Here’s an interesting site: Gaming Ministries.

From their site:

Gaming Ministries is all about empowering men and women of God with tools to reach an online world with the Gospel of Christ.

We have many sites in our network that will equip you with tools for doing something completely new, and even foreign to you. It is an exciting time we live in with information at our fingertips.

An article that ran in the Washington Times last month which touches on issues of Generation Y, religion, and technology:

Generation Y Embraces Choice, Redefines Religion

It has some interesting things to say that we should keep in mind as we develop evangelistic websites and digital strategies.

Here’s an article which ran in the Rocky Mountain News a couple of months ago (I am catching up on some of my writing for this blog):

Web Is Heaven-Sent For Religious Bloggers

Ken Gosnell recently wrote a story for Lifeway.com entitled 4 Ways Blogging Can Change Your Church. When I first read the article, I was hesitant to comment on it for a couple of reasons: 1) it was getting a lot of play around the Christian web strategy blogosphere (I try as much as possible to concentrate on highlighting ideas which aren’t being mentioned a lot, which hopefully makes my contributions to the ongoing conversation at least somewhat unique); and, 2) I didn’t see a lot in Ken’s article which pertained to digital outreach, which is the focus of this site.

But now, on his personal blog, Ken has written a very interesting article called More About Blogs, in which he talks about the power of storytelling as it relates to Christian blogging:

As I think about these blogs it reminds me of the power of stories. Jesus talked to his disciples in parables (modern day stories with a spiritual application). Today He might have talked to the world in a blog. So how can we make our blogs more of a parable experience?

It did my heart good to read someone else talking about storytelling and blogs since I had earlier written about those subjects here and here (see also Mike Boyink’s poignant comments as he responds to this article).

How I long to see the church in a local area utilizing technology to tell their stories to the world.

Doug at Outside The Box Ministry has a post this morning about redesigning websites targeted to emerging generations. He offers a number of specific thoughts and also asks for ideas from his readership. Why not head over to his site and contribute to the conversation?

An Associated Press report, Craigslist.org Founder Eyes Journalism, caught my eye recently. Not because I’m especially interested in Craig Newmark himself, but because a well-known internet executive is sensing the power of blogging technology.

I have a growing interest in citizen journalism because I believe that blogging technology gives the Christian community an opportunity to shape the media in a local area and provide its unique perspective for those who are interested.

For example, on our local Christian site, ChristianCruz.com, we have begun to allow moderated comments and trackbacks so that the broader Christian community in our area can lend their perspective to the stories we run. Soon, area Christian leaders will be recruited as columnists for ChristianCruz.com. When we launch our companion site, SantaCruzLife.com, these columnists will have an even broader reach.

For more on this concept, see the website of our partner, the Blews Network.

My Daily Appointment With God is the title of a new blog by Darrin Coe of Canon City, Colorado. In this blog, Darrin relates his experiences of spending time with God in prayer and Bible study on a daily basis. What I find most interesting is Darrin’s desire to syndicate his blog so that others might benefit from his experience.

It’s another example of the power of blogging and RSS technology. We can read of Darrin’s experiences in our feed readers and/or we can publish his experiences to our websites (with his permission of course) and expand the reach of his encouraging words.

Steve Dilla has some great things to say about how blogging has helped him in his spiritual life. What caught my eye more than anything is when he attributes the formation of new relationships to blogs.

I have people wonder all the time why I put so much time into blogging, but I cannot tell you how incredible it is to be challenged and grow through a relationship that would not exist without a blog. I have met people literally from around the world who I engage in conversation with and walk away challenged in some way.

Made me think about the number of people I’ve met through blogging that I would never have known in any other way. What a great tool God has given us!

In a related vein, I’m in the planning stages for a couple of blogs which won’t be Christian per se, and I’m excited specifically to find out how God will use those to bring me into new relationships with people who have not yet found Christ. Steve’s post was a good reminder that even when blogging about so-called unspiritual topics, God has a purpose and that purpose is lived out in relationships.

This website currently has some problems with html validation (and possibly css validation), and I need to address those issues soon. One thing it does have is resizable text, and I’m proud of that because it was a long and painful journey for me to migrate from a philosophy of trying to mandate text sizes for readers (by using pixel measurements) to one in which I allow users to resize their text by using their browsers’ text-resizing feature.

Here is a related and thought-provoking site for those involved in developing evangelistic and other Christian websites: Evangelizing Less Than All The World.

I came across the ChurchNerd blog a couple of days ago. It’s focused on technology for churches and ministries, but seems to have some application to digital evangelism, so I thought I’d mention it.

Rob at Effective Web Ministry Notes is blogging about using mapping technology to spread the gospel. Blogger doesn’t have trackback capabilities (c’mon Google!), but I commented on Rob’s post and thought it would be a good idea to post a portion of my comment here as well:

Rob:

Not sure if Google Maps would help with this, but I’ve thought for awhile that it would be interesting to have a database of believers in a local area (of course, there are all sorts of privacy issues, fear issues, etc. that would need to be worked through, so I’m not sure how practical this is), along with their interests, ministry skills, affinity group involvement, neighborhood, life experiences, etc.) so that we could match up believers with unbelievers with particular needs in their lives.

Why not head over to Rob’s site to read the rest of my comment and join the conversation?

The Emerging Evangelism Blog is increasingly becoming more of a regular destination for me each day as I search the web for thought-provoking items regarding digital evangelism. This morning, I came across a post entitled Re-Thinking My Efforts. In it, the author has some very good suggestions about how to start conversations with people about faith, including suggestions which are applicable to the modern digital lifestyle many of us follow.