Pastor Taylor has some interesting things to say on his blog about the widespread presence of technology in India:

I found it amusing, while visiting India, that a typical home may not have a sink but will have a computer with unlimited internet. I took pictures of houses with concrete walls and floors with cell towers in the background.

Many American companies are investing huge amounts of money into India. The resulting technologies create an new opportunity for discipleship and evangelism.

His suggestions for collaboration between pastors in India and the US are worth a visit.

Graham Doel is writing this week on the Emerging Evangelism blog about using the internet to facilitate face-to-face relationships:

I have been thinking for some time about how I can use the anonimity of the Internet to make local connections. As I talk to people I have descovered that there are many people who are interested in God, faith and the Bible, but the thought of coming to some kind of religious meeting (whether in a church building, home or other venue) does not appeal. With that in mind I have come up with this plan:

Click here to read Graham’s plan.

Here are links to some articles I came across this morning which may have some significance for those of us involved in digital evangelism:

• Yahoo Developing An Audio Search Engine
• U.S. Cities Set Up Their Own Wireless Networks

A new site (just launched on April 13, 2005) - BetaChurch.org - aims to, in their own words, be “a guide to the grand experiment of the digital church.”

The brainchild of the non-profit Noah Institute (at the time of this writing, their main website is still to come), this looks to be a valuable addition to the growing list of websites devoted to issues of the church’s use of technology.

Check them out and join the conversation!

Aaron at EmergingEvangelism.com tells the story of Terry and Patty who came to Christ after a year of growing, face-to-face relationship with other believers.

Aaron believes (and I agree) that this type of process is much more normal than quick conversions (as a result of crusades, tracts, etc.).

What does this say about internet evangelism? Most internet evangelism today, it seems to me, is aiming for quick conversions. And yet, are these lasting conversions? How can the internet and other digital means be used to facilitate growing, long-term, face-to-face relationships of the sort that Terry and Patty experienced and which eventually led them to Christ? Hopefully, these are some thought-provoking questions for us.

As always, comments are welcome. And thanks to ChurchTechMatters for the heads up!

There was an article in today’s San Jose Mercury News about a company called Digital Praise which develops video games for the Christian market.

I’m not sure what the potential opportunities might be for using such titles for outreach, but I did notice this portion of the article:

The games, which are aimed at kids from about 8 to 12, are not overtly religious. ("There’s no virtual Jesus,’’ Tom Bean (one of three founders)jokes.) But they do provide moral lessons—telling the truth is good, the test of character is what you do when no one’s looking. One game features “a gauntlet of virtues,’’ including kindness, faithfulness, self-control.

The fact that they are “not overtly religious” may mean there is an opportunity here for outreach. Sort of a VeggieTales model, although I don’t know how successful VeggieTales (which definitely has a similar approach - not overtly religious but presenting moral lessons). I’m not sure about it, but it is interesting.

Just so we don’t make the mistake of thinking that internet evangelism is applicable only to the western world, MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of developing world kids.

Read about this exciting project here.

The question for the church is “Will we be prepared?”

Will Samson is back from the recent Internet Evangelism for the 21st Century conference and has some probing questions and thoughts surrounding the typical modern concept of conversion and its implications for internet evangelism.

In my favorite excerpt, Will writes the following:

If all I need to do is say a prayer, why be involved in a community of faith? Lesslie Newbigin, in his seminal work, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, talks about the congregation as a “hermeneutic of the gospel”. That is simply a more sophisticated way of saying that people understand the gospel by looking at how it is lived out. This has always been true. The writer of Hebrews tapped into this idea in saying that the expression of Christ’s sacrifice is to meet together. I wonder if one of the reasons people are less likely to follow Jesus but are instead content to simply pray a prayer and consider themselves “saved” is because we have so few compelling congregations?

Internet evangelism which encourages people only to “pray a prayer,” I believe, has to be considered suspect in its ultimate effectiveness because, as Will suggests, it divorces the process from an authentic expression of Christian community.

We tend to believe that Christian community is only a follow-up method once outreach has been “successful” - once someone prays the sinner’s prayer, we encourage them to find a Bible-believing church and join it. Jesus, on the other hand, sees Christian community as the foundation of outreach (cf. John 17:21-23).

Rather than encourage people to “pray a prayer,” I believe that our evangelistic efforts on the web (and through other digital means) should focus on drawing unbelievers into an experience of authentic Christian community (ideally face-to-face community, but in creative access nations, online community may be the only option). The expression of selfless love which the unbeliever will (hopefully) witness and experience in the midst of a community of believers will do far more to convince them of the truth of the gospel than statements of propositional truth and an invitation to pray the sinner’s prayer which they may find on our websites.

I suspect this post may generate some passionate dialogue , which I would very much welcome!

I recently started using Skype, the popular (and free!) Voice-Over IP phone service. Well, okay - I downloaded it, installed it, and had one conversation with it. But one conversation was enough to be utterly amazed by the quality and ease of use.

Then yesterday, I found an article at News.com which talks about the phenomenon of seemingly random phone calls from strangers, often wanting to practice their skills in a language they are learning. Knowing that teaching the English language can be an effective door-opener for outreach, I was intrigued by the concept.

If I understand it correctly, all you have to do is download and install Skype, hook up a headset / microphone combination to your computer, set your Skype status to “Skype Me” (I’m away from my home system which has the actual Skype software on it, so I may not be exactly right in the terminology I’m using, but I suspect it will be fairly straightforward), and then wait for the calls.

Or even better, search for people who have similar interests to yours and who have their status set to “Skype Me”, and take the initiative to call them! The only thing that I would say about contacting someone this way is that it would be important to contact someone in an area of the world where you know someone who is a believer that you can refer your contact to for face-to-face relationship.

Has anyone had any experience with this sort of approach? I’m writing this without any experience at doing it at all, so I want to be careful that I’m not making impractical, or worse yet inappropriate, suggestions on how to do outreach in the digital arena. From the article, it appeared that people who set their status to “Skype Me” actually want phone calls from strangers. Can anyone confirm this?

Technology and a New Reformation: Communicating the Gospel in the Information Age, by Richard Rouse.

There is a great article in today’s San Jose Mercury News (free registration required) called “Among neighbors, online ties also bind.”

It tells the story of how the neighborhood email list of the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association helped neighbors who often communicate in the digital arena do good works in the physical arena. When the email list started to become active early Wednesday morning, someone asked about a helicopter that was flying over the neighborhood. Someone else chimed in that there was a fire at an apartment house in the neighborhood. Soon, those neighbors who were having digital conversations realized that some of their neighbors were suddenly homeless. Then, in the words of the article, “The online community took it to the streets,” and began to help meet the physical needs of their now homeless neighbors.

I strongly encourage you to register at the Mercury’s site and then read the entire article. It has some great lessons for the church in how digital means can be used to facilitate face-to-face relationships and community.

Then head on over to Transform Indiana to learn how Neil Cox and his “Indiana cohorts” are using digital means to encourage transformation in their neighborhoods.

Not sure how much of this is applicable to web evangelism, but Peggy Noonan recently wrote an interesting article on the blog phenomenon. Much of what she has to say applies more to political blogging, but at the very least, it’s good background information.