Campus Crusade for Christ graciously hosted the IEC Executive Committee Meeting in Orlando in January.  Members heard updates on the following IEC initiatives:

Training Curriculum: Dick Wynn (Crown Financial) and C. Thomas Wright (North American Mission Board, SBC) presented an updated version of the online evangelism training curriculum being developed.  The curriculum will be available soon, allowing participants to move through a series of lessons teaching them how to share their faith online.

GrowingInChrist.com: Allan Beeber (Campus Crusade) provided an update on GrowingInChrist.com.  The content is available for other sites and can be edited/branded by the new host--allowing ministries to add follow-up to their evangelistic efforts.  Participants work through the site at numerous sittings and pick up where they left off on return visits.

Strategic Consultation: Robby Richardson (Gospelcom.net) is bringing together a Strategic Consultation on "Internet Evangelism and the Local Church" to seek bridges of understanding and collaboration between online evangelism and local churches.  Keith Stonehocker (Christianity Today) is working on an International Strategic Consultation to discuss issues such as the development of multi-lingual web sites, the challenge of global follow-up and web evangelism in closed countries. 

Seeker Site: Sterling Huston (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) presented the new version of NowTryGod.com.  The new look and feel of this seeker site will be posted soon.

Maura McCarthy: The Committee heard a presentation from Maura McCarthy who interned/performed research at Campus Crusade for 16 months.  She received a Masters in social anthropology from Oxford in 2000, for work on the use of the "bridge" technique in evangelistic web sites.  Maura is now a doctoral candidate at Oxford focused on how religious faith and the use of technology shape one another.  Essentially, Maura is looking at how technology use is rooted in the history, values, social context and daily practice of a particular community (in this case CCCI).  While her doctoral thesis is not yet online, her Masters thesis is at: http://mkmccarthy.homestead.com/thesis.html.