Digital Evangelism Issues

To paraphrase the 1990′s election slogan (in response to the unspoken question “What’s the priority?”), we might respond to “What’s the key to effective evangelism?” with the answer: “It’s the relationships, silly.”

Most lasting conversions are the result of an ongoing relationship with one or more believers (see research study). And around 50% of people start their spiritual journey at least in part due to a serious life problem, such as relationship problems, illness/bereavement or debt. Any online outreach must be geared to offering ongoing email support to all those who want advice and help at any level.

Canada’s TruthMedia online outreach team uses hundreds of volunteer e-mentors to build email relationships with inquirers or those with life problems. (Learn about volunteering here. TruthMedia can also now share their follow-up software system with other ministries – read more about the Mentor Center.)

Karen writes…

Karen Schenk, TruthMedia’s National Director of Media Strategies, shares some insights from their ministry:

‘In the past few months, TruthMedia has seen incredible growth in both ministry impact and reach.

I’m becoming more convinced than ever that the key to sharing the Gospel in our culture is addressing relationship needs. No matter who they are or what they do for a living, people all around the globe have relational issues and want help and insight into how to address them.

One of our websites had 400,000 visits this past month alone and of those visits, more than 50% of the content that was viewed and the messages we received were about relationship issues. People want help and perspective for their families, kids, marriages, dating, and workplace. As we connect with people about their relationship issues, we are in a position where we can share the hope of Christ. The mentors who share with these people are also being directly impacted. Here are some of their stories:

A father asks for help: “I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I’m failing, I’m hurting myself, I’m becoming more violent, more judgmental of myself, and I’m pretty much giving up on having any future. What can I do to change myself? I have no goals in life other than to raise a child and be a father.”

A lonely person who found hope through a mentor now helps others: “First of all thank you for that wonderful message. I think this is an awesome ministry. It was a life saver for me, and now I hope I can help it be for others. When I came to this site over a year ago, it helped change my life forever. I felt so alone, had sunk to the bottom of the sea. Since I found this site and my wonderful mentor and friend, my life just continues to get more and more blessed. I have recovered the joy and happiness I didn’t ever think I would find again. You got me through one of the most devastating times in my life. And now the blessings continue as now I can be a mentor and understand how some of these people are feeling. They not only acquire a friend, but I also. For me, just having someone I can be honest with, vent to, and know they are listening is the best therapy I have had. I am so thankful I could be part of this. Thank you.”

A believer learns to share her faith: “I feel I’m really growing in my faith also and it is mostly because of Power to Change, Truth Media and all you guys helping me to get started as a mentor. This is such a great ministry, and I’m sharing my small part in it every chance I get. Last week I spent 30 minutes in our local supermarket sharing with a lady about Jesus and what we all are doing to carry His word around the world. Happiness is bubbling over in my life right now.”

Source: TruthMedia newsletter. Used with permission. Subscribe to their newsletters

This week’s infographics:

First, from Cool Infographics gives insights to social networking usage. By the way, for valuable help on using social networks, follow JustinWise.net blog, and for more detailed stats on Facebook and other web stats, subscribe to the Internet World Stats newsletter – read the latest.

Search stats

Second from Tech King below, an infographic showing top search words for different countries. However I think what this mainly shows is that a majority of web users do not understand the difference between a browser search box and the navigation toolbar – ie. that you can type an URL directly into a browser! So they just use the search box to find sites they are already aware of, or because they can’t remember the URL (or are unaware how to bookmark and retrieve a page), or don’t know how to enter an URL anyway. Chrome is the only browser to ‘go with the grain’ of average users, and offer a single text area to use for either search or direct entry of an URL.

This same issue can be seen at the Google Zeitgeist tool and in Most Popular Keywords (long term), which also demonstrate that relatively few people understand how to use multiple keywords for a more focused search. Google Trends gives current topic searches without seemingly including searches for known websites.

None of these tools show much evidence of spiritual keyword searches, contrary to the occasional claim you may hear from Christians, that religious web searches are the second most numerous online. Unless anyone can come up with research stats to back up this claim, it must be just another urban myth that Christians unwittingly, though in good faith, persist in passing on.

Even among the top 500 words on the Most Popular Keywords list, there are surprisingly few relating to health or felt needs issues. Almost all keywords that might relate to evangelistic or bridge strategy websites are in a Long Tail of millions of lower frequency keyword searches.

Today’s Western high school students are the first generation to have grown up with digital technology in their homes from birth. The first therefore to have their brains rewired, for better or worse, by 24/7 digital communication. This video and more detailed and insightful accompanying article give a stark picture of these changes.

The study points out the way that digital is changing behavior and distracting students from focus. It also gives students no time for mental rest and reflection, because it is on 24/7.

These changes to our brain wiring and behaviour are also the central thesis of Nicholas Carr’s book and blog The Shallows. Shane Hipps’ book Flickering Pixels looks at our digital communication culture from a Christian viewpoint.

Our response?

These trends suggest two areas of response, rather than negative reaction. (As the video says, the digital trend is as unstoppable as a tsunami.)

1. Training

Teach children and young people, from their earliest years:

• how to control digital, rather than be controlled by it.
• how to switch off digital distractions to accomplish tasks that need focus.
• how to create digital downtime, real rest, and time for reflection.
• how to handle the digital ‘elephant in the room’, po*n.

This surely needs some sort of informal ‘curriculum’ framework, a digital ‘Dr Spock’, for parents, teachers, and youth group leaders? Is there one already? Or how can we develop this?

2. Online evangelism

To engage evangelistically with young people, we must remember:

• if we are not online, we are invisible.
• effective communication is story-based, not abstract.
• visual is vital, especially video clips.
• true evangelism is two-way, relational, dialogue, question-starting, non-preachy.
• everything we do must be accessible on mobile phones.
• popular culture – ie. movies and music – is a great starting point.

Training for young Christian people to use the Web for evangelism should include:

• how to use Facebook and Twitter appropriately.
• how to create God Space in online conversations.
• how to post video clips into Facebook, or download to mobile phone, from YesHEIs and GlobalShortFilmNetwork, and initiate discussion.
• how to script and edit video shorts – a great youth group project.
• where to find reasoned answers to serious apologetic questions.

Please add your thoughts using the ‘Comment’ link below.

Another of those useful infographics – this time looking at the dizzy trends in computing power that we will see in the coming years. Set it in context though! There’s no sign of any computing system I know that can:

• Look at a person, recognize them as a friend, and assess their body language, facial expression and other clues to sense their inner mood or concerns within half a second. You can do that! (See Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.)

• Operating on glucose as a fuel, enable a miniature flying platform to hover to within 0.5mm and extend an extraction hose into a reservoir of sugar syrup, having detected the reservoir’s existence by a mixture of distant visual and scent clues. Then navigate back to a base up to 2km away, and share the location of this syrup to other flying platforms by visual movement patterns. Bees do that.

But for what computers can do well, they are doing it faster and better…

Read article on GrasshopperGroup page, and see the page of author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil, on which the figures are based. His articles cover many issues, not just computer, and represent a fascinating glimpse into possible future developments.

Best person to ask about the cultural trends of the last 10 years is a culture watcher. Here’s Andy Crouch:

Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade

For thoughts on the last 10 years in technical terms, see ZDNet | Guardian | BBC.

Please Tweet or Facebook about the 15 May date for this year’s Internet Evangelism Day – here’s a ready-made Tweet and Facebook post.

You can syndicate our blog posts to your Facebook profile (and/or fan page) in three easy steps.

Share this post on your Facebook page or please click ‘Like’ button below…

Interesting thoughts from Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog on ‘less is more’ with the ‘serenity prayer’ as a flow chart.

Interesting to try putting your writing throught the Gobbledygook Grader.

“What do we want? Evidence-based change! When do we want it? After peer review.” Banner at rally, posted on Bradley Wright’s blog.

How often do we analyze whether a certain strategy is actually achieving anything? Or be open enough to try something totally different? Or invite trusted peers (or outsiders) to give comment and input, and then take action based on their insights? This brings to mind Einstein’s comment: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Finally, a reminder (from a newspaper advert) to:

• analyze all sides of a question
• don’t make do with partial information
• don’t confuse our instant gut reaction to some situation, as being automatically a balanced biblical view and the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Please add your thoughts about openness and understanding the big picture, using the ‘comment’ link below.

I find this series of cognitive experiments with small babies at Yale University quite remarkable.

What they have found is that babies as young as six months can:

• follow and understand a fictional narrative story
• make a moral judgment about the motives of the characters in the story

So at an age when they could not have learned these things, we can see that babies are hardwired for both stories and an understanding of right and wrong. Wonder where that came from. Watch the video below and read the story.

The largest ever global research project into people’s online activities and behaviour has just been released by TNS Digital Life. Covering nearly 90 per cent of the world’s online population through 50,000 interviews with consumers in 46 countries, the study reveals major changes in the world’s online behaviour.

Core data from the study is being made publicly available via their interactive website. The conclusions are set out within five PDF booklets, available within the main Digital Life site. From the main page, view the interactive map (you may need to upgrade to the latest Flash 10 version for this). This provides loads of information in easily-understood mouse-over graphic form. You can line up the stats for any two countries next to each other for comparison.

Read news summary | Digital Life site

What do you find most useful about this resource? Do you relate to the six categories of web users they have chosen: Influencers, Communicators, Knowledge-Seekers, Networkers, Aspirers, and Functionals? Add your comments using the ‘comment’ link below.

Steven Johnson offers some valuable insights into ‘where good ideas come from’. He highlights the timescale needed, and especially the cross-fertilization of ideas through discussion and networking:

Please add your thoughts, or examples of such creative group thinking, using the ‘comment’ link below.

Here is a long but very useful analysis by John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University. He is currently working on a book about the internet phenomenon.

Read it here.