The ministries in the Gospel.com Community organize information into 'topics' to help you find what you're looking for. Learn more
Ideas for Christian advocacy and ministry
Are you involved in any sort of advocacy – for web evangelism, missions, or anything? Chris Brogan has suggestions for doing it well.
Are you a perfectionist or an optimalist? And what’s the difference? Leading Blog has the answer.
There’s a free downloadable ebook Kingdom Partnerships For Synergy in Missions available from WEA.
Pew Forum have published a study on why people leave the church. Think Christian blog shares thoughts about it.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/398
Digital evangelism to the non-western world and unreached people groups
To share with Muslims, we do need to understand how they think. Here are several articles to help us think through these issues:
* The Missing Father – explaining a Trinitarian Concept of God to Muslims
* Understanding shame cultures – completely different to the culture you probably belong to
* Oral Communication Cultures – although Muslims are people of the book, they are also within a broadly oral communication culture (as indeed are many westerners who do not get much information from print media)
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/356
Not brochureware any more
Each time a new medium arrives, Christians may well adopt it reasonably quickly, but tend to perceive and use it in the way they used a previous medium. One example is Christian radio. For many years (and this approach is not extinct even today), the tendency was to transfer the medium of communal church worship directly to radio: hymns, prayers and sermons.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/590
Making Facebook fan pages for churches and Christian ministries part 2
Part 2 of the series of the excellent tutorials from Church 2.0 is now online. You can view Part 1.
See also Equipping for Eministry blog post – Part 1 of Are You Using Facebook Effectively?
And August is OurChurch.com’s Social Media Month with coverage of many aspects. Latest posting is 5 Myths Believed by Those on the Social Media Sidelines.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/2237
Susan Boyle video clip - the power of viral transmission, and lessons it teaches us
When a video clip goes viral (ie. is passed from person to person), it can spread exponentially. You may well have seen viral video clips such as a boy using his Star Wars light saber.
The latest is a moving human story. UK’s new series of Britain’s Got Talent started on 11 April. The TV company wisely ensured that for the first show, among the usual dross of dear people with a somewhat deluded perception of their own talent, there would be two performances of quite incredible power. One was the street dance group Flawless, who gave a blindingly good demonstration of utter talent.
But the unexpectedness of the gifts of another competitor, Susan Boyle, was a news story trailed in advance, and has since gone round the world. A middle-aged unemployed spinster who lives alone with her cat, and describes herself as ‘looking like a garage’...
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/404
Social and religious trends in UK reflect those in the rest of the West
Research in UK by Christian thinktank Theos shows big big changes in religious belief: one in five believes in astrology or horoscopes, one in ten in Tarot or fortune telling and nearly three in ten people believe in reincarnation. These are much higher figures than similar research carried out in 1950 by Gallup. Although not included in the survey, ‘karma’ is also a very common belief here in UK.
What this surely demonstrates is that a large percentage of the UK population (and doubtless similar populations elsewhere in the West) are effectively believing most of the tenets of Buddhism though they would be mostly unaware that they are doing so.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/392
Blog resources for Christians
If you are a blogger using WordPress, it sounds as if this book will help you:
Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read, reviewed on Michael Davis’ blog Blogging Ministry. Check also this SiteProNews article: Blogs, WordPress and Google.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/427
Group dynamics and crowd behavior is often scary
The way that people behave differently in a group, and participate in a self-reinforcing bandwagon effect, is rather scary.
The famous Stanford ‘prison simulation’ experiment in the 70s was aborted after six days when things got out of hand. Though it was only on the instigation of his then girlfriend, now his wife, that Professor Zimbardo canceled the exercise:
A lesser-known experiment was conducted even earlier, in 1967 at Palo Alto, California; and a film The Wave has been made, based on this experience.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/158
Christian ministry response to disaster: David Wilkerson's prophecy of judgment
Without wanting to sound apocalyptic, we know that we live in very uncertain days. One Christian leader has predicted serious inner city problems. Blogs provide a good forum to discuss such issues – here is some very balanced and sensible discussion about his prediction at Monday Morning Insight. It is certainly a very possible scenario – a prolonged recession, unemployment, repossions etc will bear down most on the people at the bottom of the pile, and they will not necessarily react with the patience that newsreel of 30’s soup kitchens seem to suggest. This recession will be likely be harder and longer than anything most of us have seen, and it will take many years to sort out and pay off the mess created by the kindly bankers and their mickey mouse money schemes. Spare a thought for unemployed in Japan, who have to sell nearly everything before being entitled to unemployment benefit.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/179
Electronic book readers like Kindle - potential for evangelism and Christian ministry
Electronic book devices such as Kindle are probably at the stage that sat-navs were several years ago – rather expensive, a few usability issues, and maybe only for early adopters. But they are surely destined to come down in price, and improve in usability. Jakob Neilsen reviews the Kindle 2 here and is impressed in many areas – he finds his reading speed equal to a paper book – but highlights issues which are not yet optimal. He also posts separately on content design for the Kindle.
You can also use the Kindle to send email.
As electronic readers gain in popularity we have the opportunity to offer free literature to users in Kindle format, which they can download wirelessly.
http://internetevangelismday.com/blog/archives/172