The sixth annual Internet Evangelism Coalition (IEC) Conference was held September 20-21 in Chicago. The meeting covered a broad menu of relevant topics including social networking, international outreach and creating an effective personal testimony for the web. Topic-directed networking groups were a key feature of this conference as well.

The current phenomenon of social networks was the focus of the first afternoon including a presentation by David LeFlore, Vice President of Evangelism and Outreach for the American Tract Society (ATS), unveiling the ATS plan to offer an alternative to sites such as MySpace, FaceBook and Xanga. The ATS goal is to provide a versatile, attractive and effectual site that would have criteria and monitoring to make it a safe place for Christian teens. The architecture of the site will allow other Christian organizations working with youth to have a branded presence using the ATS environment.
LeFlore's Presentation

The second half of the presentation on social networking featured a panel dealing with the issue of utilizing current sites as an opportunity for evangelism. Many organizations already have an intentional presence on popular sites with outreach as their primary purpose. A concern was expressed that we not merely create a safe place but we also invade the public space where people need to have a relevant presentation of the Gospel.
Panel Discussion

The evening session featured Gordon Robertson, vice president of Digital Media for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and President of CBN Asia, who gave a very informative and vision-lifting perspective on the use of digital technology to reach the world’s largest and most unreached populations. Many Asian countries and the church in these countries are adopting the Internet and new technologies more rapidly than the West. Robertson predicted that digital technology and the Web is being adopted so rapidly in Asia that in a few years it will replace television as the primary methodology for CBN ministries on that continent.

Dave Hackett, Associate Director of visionSynergy, the international partner of IEC, shared informative statistics regarding non-English Internet sites and strategic conferences to reach large populations of enclosed countries. He pointed out that there are three times as many evangelistic sites in the Arabic language as there are in the next most prevalent language: Chinese. VisionSynergy continues its efforts to identify and build networks and coalitions in the non-English world to strengthen ministries and share resources.
Hackett's Presentation

Andy Fish, Project Director in the National Office of Campus Crusade for Christ, presented a very practical session on creating and posting “Your Story” of coming to faith in Christ on the web. StorySpot.com, which he created, offers this type of guidance and hosts approved stories. Those Christians with postings on the site are given suggestions and encouragement to direct family, friends and acquaintances to visit as a method of evangelism.
Fish's Presentation

A feature of this year’s conference was topic- directed networking/discussion groups which were held on the first afternoon. Evaluation comments of those sessions affirmed the value of these groups and significant take away of ideas and resources for those who participated.

Conference evaluations were very affirming of the relevancy of content, variety of presentations and the quality of the sessions. The IEC is planning to hold its Seventh Annual Conference in September of 2007 as an integrated track within the annual Gospelcom Conference (GospelCon). This will permit attendees to choose from a wide of topics and expose a larger audience to the opportunities to use the web for evangelism. In addition, significantly more resources will be available from exhibitors through networking. Dates and information on the meeting will be communicated as soon as that information is finalized.

Participant Comments

Speaker PowerPoints and Videos of Presentations

 

"I've heard of Jesus (Isa) but never really understood who he was, your website helped me to understand, thank you...Please send me a New Testament (Injil)".

This was one of the many responses that we have received from the more than 14,000 Muslims who visit our contextual evangelistic website each month. How many ministries or churches do you know that are providing a witness to this many unevangelized people on a monthly basis? Perhaps not many, but the exciting news is that they could be doing this and much more through the power of the Internet. We are literally standing at the doorstep of a new digital age. Never before have so many individuals been able to communicate personally with so many others around the world for so little cost.

During the time of the early Christian church, the gospel spread rapidly thanks in part to the Romans Road, which was built originally for military purposes. Once again we find ourselves presented with a new Romans Road, the Internet.

Because of this new phenomenon relatively small ministries like ours are able to reach into countries where missionaries would never be allowed to preach. In the first year, we have had over 100,000 visitors to our Muslim evangelistic website and hundreds of inquiries. We have maximized our focus on a purely Muslim audience by signing the website up to the 21 most popular Arab and Muslim "TopSites" search engines. At present our website consistently ranks among the top 10 most popular Muslim sites on at least half of these search engines. In one month alone, we received 15,000 visits from Muslims and distributed 500 electronic tracts in 15 different Muslim languages.

We have just launched two new evangelistic websites; one for Buddhists, and one for Hindus. In addition, we have just created a website for "Messianic Muslims," Christians from a Muslim background worshipping within their cultural context.

The Internet now boasts more than 1 Billion users, and it is estimated that by 2010 the number one language used will be Chinese. With broadband connections increasing daily, we are rapidly approaching the day when we will see the convergence of the Internet and satellite television. This will mean that everyone with cable/satellite TV will have the potential of viewing websites, and most of the television watched in Asian and Middle Eastern countries comes through this technology.

The Lord has been leading Create International to move forward and expand the Web Evangelism part of our ministry. We are buying equipment and reallocating some of our other computers to be fully dedicated to evangelistic website construction, chatroom evangelism, e-mail forum evangelism, and training other Christians to do Internet evangelism.

This June/July (2007), we will be running a one week Web Evangelism Seminar and will follow this up with a new three month "Web- Evangelism School" in Perth, Australia perhaps by 2008. The goal is to raise up a team of "E-vangelists" who could staff a permanent "Web Evangelism Centre." The opportunities to reach people in restricted access nations through personal discussion and ministry presentations on the Internet is endless.

Please let us know if you are interested in being involved in this vision or in any of our upcoming training. Let's not miss this awesome opportunity that the Lord has given us to reach out to the frontiers of mission and walk the new Romans Road, taking the Gospel to those who have never heard.

Create International

The Bible Society of South Africa has appointed ChristianMobileTM as their preferred service provider for the development and distribution of the 1983 and 1953 Versions of the Afrikaans language Bible, the English King James Version of the Bible (KJV), the English Good News Version of the Bible and the Contemporary English Version (CEV) of the Bible to mobile phone subscribers in Africa and abroad. The text of the Bibles will be distributed under the VirtualBibleTM brand.

"It is the task of the Bible Society to make the Bible accessible to all and the VirtualBibleTM will enable the Bible Society to supply the Bible to every modern cell phone user in a fast and affordable format,” says Gerrit Kritzinger, the CEO of the Bible Society of South Africa. “The Bible Society of South Africa is also a member of the United Bible Societies, a fellowship of 141 Bible Societies working in more than 200 countries, and we are sure that the potential of Virtual BibleTM is boundless," he added.

“Mobile technology is the fastest growth of technology ever witnessed; it took 12 years to reach the first billion connections, the second billion has been achieved in just two and a half years. The VirtualBibleTM technology opens a further channel to spread the Gospel” says Bertus Preller Marketing Executive of ChristianMobileTM.

The Pew Internet Project has released its second report on The Future of the Internet. A survey of Internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020:

• A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a "flattening" world.
• Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and "smart agents" proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans' ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
• Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
• Tech "refuseniks" will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network.
• English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

The experts and analysts split evenly on a central question of whether the world will be a better place in 2020 due to the greater transparency of people and institutions afforded by the internet: 46% agreed that the benefits of greater transparency of organizations and individuals would outweigh the privacy costs and 49% disagreed.

Pewl Report on the Future of the Internet

On September 20, the Pew Internet Project also released a Data Memo on Politics Online. On a typical day in August, 26 million Americans were using the Internet for news or information about politics and the upcoming mid-term elections. That corresponds to 19% of adult Internet users, or 13% of all Americans over the age of 18.

Pewl Report on Politics Online

- Mennonite Mission Network: Blogging, A Spiritual Discipline

- Baptist Press: Blogs changing journalism

- BBC: Making the Web Accessible for Everyone

- CNetNews.com: Tech Unites Not Divides Families

- Stanford University School of Medicine (as published in CNS Spectrums): Internet a "consuming habit" for a growing number of people

- PA Attorney General: Operation Safe Surf

- McGruff the Crime Dog: Take a Bite out of Cyber Crime

- BBC: Mobile Phones Have Key Role for Young People

- eMarketer: The Greying of MySpace

- CharityGuide.org: Internet Changing the Way Americans Volunteer