Lausanne World Pulse – Research Articles – The Internet: The New Missionary Challenge of the Twenty-first Century

By Eric Célérier

Missionary Field
I do not see the Internet as a tool. Instead, I consider the Internet to be a missionary field. In 1865, Hudson Taylor created the China Inland Mission because he had the vision to reach China with the gospel. The 1.2 billion people using the Internet are just as important as the ones Taylor was seeking to reach. Today, when people search for God, Jesus, the Bible, or faith, very often they make their search using the Internet. According to Google Zeitgeist, “Who is God?” was one of the most-searched phrases on the Internet in 2007.

 
This is one of seven translations of an evangelistic website
where people around the world are learning about Jesus.  

Our calling is to go around the world preaching the good news to the entire creation. Why not send missionaries to our world’s newest continent…the Internet?

A missionary called to proclaim the gospel on a continent, or to a people, must be sensitive to all the human needs he or she observes. While remaining focused on his or her vocation to preach the gospel, he or she also has an obligation to respond to all of the needs of his or her missionary field.

Therefore, through these few lines I am issuing my passionate plea. We have an urgent need for more missionaries on the Internet. These same missionaries, working in coordination with one another, could increase the visibility of Christian websites. When someone types the word “God” into a Google Search, 365 million responses are suggested. A person would have to visit one million web pages, every day, for one year, in order to see everything listed! That is impossible. A better option would be to strengthen the visibility of the few quality websites devoted to evangelism.

Moved with Compassion to Transform the World
 Every Christian could take up this challenge. The number-one, most popular religious website on the Internet is a site devoted to Islam. According to the worldwide classification of websites on the Internet, that Islamic site is ranked as the 600th most popular site overall with one million visitors per day.

By contrast, the number-one, most popular Christian website is ranked much lower at position number three thousand. It boasts only 300,000 visitors per day worldwide. We cannot continue to tolerate that kind of inequality. It is not a matter of rivalry with another religion, or a matter of competition; more accurately, it is a question as to the measure of our compassion for the lost and our obedience to God.

Pages: ALL   Prev    1    2    3    Next   

Eric Célérier is founder of Topchretien.com, an internet portal for Christians. A pioneer in evangelism with new technologies, he also founded ConnaitreDieu.com, a website for non-Christians which is available in seven languages. Every day, 1,200 people indicate a decision for Christ on these websites. Célérier is French. He can be reached at: [email protected].