Online Mission | Lausanne World Pulse Archives

Since its popular introduction in the mid 1990s the Internet has changed how we communicate. Getting a message from one part of the world to another has become so easy, cheap, and quick that geography is no longer the same barrier for communication that it was in the past. At the same time the Internet has expanded our understanding of communication. Using the Internet is not just about passing on a message.

When we send an email or a message through the Internet, we link to the many million websites that are part of the World Wide Web—either directly by placing a hyperlink in our message or indirectly, since what we write and send will be evaluated in the light of other information that can be found online. The Internet has also increasingly become a social experience. We are not just there to communicate, but also to socialise, sometimes as the persons we really are and sometimes, for different reasons, behind a pseudonym.

It’s Here to Stay—So Use It!
The popular breakthrough of the Internet forces the Church, and many other institutions, to think in new ways about its communication. The complex nature of the Internet (being a medium, an information archive, and a social space) demands equally complex thinking from the Church. This article will present a few fundamental ways in which the Internet can be used by a church with a missional agenda, but it will by no means cover every issue associated with the Internet and churches.

My goal here is both to encourage churches to a more focused use of the Internet and point to some of the possible pitfalls that exist when churches go online. My approach to the Internet is very pragmatic: it is there, it is important for our communication today, and most likely it has come to stay. Therefore, it is not fruitful to discuss whether we should use the Internet or not. Instead, we should focus our energy on how to use it in the best way possible.

The mission of the Church is to reach the world with the love of our saviour Jesus Christ by words and through a visible engagement in society. This mission is the same when the Church goes online. Here there is both a need for the proclamation of Jesus Christ in words and the presence of Christians who represent the Kingdom of God in their online behaviour. Both aspects can be formalised in church web initiatives, but must also be held up as a personal responsibility for the individual Christian. There is a temptation to think of the Internet as a non-real space where lying, cheating, disrespecting, and ignoring your cyber-neighbour are more harmless than acts committed offline.

Teaching in Christian Internet awareness must deal with these aspects just as much as with the more outgoing evangelistic aspects and must help individuals to maintain their Christian identity online.

Church-initiated Side of Online Ministry As mentioned previously, one of the obvious advantages of the Internet is its large reach. This goes well with a church that is eager to follow the words of the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations.” In countries where traditional mission approaches are difficult because of the religious or political climate, the Internet can be an easy, safe, and cheap way in. Although some regimes try to control which websites a population can visit, it is almost impossible to suppress unwanted information altogether given the fluent and decentralised character of the Internet combined with the receiver’s possibility of surfing the Internet in privacy. When it comes to the West and ”traditional” Christian countries, the reach of mission is also increased by the Internet.