Lausanne World Pulse – WORLD PERSPECTIVES – Global Internet Users Present Vast Opportunities for Online Evangelism

By Dave Hackett

Some sites are more implicitly Christian, delving into their general interest topics from a Christian worldview. Their evangelistic purpose may be so contextualized within a felt need that the casual visitor would not recognize this until captivated by the quality of the site’s content, and follow links to other sites that are more explicit.

Yet other ministries are successfully using instant messenger software such as Paltalk to attract non-Christian inquirers to chat rooms where Christians are trained to engage in evangelistic chat. These may be the real frontier, harnessing the large-scale attraction of sites and tools established and maintained by others that already draw significant traffic.

Calvin Conkey of Australia and Whittaker have created the “X-Spectrum” to define the contextual positioning of Christian websites. Their X1 to X6 scale is meant to suggest that different approaches and styles have advantages and disadvantages and can reach different target audiences. The scale is very useful for categorizing the various types of evangelistic websites.

An X1 site has a target audience that is in practice entirely Christian. It assumes knowledge about Christ and salvation and uses a high degree of insider Christian jargon and concepts. “These characteristics,” say Conkey and Whittaker, “are entirely appropriate for a site which is ‘in reach’—edification and teaching of Christians.”

An X6 site has an entirely non-Christian target audience. According to Conkey and Whittaker, “Such a site assumes visitors have no prior Christian knowledge, and may be indifferent or hostile to the Christian message. [The gospel is] presented in highly-contextualized or creative terms appropriate to target audience, in a non-formulaic non-religious non-Western style. [The] site may give little clue as to its Christian nature.”

While non-Christians who are very open to the Christian message may be receptive to websites at the lower end of the X-Scale, Whittaker sees far more potential in websites positioned at the X5 and X6 end of the scale.

Internet evangelism opportunities on the web will only increase. The number of Internet users is expected to hit the two billion milestone by 2011,⁶ and most of this growth will come in the majority world which contains untold millions of unreached cultures. The online interests and technological capacities of youth will power this first wave of web-based evangelism. However, older audiences of seekers will come close on their heels, looking to ask their secret questions about faith, forgiveness, healing and grace. Many hope the global Church will be there to meet them as they come.

Endnotes
1. World Internet Users and Population Stats
2. http://global-reach.biz/globstats/
3. www.metamend.com/internet-growth.html
4. http://www.c-i-a.com/
5. http://aibi.gospelcom.net/missions/cybermissions_target_nations.htm 
6. http://www.c-i-a.com/ 

Rev. David Hackett is associate director at visionSynergy, a ministry developing strategic international Christian networks focused on high impact opportunities for world evangelization. See www.powerofconnecting.net for more information.

Comments on this article

Hi there. Thank you for your article. It is encouraging to know that others are picking up the mantle to share Christ on the web. I have been doing what I would consider frontier web evangelism for over seven years. I am not a web guy, but I do chat with users from around the world via an IRC chat network. This has resulted in many users coming to Christ. Also I go to public networks such as dal.net to interact with folks. It is a wide open field on the secular networks. There is very small representation of believers in those venues. The main thing I have learned is to be real, relational and respectful. You know, the three r’s.

Shield :: 2 May 2006