Sunday, April 29, 2007

Internet Evangelism

"Sixty-four percent of Americans seek spirituality on the Internet, and as Christians, we need to be there for them," said Craig von Buseck, director of ministries for CBN.com.

The whole story here.

This is pretty profound, but I often wonder how the difference is showing up in real time. I continue to think that the Internet will prove to be an incredible church [movement] planting tool - and not just cyber churches, but real live churches based upon conversions made online. Tools like MyEveryStudent.com will continue to morph into tools that help new believers plant new simple churches / spiritual movements (without ever connecting to original forms). On a biblical front, very akin to the demon possessed man of Mark 5 heading back to the ten towns, or the Samaritan woman of John 4 in her own village.

If we apply Mark 4 (the sower) to the decisions that are being made on line, there should be hundreds of people instantly ready to multiply 30, 60, 100 fold. Very nice.

17 comments:

Kathryn Taylor said...

Shane,
I totally agree with this! There's something about internet evangelism that kind of bugs me. Yes, I'm thankful for the tool, thankful that people can get on and find information in the privacy of their home - low risk...but if the gospel really has power to transform lives, then we shouldn't the thousands of internet decisions based on everystudent.com have translated into something more on our campuses? Is our purpose just to "save people"....to give them the "get out of jail free card" or is it to lead them to Christ? Jesus says, "THIS IS ETERNAL LIFE, that they may KNOW ME". It seems like we so easily define "eternal life" as the check mark on a box. That doesn't really seem to match up with the things Jesus taught. I guess we'll only know in heaven (since none of the students who trust Christ via the internet have EVER shown up at anything I've done in ministry).

Shane Deike said...

I hear ya K - I am working with Neil Cole and some other gurus to look at ways to plant new churches / movements right out of the gate. Not cyber, but local- we think it is very doable.

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