meet in the game, then form into
Christian community
·
Christian gaming communities
·
Christian sub-communities in Second Life etc
·
Use the game to teach values – teaching by participation
Threats:
Technological
·
A cyberchurch depends on reliable Internet access
and people having computers to access it. If the server goes down, the church
goes down.
·
A cyberchurch can be hacked or spied on by malicious
parties
·
Some high-bandwidth applications (e.g video streaming)
may not be accessible to members using dialup or in developing nations.
·
VOIP e.g. Skype is illegal in some countries Threats
- Fakes, Impostors and Heretics
·
Fakes / Infiltrators: It can be difficult to
ascertain that someone is “really a Christian” online? (This is vital in Muslim
countries)
·
Impostors: For instance someone who claims to be one
gender but is really another e.g. a man pretending to be a woman?
·
Heretics / Cults: Those who enter the group to argue
or to “draw away disciples after themselves”
Threats:
Scam Artists & Online Predators
·
People who enter Christian groups because they are
“so trusting” and peddle multi-level marketing, HYIPs (High Yield Investment
Portfolios = Ponzi schemes) etc.
·
People who try to ensnare youth, lonely people etc
into sexual relationships
·
Teach discernment skills
·
Have an alert moderator
Threats:
Internal and External Conflict
·
If moderation is too laissez-faire then internal conflict
can tear the cyberchurch apart
·
If moderation is too strict, many people will quietly
(and sometimes loudly) leave
·
Cyberchurches have the potential to cause resentment
from other forms of ministry and can thus generate external conflict
·
Cyberchurches can occasionally be accused of the
same sorts of things that social networking sites are accused of
·
Have a clear, written code of conduct
·
Have a usage policy and copyright policy
·
Have fair and firm moderation
Part 3:
Building Christian Community Online
Focus
·
An online community needs a central focus e.g. “Red
Hat Linux User Group”, or “Christian Bee-Keepers Association of Northern
Alberta”.
·
The site policy document should reflect this focus
and help people to stick within it
·
For instance a Christian HIV+ recovery group may
wish to include some people and exclude others and this should be plainly
stated at sign-up.
Forty
to Four Hundred
·
40 is the “magic number” of members at which an
online community starts to “come alive”.
·
400 members is approximately the number at which an
online community begins to get too many messages and becomes “too large” for
most people.
·
Try and get 40 interested folk (or as close to it as
possible) before you start your cyberchurch, divide the community at 400 or
earlier.
Facilitated
·
Keep it simple and intuitive, write for outsiders
not insiders, remember the non-techie.
·
Have help that is easy to access. Reminder emails each
month.
·
If people are made to feel dumb they will stop participating.
·
If people are made to feel clever and cool they will
tell others.
·
If people feel they are helped quickly they will be
loyal.
·
If their problems are ignored they will resent you.
Faith
·
A cyberchurch that is spiritually encouraging and
full of faith will grow through the work of the Holy Spirit among its members
·
Encourage positive Scriptural faith and simple
Christian joy
·
Use scriptures to encourage people and assure people
that they are being prayed for
Fervent
Prayer
·
All ministry rises or falls on prayer – even cyberministry.
·
There is an enormous amount of spiritual warfare that
happens in online ministry .especially those that are breaking into territory
once held by Satan.
·
Pray daily for your online ministry and have it “covered” by some good intercessors.
·
Have a separate e-group of prayer partners and send
them weekly updates.
Fast
& Friendly
·
Fast responses from a friendly moderator really help
to build online community.
·
If a moderator can respond within 2-3 hours of most
messages being posted it gives a sense of immediacy which encourages sharing.
·
Moderators should aim to “prime the pump” rather
than dominate the discussion.
Fairness
·
The moderation team (and it is best if it is a team
of say 3-5 mature Christians) should be scrupulously fair when dealing with
online disputes.
·
Cliques and favorites can develop online, just as
they do offline and they are perhaps even more damaging.
·
Impartiality brings stability to online community.
Fire
Extinguishers!
·
“Flames” are insults, aspersions and verbal assaults
which occur in online debates.
·
If the “flames” are allowed to spread then the
Christian community can be damaged
·
It can be tempting to react angrily to someone who ”flames”
you – which only adds fuel to the fire.
·
The goal is not to “win” but to preserve community.
·
Forbearance and turning the other cheek are
essential.
·
Moderators should privately email those in the flame
war and tell them to stop.
Freebies
·
People will join an online community that has regular
freebies – that relate to the group's purpose.
·
This can be as simple as a link to a useful piece of
free software or to a bible search tool or other item: “This week's useful freebie: check out
E-Sword's new module on...”
·
Or it can be a “free tip” on Christian living or a
free devotional.
·
Once they join they then can slowly become part of the
other activities of the cyberchurch.