Lausanne World Pulse – WORLD EVANGELISM & MISSIONS REPORTS – The Strategic Role of www.hikidz.org in Internet Child Evangelism

By Harry Bryans

As Christians, we need to take a leading role in our society and the media to positively influence the culture and fulfill the Great Commission. However, to reach even more of today’s children in a way that will engage them at a greater level, they need new, innovative and appropriate means of communication.

HiKidz.org includes both games and presentations of the gospel message.

Hi Kidz Purpose and Mission
The website seeks to provide children with a safe world of fun, entertainment, information and interactivity. Woven into these goals are opportunities to discover both Christianity and a holistic Christian worldview that touches every area of life. The children are encouraged to respond personally to God’s love and call on their lives. A weekly Cyber Mag is sent out as a free animated email in English or French to all who register on the site. Other regular emails are also envisioned for teens, parents, teachers and children’s workers.

The Hi Kidz website presents an exciting opportunity for a children’s Internet site and represents the collaborative work of Christian ministries to reach today’s generation in a relevant and engaging way. The site was initially developed in French by the Swiss children’s ministry, Grain de Blé. In the UK, the English version has become a collaboration of fourteen organizations, including Agape, Crusaders, Scripture Union, the International Bible Society and Viva Network. For such a site to be effective across countries and languages, many ministries and the wider global Church need to share in this project together.

Until now, the low budget Hi Kidz pilot version (with limited content in English and French) has received more than 300,000 visits from over one hundred countries across five continents, with an average of seven pages viewed per visit. All this has happened without any major publicity campaign. The current Hi Kidz site is still just a pilot version.

The Future of Hi Kidz
What started as a collaboration of different ministries investing in a united project will become the heart of a very new Hi Kidz website on an international scale. However, in order to offer children’s ministries all over the world, it is imperative that we work together in a spirit of dynamic collaboration and not one of defensive competition.

In 2005, Grain de Blé commissioned Esterheart Ministries to restructure and redesign the current pilot site. The overall strategy is to develop a multilingual site that can compete with the appeal and quality of the best secular sites. Once a worldwide partnership of major children’s ministries is in place, networks of collaborating children’s ministries will be able to manage the site on a local/linguistic level. This will also enable these networks to provide content that is adapted to the children’s needs and culture. It will also allow the networks and local churches to effectively incorporate the site into individual strategies and action plans at every level.

The restructuring will build on the strengths and experience of the pilot version. It will be upgraded according to Esterheart’s six-month study which has included findings from both secular organizations dealing with children’s websites and several Lausanne reports regarding children.

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Harry Bryans is the pioneer developer and webmaster of www.hikidz.org. Bryans is originally from North Ireland but served as missionary in Belgium for twenty-two years. He worked for fifteen years with the Grain de Ble European children’s ministry and helped launch the Hi Kidz telephone ministry in a dozen countries on three continents.