Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – Reaching an Online Generation

By Eric Célérier
December 2009

Measuring the “Success” of a Website
 Some people think success shouldn’t be measured. In 2007, Brown Governance and the Internet Evangelism Coalition compiled an excellent survey called “International Internet Evangelism Performance Measurement Report.” Below is part of the report:

Two respondents articulated that measurement should be “left to God.” While God will no doubt take the final and ultimate measures of the efforts of individual Christians and Christian organizations, should this keep us from creating, implementing, measuring, adjusting, and reporting on our strategies and efforts? We believe that Christian organizations should not feel threatened by an expectation of results. Results are important to God—if they weren’t, he would not have given us a mission to begin with. We believe that the Church needs to be reproducing and it should therefore engage in measurement to ensure that it is.

There are many ways to measure success for a website. As a missionary on the Internet, my best tool to measure effectiveness goes beyond figures. A ministry CEO once said, “Eric, all these figures are just virtual! It’s only figures and behind them there is probably nothing more!” On that same day, a friend of mine who is a French pastor sent me a short message while he was visiting Algeria. It said, “Eric, guess what I’m doing? I’m baptizing someone who accepted Jesus on one of your evangelistic websites!” Or, consider Mariana, who is living in the Palestinian territories. When we launched MaarifatAllah.com (LookingforGod in Arabic language) in December 2006, she was the first seeker to write us. She said, “I would like to have Jesus in my life!” Since that date, more than fifty thousand Arabs (most from a Muslim background) wrote to tell us the same thing!

A successful website is one which has a lot of visits, a continuing high growth, a worldwide audience, a high conversion rate, is very visible in search engines—and which has very high offline results. To keep being successful in the long term on the Internet, we need to cleverly use not only the best existing tools, but also be ready to start new ways and approaches.

Are New Approaches Possible to Reach the Online Generation?
 I think so! Last year we participated in a brainstorming session with other pioneers of the church-planting movement (CPM) and Internet evangelism. One of the results was the launch of a blog called “reachingtheonlinegeneration.com” by Paul Watson to try to apply the principles of CPM multiplication to the Internet. With partners and friends, we are exploring the following avenues:

  1. A new online follow-up service for seekers. The method used by most organizations involved in Internet evangelism comes from evangelistic campaigns; we ask a spiritual counsellor to take care of the “new convert” and we measure the result. But another approach is possible with Internet: using a PUSH instead of PULL approach.
  2. E-learning applied to discipleship. For the last eight years, EO (a Dutch Christian organization) has gotten incredible results by using E-learning. For example, in Poland, fifty percent of the people following the five-week lessons of the E-learning course are joining a local church or an Alpha course.
  3. Artificial intelligence applied to evangelization and discipleship. Why not use artificial intelligence to present the Bible in a more attractive way that is based upon the seeker’s need? It’s now possible.
  4. Viral effect of CPM applied to the Internet. A real viral movement can occur on the Internet. To do so, we need to help new believers to reach their “Oikos” online.
  5. An interactive Facebook application. What do you think of an application that would present the gospel according to your Facebook profile and that would help you testify to your online friends?
  6. An online church. I am not talking about broadcasting church services online as many churches actually do. I am thinking about a church with services, pastors, sermons, prayer rooms, and spiritual growth resources especially dedicated to online people who don’t have a church. This online church would have two main goals: make disciples and start offline churches.
  7. Using the Internet to reach cities. It is possible to target cities according to the needs of the Internet users living in those cities. Did you know that the town where the word “depression” is the most searched on the Internet is Melbourne, Australia? And that the city where the word “suicide” is the most searched is Portland, Oregon, USA?

If you are interested in one of the projects above—and if you want to know more about it—or if you want to be involved in the Jesus Internet Project, please contact me at [email protected]. Innovative ideas are also very welcome! Please be praying about how you can be involved in Internet evangelism.

Eric Célérier is a French pastor and founder of TopChretien.com, a Christian Internet portal for French speaking people which receives fifteen million visits per year. He also initiated the Jesus Internet Project and is an active member of the Lausanne Strategy Working Group. He and his wife and three children live near Paris.