Digital revolution creating new evangelism opportunities

A month of digital outreach has culminated on Internet Evangelism Day today.

The focus of Internet Evangelism Day is to mobilise individual Christians into digital evangelism.

While this used to be confined to things like blogging or chat forums, advances in digital technology and the proliferation of social networks have opened up new opportunities for reaching out via the web.

With 2.3 billion people online and four billion mobile phone users, the opportunities are only expanding.

Now Christians can utilise the 'three-fold cord' of social networking allied with video shorts and mobile phones, say organisers.

"At last it has become remarkably easy for any Jesus-follower to build relationships and discuss truth appropriately, especially within social networking platforms," said Tony Whittaker, Internet Evangelism Day coordinator in the UK..

"Our digital communication culture has become highly visual and dialogue-based, and the sharing of conversation-starting video shorts on Facebook and Twitter is as easy as a mouse-click, though only if we know where to find them."

Damaris Trust is among the many Christian organisations utilising the power of phone apps to reach the non-churched. It has just released an app called Talking About Jesus to the iPhone, with an Android version coming soon.

While most Christian smartphone apps offer discipleship help for Christians, Talking About Jesus is directly evangelistic and offers 18 short videos by insightful speakers such as Philip Yancey, Anna Robbins, Andrew White, Krish Kandiah, Nick Pollard and Gary Habermas.

A second new evangelism-related web app is called God’s GPS. The app, which works on any smartphone, guides Christians on ways to share the good news appropriately and conversationally. The interface operates in 40-plus languages and explains the principles that Doug Pollock - author of God Space - offers in his books and seminars.

Churches around the world are marking Internet Evangelism Day by creating a focus spot in a church meeting.

The organisers of Internet Evangelism Day are encouraging Christians to read Len Sweet's new book, "Viral: How Social Networking Is Poised to Ignite Revival", which explains the transformation in culture from print to digital, and how this has the power to change everything in the church's communication and ministry.

Internet Evangelism Day, supported in the UK by Damaris and CPO, is also calling for digital advocates to help church members find and use the many digital resources now available to them.

On the web:
Download ebooks for free on Internet Evangelism Day only: http://ieday.net/eb
http://talkingaboutjesus.org/app
http://www.godsgps.com