The Internet has become a 21st century Roman road, marketplace, theater, backyard fence, and office drinks machine. Web evangelism gives believers opportunities to reach people with the Gospel right where they are, just as Jesus and Paul did. The Web is an open window to the whole world.
The Web’s explosive growth has been remarkable. In ten short years, it jumped from being a minority hobby for computer enthusiasts to a communication medium used by over 1 billion people worldwide. If your visit to this website lasts ten minutes, in that period 460 people will have used the Web for their very first time.
The world impact of the Internet and the digital revolution will be as far-reaching as the invention of the printing press as this clip demonstrates:
To use the Web effectively, we must understand its nature as a medium. Each time a new means of communication is developed, people initially think of it in terms of a previous known medium. Thus, TV began as radio with pictures, but was soon viewed as a different medium in its own right, as people learned its potential.
Linear versus non-linear
Many mediums are linear – they communicate a message along a single line. Radio and TV are essentially linear (although these days, interactive TV can give the user some control). Fiction books, videos and tracts are also linear. However, a newspaper is non-linear – it contains multiple messages, not linked together sequentially. Users can move around as they choose.
The Web is also non-linear. A website is not (usually) a single page of text, but offers choice between a range of pages and ideally other interactive options too.
Pull versus push
Outreach literature is a push medium. For instance, people offer tracts into others’ hands. Radio is largely a push medium – within a limited range of available stations, the user listens (or turns off).
The Internet however is a pull medium. It draws people in – but only within the channels on which they wish to be drawn. It is therefore like a reference library rather than a literature distribution program. There is no automatic audience for a website. Many Christian websites which would aspire to be evangelistic, are in fact largely “preaching to the choir”. To engage with not-yet-Christians, who are not already seeking, requires us to use the Bridge Strategy.
Interactive and two-way
One of the greatest attractions of the Web is its interactivity. The user controls completely what webpages appears on his or her monitor. Each person will have a unique route of personal choice though any website, and across billions of webpages around the world.
The two-way nature of the web means that the user is no longer a passive recipient. When you listen to radio, the experience is one-way, unless you can phone in or write a letter. But the Web makes it easy for users to express opinions and interact with webmasters by email or instant messenger, and discuss a site with other users by bulletin board, blog response form or chat room. At last, my opinion counts. In some ways, the Web is a modern reflection of the time 100 years ago before mass media, people created their own entertainments in the evenings or spare moments. Once again, through collective creativity, ordinary people at home are sharing their ideas, gifts and lives with others they feel linked to. The growth of sites hosting self-posted video clips is a dramatic example of this new creativity. “People want to be players not just spectators, part of the action, not on the sidelines,” writes Charles Leadbeater in a new book WeThink.
Just as a newspaper aims to build loyalty among its readers, a website can generate a sense of community – the feeling that users can identify with the site. Successful sites understand how to this create welcoming interactivity.
Relationships and Web 2.0
The Web has developed and matured from being merely static “text on a screen” to something far more. This “grown-up Internet” is often called Web 2.0. Although the 2.0 concept includes best-practice design standards for webpage appearance and easy intuitive navigation, it embraces much more – a whole philosophy of communication. Just as the church is people, not buildings; the Web is essentially relationships, not computer screens. People want “connectedness”, the opportunity to share in a two-way or multiple conversation, to feel they belong. This is often called a sense of community, and is a key part of Web 2.0, illustrated by the diagram.
Relationship and connection are at the heart of the Internet. Before the Web, a person’s circle of relationships was usually initiated by face-to-face contact, and then sustained by personal meetings, letter or phone. Naturally, there tended to be a geographic limitation to a circle of relationships. But with the Web, relationships can be initiated and maintained online, and physical location is no longer an issue. Using the Web, people can also maintain, at least at a limited level, a much wider range of relationships.
Relationships are, of course, a key to evangelism. Very few people become Christians merely by hearing, or reading, a proclamation of the Gospel. Analyze a range of testimonies and in almost every case, you find that an ongoing relationship with a praying Christian played a key role. So effective online evangelism needs to be relational.
The Web as dis-inhibitor
People behave and communicate very differently in the virtual world, than they do in face-to-face interactions. The relatively anonymous nature of the Web encourages people to share inner thoughts, worries and questions, in a way they might never do face to face. Although there may be no person they could trust face to face, web users may ask intimate questions online from the privacy and anonymity of their home computer. This is strategic for any sort of evangelism, and even more so in a country where there are very few Christians. A seeker may know of no place where they could ask spiritual questions, or know that it would not be safe to be seen publicly to do so. Email, bulletin boards, blogs, or social networking sites can be a safe environment for questions and interaction. You can read more in The Online Disinhibition Effect, a valuable article from John Suler’s The Psychology of Cyberspace, which you can read online, or download as an e-book.
Communication cultures
It is also helpful to understand the Internet in the context of different communication cultures. Before the invention of the printing press circa 1500, the prevailing communication was an oral communication culture. The printing press changed the world for ever, and brought in a print communication culture. Christian commentator M Rex Miller suggests in his book Millennium Matrix that from about 1950, the development of TV led to the broadcast culture, with different characteristics to the previous cultures. Further, he suggests that we are now moving into digital culture in which communication is once more operating in very different ways.
Another commentator Andy Crouch sees our current culture as being what he calls visualcy.
These are not merely academic classifications – they describe some very profound changes in society which affect how we can effectively communicate the gospel. If we try to use methods which worked in a past communication culture and have gained an imagined sanctity as a result, we may receive little fruit. While the gospel does not change, the way we communicate it must constantly change. If you doubt this, root around for some Christian magazines, books or films dating from perhaps the mid-60s. They may have been effective then, but the “past is a different country”!
Also, one of the major advances in the mission world has been an understanding of oral communication cultures. Many non-western countries are still largely oral societies, and it is only relatively recently that missions have really analyzed appropriate ways to communicate with people in such cultures. Many people in the West are also to a considerable extent within an oral culture, and receive very little information from books or newspapers.
Implications of the Web’s properties as a medium
It is a mistake to regard the evangelistic potential of the Web as merely “tracts on a screen”. Such a perception will greatly limit its potential for outreach. Instead, we must understand the Web’s nature as a medium and learn how to work with its inherent strengths. Only then can we begin to use the staggering opportunities it offers us.
Learn more about using the internet for evangelism at internetevangelismday.com and find out how you can take the next step by getting involved with TruthMedia today.
Tags: Culture, internet evangelism, ministry, relationships, Video, World
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