I was wandering around the Gospelcon Blog (the home of Gospel Communications’ annual internet ministry conference) this evening and was pleasantly surprised to see my name and this website mentioned in this article. The folks at Gospelcon were responding to the article just before this one, entitled Flawed Follow-Up or a Flawed Philosophy of Evangelism.

While I was flattered by the mention, I felt that they had misconstrued what I was trying to say, so I left a comment to attempt to clarify my thinking. If you’re interested, why not visit the article and add your thoughts there (or here if you prefer). While you’re over there, the Gospelcon Blog is well worth reading, so why not spend some time perusing their articles?

This article on mobile phone use in developing countries came out a few days ago. Among its assertions:

• 22 percent of Vietnamese own a mobile phone.
• In the Philippines, more than 4 million people use their cell phones to conduct online transactions.
• Afghanistan has 20,000 fixed-line phones and 2 million cell-phone subscribers!
• According to the UN International Telecommunication Union, cell phone subscriptions in the developing world rose to 1.4 billion at the end of 2005 (compared to 800,000 in countries with “advanced” economies).

Today, mobile phones are the primary form of telecommunication in most emerging economies, fulfilling much the same role as fixed-line phone networks did in facilitating growth in the United States and Europe after World War II.

This represents a vast opportunity for using digital means to spread the gospel in the developing world. The challenge, as with any digital means of outreach, is finding ways to use mobile technology as a way of intriguing the unbeliever enough to want to be immersed in Christian community, where a full presentation of the gospel can be made.

More Information:
Web Evangelism Guide: Mobile Phones and the Internet — Using cellphones for online evangelism
White African: Mobile Phones as Platform in Africa
White African: A Web Technology Idea For Africa

LinkedCampus helps campus-focused businesses connect with their most valuable customers by harnessing the power of text messaging. We offer a web-based marketing tool that allows organizations to reach college students like never before. Gone are the days of ineffective email and flyers posted on bulletin boards; LinkedCampus allows local businesses the ability to impact college communities instantly and effectively.
http://www.linkedcampus.com/

Hmmmm .... I wonder if there is an application for churches in college towns. If user permissions are respected, I would think this could be a good avenue for churches to get the word out about the life of their community.

As some of you may know, I maintain a local Christian portal website called ChristianCruz which is designed to be an online resource for believers living in Santa Cruz County, California.

When I began the site in 2000, my intention was actually to use it as a vehicle to build a local web design service for churches, ministries, and Christian business folks (I had read somewhere that starting a community portal was an effective way to build a web design service). Before long, however, the Lord changed the direction of the site through a series of what I believe were divinely-appointed connections. Within the space of a week, I came into contact with several people involved in community-wide, cross-church and cross-denominational efforts to reach our county for Christ. Through these connections, I came to believe that there was a greater purpose for ChristianCruz (to play at least a small part in encouraging Christian community across denominational and individual church lines, community which would become the foundation for local outreach efforts).

Because of the way the site was started (sort of haphazardly, without a focused vision), I have never formalized any "reason for being" for the site, although I have certainly thought about it a great deal. Over the past couple of years, I have thought a lot about the need to write a white paper to document what I believe are important reasons for this effort, not only for ChristianCruz.com, but also to support a vision I have had to help other local areas begin similar sites.

I have finally been able to come up with a basic, yet rough, outline of what the white paper would say. I'd like to include that outline here and solicit feedback from the readers of this blog (positive feedback, negative feedback, accusations of mental problems, spelling corrections, suggestions for further resources to study, etc., etc. — all types of feedback will be welcome).

With that as an introduction, here is the very rough outline:

1. An authentic demonstration of Christian community is the foundation of all effective outreach.
2. In John 17:21-23, Jesus said that if His disciples were one and perfected in unity, then the world would know that the Father loves them and that the Father sent Jesus (I believe that also includes an understanding of WHY Jesus was sent to earth).
3. The converse is true – if Jesus’ disciples are not one and not perfected in unity (I would add “in a local area”), OR if it is not evident to the community in a local area that Jesus’ disciples are one and perfected in unity, then the world will not know that the Father loves them and that the Father sent Jesus (along with the reason for His being sent).
4. If a person does not know that the Father loves him/her and that the Father sent Jesus (along with the reason for His being sent), they will not be converted to Christ.
5. MAIN POINT: If unbelievers in a local area do not SEE (whether it exists or not) a vivid, ongoing demonstration of authentic Christian community (across denominational and individual church lines), that local area will not be reached for Christ.
   • Robert Banks illustrations regarding going down to the harbor and the first century house being open to the street – the life of the church lived out in full view of the unbelieving community (this is a note to myself that will remind myself of supporting material)
6. With the current state of the church — being expressed in multiple individual churches and denominations (as vs. the city wide church of the first century), it is vitally important that the authentic demonstration of Christian community across denominational and individual church lines be PUBLICIZED to the unbelieving community.
   • Another note to self – check Francis Shaeffer, book on Christian media, and book on City Reaching for supporting material
7. The role of Christian media in publicizing authentic Christian community across denominational and individual church lines is important – without such publicity, any demonstration of authentic Christian community within a single congregation risks being superceded in the unbelievers’ minds by the apparent division between individual churches and denominations which may appear to exist on a broader scale (but still in the local area).
   • a city set on a hill cannot be hidden
   • let your light so shine before men (so shine = in such a way)
8. Local Christian media is uniquely positioned to publicize ongoing demonstrations of authentic Christian community across denominational and individual church lines
   • It can report on multi-church projects
   • it can publish the collective voice of the evangelical church in a local area
9. Online media (website) is the most cost-effective approach for local Christians to demonstrate their authentic community
   • citizen journalism
   • blogging technology cuts costs

A few friends of mine and I are working on a missions-related website. We’d like to find several panoramic (i.e., stitched together) photos that would be missions-related (show the faces of people of the world or be of fairly recognizable city scenes). Size requirements - we would have to be able to comfortably resize them to 1600 pixels wide by 185 pixels high. “Comfortably” means they would have to start out at least this size or larger and when resized, they would still have to present a reasonable view. For example, I can find appropriate images that are larger than 1600 pixels wide, but because they aren’t panoramic, when I resize them to 1600 pixels wide by 185 pixels high, we end up with a person’s nose on one end of the image and basically nothing recognizable for the rest of the image to the right.

Anyone know of a good, inexpensive source of such images? I’ve tried istockphoto and bigstockphoto (two of my favorite sources for inexpensive stock photography), but haven’t had much luck yet.

Any help readers of this site could lend would be greatly appreciated!

Churches and ministries might be interested in an announcement from Marqui today about their intention to give away a free web marketing solution to one non-profit organization. The Marqui press release can be found here.

Applications are being accepted through October 15 at this page.

Marqui has "developed the first Web-based suite that simplifies and automates a broad range of marketing communications activities, including e-mail campaigns, Web content management and blogging." They are perhaps best known for their controversial "Pay Bloggers" initiative in which they paid approximately twenty bloggers $800 per month to write about the company.

I have a question for Christian bloggers.

Are there any Christian sites you routinely ping when you post to your blog? I know about the traditional sites bloggers might ping (the sites listed at http://pingomatic.com/, for example). But are there any similar sites which accept pings from bloggers which are specifically Christian in nature?

Does such a thing even exist? Thanks for any help you can offer - I really appreciate it!

I came across a very interesting blog a couple of days ago: MicroExplosion. Written by Bill Seaver, a Christian internet marketing strategist, MicroExplosion “seeks to extend an organization’s message and meaning using the new media (web 2.0) technologies, ideas and strategies from a Christian perspective. Specifically, MicroExplosion focuses on the awareness, explanation and application of this technology for churches, ministries and Christian businesses. Generally, MicroExplosion should be helpful for anyone interested in the application of web 2.0 technology.”

His article on The Six Categories of Web 2.0 was especially interesting.

Here is a set of good links on cell phone usage in Africa. Lots of implications for how we might use digital technology to reach the African continent.

In War-Torn Congo, Going Wireless To Reach Home
The Amazing Growth of Mobile Tech in Africa
Forget the $100 PC
Phones Teach Written Literacy

I came across all of these links by following one link from Robert Scoble.

I haven’t been posting much lately primarily because I’ve been working night and day on a new, exciting web project (sorry, can’t tell you about it yet).

In the meantime, I found a nice series of articles by Tim Lehrian entitled “Church Web Site Annoyances”:

Church Web Site Annoyances, Volume 1
Church Web Site Annoyances, Volume 2
Church Web Site Annoyances, Volume 3
Church Web Site Annoyances, Volume 4
Church Web Site Annoyances, Volume 5

I especially liked his comments about using photos of people rather than church buildings.