I’m capitalizing on an announcement in the blogging world today to write a bit about the potential of blogs for internet evangelism.

MSN Spaces, the new blogging service from Microsoft, was launched yesterday. At the same time, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, told Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press that ““Blogging is huge. It brings together the three biggest Internet trends: communicating, sharing and socializing. It started with e-mail and instant messaging and music sharing, and it’s getting bigger each day.”

Following on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s recent call for a $100 PC, Solar PC is announcing a sub-$100 PC which can be run from a solar panel or car battery, or even be human powered (with a bicycle-based generator).

The related Global Education Link project, referenced in SolarPC’s November 20, 2004 press release, has a goal of distributing one million SolarLite computers to schools in poor countries.

I remember a few years ago teaching a course on web strategy for churches for the denomination with which my wife and I are affiliated. Prior to the first session, I wrote some notes on the whiteboard, including several passages of Scripture which I felt were relevant to the discussion I was hoping we would have.

When some of the session participants saw what I had written on the whiteboard, one of them snickered to his neighbor, “I wonder what the Bible has to say about websites.”

True, the Bible doesn’t have anything to say directly about websites. But it does have a lot to say about outreach! And if the purpose of our websites is to reach unbelievers, then we would do well to heed the principles of outreach which the Scriptures give us.

My core philosophy of internet evangelism revolves around a passage of Scripture in John 17:21-23.

The “Internet Evangelism for the 21st Century” conference will be held at Liberty University April 1-2, 2005. This conference expects to draw
attendees from the 8,000 member residential student body as well as pastors and leaders from Central Virginia and beyond. LU’s state of the art wireless campus is an ideal venue for IE-21st Century. For more information visit http://ie-21stCentury.com and/or email Professor Daniel Henrich at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

I use a website (and its accompanying RSS feed) called Threadwatch to monitor various message boards related to search engine optimization. I probably miss some things by relying on Threadwatch to choose the most interesting conversations, but on the other hand, I don’t have to spend countless hours monitoring several message boards.

Recently, I noticed a post on Threadwatch about a conversation taking place at cre8teasiteforums.com about the ability (or lack thereof) of photographs of real people (rather than stock images) to create credibility in a website visitor’s mind. Since this is an issue that churches often struggle with when developing their websites, I thought I would check out the conversation.

But when I took a look at one of the links which was referenced in the conversation (The Web Credibility Project from Stanford University), I found myself considering the broader issue of credibility in general and specifically how credibility might relate to a church’s website.

Courtesy of Search Engine Watch Blog, here’s an article on how Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all trying to enter the video search space: Striking Up Digital Video Search. Just a follow-on to the article below about Singing Fish.

A post on Inside Google from this weekend made me start thinking about using online audio and video for outreach purposes. The site that Inside Google referenced was Singing Fish, a subsidiary of AOL which specializes in searches for online audio and video content.

I used to work for an audio company, so I knew about Singing Fish, but I had never really considered whether it would be a good search engine for churches and ministries to target. I’m not even sure how one would go about optimizing for Singing Fish.

But I did a quick search on “christian,” “gospel,” “evangelism,” and “Jesus.” I found a wealth of content for believers, but not much for unbelievers. If the local internet evangelism concept I’ve envisioned (see my white paper here) ever gets off the ground, the video excerpts of interviews would be great candidates for submitting to Singing Fish.

Any other ideas occur to anyone?

A new international focus day will debut in April of 2005: “Internet Evangelism Day”. Churches and other Christian groups can integrate a web evangelism focus into their activities on or near April 24, thereby helping their members to understand more about the great potential for this new medium.

More information is available at www.InternetEvangelismDay.com.

Many churches today see the need to have a website, but don’t know where to start.

Part of the problem is that a church feels it needs to have what they envision as a “complete” website - with service times, staff biographies, ministry descriptions, etc., etc. To create that level of website and also have a site which is graphically appealing normally requires an outside designer, which can involve a significant cost - a cost the church may not be willing or able to incur.

But there is an alternative approach which does not require an outside designer, does not need a fancy graphical appearance, and should also prove to be much more effective (in reaching the lost) than the typical church website.