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by by Claire Colvin with Katherine Kehler, Brent P. and Karen SchenkThis page provides an overview of the many opportunities available online. Follow the links and arrows hroughout the article for more information, examples and helpful links.
Why Online Evangelism?
The question many Christians are still asking is "why the Internet?" or even "should we be on the Internet?" The Internet has received a lot of opposition from the church is years past, much of it with good reason. However, while caution still needs to be used when surfing online, Christians can no longer afford to turn their collective backs on this medium.
When Jesus ministered here on Earth He went where the people in need were, sagely telling his detractors that "those that are well have no need of a physician" (Matt 9:12). In his day that meant eating with tax collectors and prostitutes. In our day, the sick and the spiritually needy are online. Online evangelism has some very practical benefits.
Methods You Can Use Today
- Use Your Email - Email is something that many of us use everyday. Now you can use it to evangelize simply by adding a link to the signature of your email
- Share Your Testimony - People love to read and hear stories about real people. You can use the internet to tell people how you came to Christ and the difference He has made in your life.
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Mentoring & Counseling Through Email - The Internet offers a unique opportunity for people to ask questions while remaining anonymous. People are hurting, and many are facing problems that they don't want to talk about face to face. Simply typing a question is a lot safer and many, many people are doing just that.
- Ministering through Hosted Chat Sessions - In a moderated chat, the participants are far more likely to be interested in the topic at hand, making meaningful conversation a great deal easier. Many chatrooms develop a community of repeat visitors so in time, you can have all of the community advantages of a small group online.
Investing Your Time
Developing A Chatroom On Your Website
Developing a chatroom of your own provides a unique ministry opportunity for those willing to make a significant time commitment. The key to starting up a chatroom is patience. It takes time to build a room, but if you stick with it, the reward is an unparalleled opportunity to reach into the lives of people around the world and minister to them where they are.
- Set your goals and objectives and start small with one or two scheduled chats per week, or even per month. We have found that having a list of questions ready beforehand really helps to guide the discussion.
- Discuss, don't lecture. This is not a Sunday School lesson. While you may have to do a lot of the talking at first, make sure you are constantly inviting participation.
- Recruit additional hostesses to help you guide the discussions as your website grows.
- Keep track of the high points of your chatroom discussions and use these stories to get other women excited about what God is doing and challenge them to join you.
Find out what people are talking about and gear a discussion around it that can lead to spiritual things. Your chatroom will be competing with literally millions of other sites. Get your audience's attention and give them a reason to stay.
Taking the Discussion Where You Want it to Go
When in the chatroom, offer to pray whenever you can. Unbelievers are often quite willing to let you pray for them, just be sure to ask first. Ask if they have a personal relationship with Christ and then share the Gospel with them. You never know who else might be exposed to this in the chat room and afterwards through the transcripts.
Building an Evangelistic Website
If you have a heart to reach a particular group and cannot find a good site to contribute to, consider putting together an evangelistic website of your own. Whether it's making a site for your church or launching an a new evangelistic site, there are two important questions to as first:
- What do you want to tell people? Even if you've already decided that you want your site to be evangelistic, you still have some choices to make.
- Who do you want to tell? The obvious answer to this question is an enthusiastic "EVERYONE!" but your site will be more effective if you gear it toward a specific audience.
Once you've decided who your target audience is it's time to do some research. Find out what your audience is interested in, what they are talking about, what kinds of things they look for online.
Evangelistic Website Basics
Online evangelism is relatively new but there are already some good guidelines as to what works and what doesn't. The key is to remember that this site is not for Christians, it's for non-Christians so don't fill it with images or terminology that is going to alienate your audience. To begin with, make sure you're website contains the following:
- attractive, clear, uncluttered page design
- uncomplicated navigation
- short concise pages
- clear writing that has been edited and proof-read carefully
- avoids Christian jargon
- no preachiness or gushing sentimentality
- no give-away mission statements – remember that the site is for non-Christians and you want them to feel welcome
- no churchy graphics – crosses, angels, doves or stain glass windows
- assumes that readers have zero knowledge of Christian concepts and terminology
- identifies with real people in the target audience
Now that you know what you want to say on your website, present it in a way that is easily understood. People read a screen differently than they read a page, so simply typing an article an posting it online won't work.
Resources Required
The resources required depend largely on the size of your website, however there are a few standards you can count on.
- Prayer. Never forget that this is an evangelistic effort.
- Time. Whether you are going to build a single page or a fully-interactive website it is going to take time.
- Technical knowledge. If you are building a single page there are many programs out there to help you put one together with very little background knowledge, however if your plans are for an entire site you're going to need someone with technical knowledge.
- Staffing & Finances. As the site grows it will need it's own staff.
Getting Your Audience to Your Door
Once the website goes online it has to compete with literally millions of new pages every day. How are people going to know you are there? Marketing. If you are going to go to all the trouble of putting together a website you have to go one step further and market it to build your audience. There are several ways to get started:
- Links. Getting other sites to link to you is one of the easiest ways to market a new website and one of the most beneficial because it helps increase your rank in the search engines.
- Search Engines. The major search engines all have programs called "spiders" that search the web looking for websites and indexing them. Eventually they will find you, if you'd rather speed up the process you can submit your site to them.
- Word of Mouth and Conventional Advertising. Word of mouth is always a great ad so talk to people about your site. Your enthusiasm will be contagious.
- Keep Track of Your Stats. Knowing what works on your site and what doesn't is vital. Keeping accurate statistics let you know where you need to build into your site, where to trim back, and can be a great source of ideas.
Once the site is live and you have an audience they are going to have questions. How will you do follow-up for your site? What about people who receive Christ through you website, how will you help them to grow? One of the easiest ways to keep track of responses from your website is through the use of forms and email.
God Can Use You To Reach The World
What dream has God put in your heart? Counseling the hurting? Writing devotionals? Intercession? Ask God to show you His plan for you and move forward. He will be faithful. Look for opportunities to share the Spirit-filled life in many creative ways online. If you ask God to use you, He will.
Once you start using the web to evangelize, it is impossible to gauge just how far it can go. Around the world, or around the block, online evangelism lets you proclaim the truth of Christ 24 hours a day. Yes, there is filth online, but we can reclaim this medium for Christ and His purposes and use this technology to make Him known. If we use sound judgement we do not need to be afraid of the Internet, instead we can harness it. We can take what some have intended for evil and use it for good. May God richly bless you as you seek to make Him known.
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