Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Digital Ministry—Incredible Mission Opportunities

By Tony Whittaker
February 2009

In 1996, a birth took place that dramatically affected many of that year’s other eighty million babies. After its gestation period as a minority “hobby,” the Internet emerged as a mainstream communication medium. It is now clear that the Web is becoming as significant as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press—an invention that transformed society, communication, the Church, and the entire way the gospel was proclaimed.

Rex Miller, in The Millennium Matrix, proposes that we now live in a “digital communication culture,” rapidly superseding the previous “broadcast communication culture” (radio/television from mid-twentieth century) and the preceding “print communication culture” started by Gutenberg.

Children who have grown up with computers were born into this new “digital country.” People who were adults before the computer revolution are at best “immigrants” and perhaps only occasional “tourists” in this strange new land.

God-given Digital Tools
With over one billion current users, and “the second billion” expected to come online in the next few years (almost entirely in the non-Western world), the Web has enormous potential for pioneer evangelism (including in 10/40 Window countries), as well as for discipling believers.

Unlike previous communication media, it is not primarily a one-way linear medium (“print on a screen”), but is a powerful 2-way relationship builder that can target any affinity group and initiate relationships.

The number of mobile phones already exceeds half of the total population of the world. Increasingly, mobile phones are used to access the Web. Phones in Africa outnumber those in the United States and are seen as contributing to development, micro-finance, and improved local trading.

And there are growing opportunities to use mobiles in evangelism and discipleship. One pastor in India writes, “I am working as an ordinary pastor with the Church of North India in a rural area. It is good for me that I download your worship and outreach songs on my PC and through that to my mobile phone to show the rural people how to worship by heart.”

Radio ministries have a wonderful opportunity to create MP3-download web pages of selected past programs. These programs are especially helpful in cultures where there is little printed material. These pages can also explain how to place MP3 downloads into mobile devices and suggest ways to share them with others.