Strategic Digital Outreach

Blogs and Evangelism

Mark Swanson has a great post on his blog in the wake of the first ever GodBlogCon about the use of blogging for evangelism and outreach.

I want to reach the person who is not necessarily a cultural conservative, who is seeking some form of spirituality but is probably leaning toward Buddhism or New Age because he/she has been turned off by the Religious Right. How can we effectively use blogging to reach this 20-30% of the population with the gospel? This is one of my two blogging passions and I’m not finding much in the way of models. I’m looking for ways to develop a blogging strategy that will draw non-believing readers and plant seeds (or uproot weeds) of thought.

Why not visit Mark’s blog and participate in some brainstorming regarding an outreach-focused blogging strategy?

For myself, my conviction that outreach is most effective when it is local colors my thinking on this topic a bit.

As I’ve said before, I envision a website which facilitates face-to-face relationships between unbelievers and believers around common life experiences and interests through combining a Yahoo-like directory for a local geographic area with video profiles of believers. A core facet of that vision, although I may not have expressly stated it here before, is to provide profiled believers with the opportunity to blog about their interests so that unbelievers in the same local area will be drawn to their profiles and thoughts.

The end-game of such a website will be to facilitate the introduction of unbelievers to believers in face-to-face relationships so that the unbeliever can be drawn into the midst of authentic Christian community over time. It’s that immersion into Christian community that will become the foundation of an unbeliever’s journey toward salvation (cf. John 17:21-23).

Posted by on 10/17 at 10:11 AM
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Mark Swanson continues the discussion:

thanks for the plug.  I think your idea is great.  are you familiar with http://godornot.com/

I’m still fumbling along.  At this point I’m realizing that my blog will always be largely populated by Christian viewers so my focus is on asking myself- how will this look to the non-believers who happen to drop in?  So my blog may not be evangelistic per se but it will always be evangelistically sensitive. I want non-believers to have fewer objections to Christianity and more doubts about their own “faith” as a result of visiting my site.  This means breaking down stereotypes and avoiding unncecessary offense (e.g. sarcastic political posts, etc).

Glad you found my site so I could find yours!

contributed on 10/17 at 01:33 PM
continues the discussion:

Mark:

Thanks for your comment! I did notice godornot.com a few days ago, but not on the main site - I saw it on one of the blogs that is participating.

I think your strategy of breaking down stereotypes is a good one and could be a valuable blog just in itself.

Thanks for stopping by!

contributed on 10/19 at 06:58 PM
IndyChristian continues the discussion:

Excellent insights—both of you!  Thanks for blogging them.  Be encouraged—IMHO you’re right on the mark!

[Btw, Frank… I’d love to see your video concept deployed city by city.  Here in Indy, we only have a text-based start, at DoYouKnowForSure.com.]

Neil

contributed on 10/21 at 05:52 AM
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