Christian internet outreach has certain advantages over six traditional forms of outreach.

Copyright

September 18, 2010

Carl Janssen

 

There are many different methods that Christians have traditionally used to outreach to their community including but not limited to the following.

1.    Charitable work and community service

2.    Friendship Evangelism and Discipleship

3.    Talking to strangers, such as street witnessing and door to door

4.    Books, Pamphlets, Letters and Epistles

5.    Preaching a Sunday Sermon to people in a Church building

6.    Televangelism and Radio evangelism

I will discuss very briefly advantages that internet outreach has over these six methods.  There are also advantages that at least five of these methods have over internet outreach which I will not discuss.

1. Hands on community outreach such as helping those in need with food or medical help

Is limited in that what is morally good must be determined before hands on work is done (for else the hands on work might not be morally good) the desire to do good must be developed within the heart (for many people are capable of good but few chose to do the good they are capable of) and eternal matters must be considered as surpassing temporary matter [for what good is it to eat bread in this life and go without even a drop of water on your tongue in the next life (Luke 16:24)] teaching helps overcome these three limitations.

2. Friendship Evangelism and Discipleship

Are very limited because of reaching a small number of people who may be hard-hearted (if they reject the truth today they may reject it again for the next 80 years of “friendship” or “discipleship”.)  Discipleship methods are also limited because you may find yourself repeating the same things to every person.  Internet outreach may enable you to reach a large group of people with the hope of finding someone who might not be hard-hearted.  Internet outreach is also helpful because once you have something published you do not need to repeat the same teaching again unless there is a good reason such as added detail or clarifications, etc.

3. Talking to strangers such as going door to door or street witnessing.

Are limited because people may be offended more with these methods than other methods, because you potentially have to repeat teaching the same things, and because you have to search out and find people to talk to.  Internet outreach provides an advantage in that if people are offended they can just avoid your website, you do not have to repeat the same things every day after you wrote them one time online and even if you sleep all day people can still look at your website.

4.  Books, Pamphlets, Epistles, Letters

These are very useful because you can write a teaching one time and it can be continued after you die.  They are limited because they need to be distributed, and duplicated which is costly either for the creator and or the consumers.  They are also limited because people may not even know about your books existence.  The internet is a cheaper method to instantly reach a large number of people with literature and does not have to consume paper.

5.  Modern mainstream preaching

In which the audience is required to keep silent and not ask questions until the sermon is over is not an early church practice in my opinion.  I as well as other people suspect that when preaching was originally done, the male members of the audience were allowed to ask questions (1 Corinthian 14:34) and multiple people would take turns speaking in an orderly manner (1 Corinthians 14:30-31.)  I suspect it was more of a group interaction in which the males participated together to learn.  I suspect that traditionally after learning in a group meeting the married men went home to teach their wives and children (1 Corinthians 14:34, Ephesians 5:26, Deuteronomy 6:7.)  I believe that women were traditionally allowed to attend such services but were expected to be silent or quiet more than the men (1 Corinthians 14:34, 1 Timothy 2:11, 1 Peter 3:1, 1 Peter 3:4.)  Since the group interaction of questions and answers has been separated from mainstream preaching I suggest that the person who insists that the audience keeps silent, changes his ways.  In my opinion he should start recording or typing those non-interactive sermons by himself (with no audience present) and place them on the internet for everyone to see, instead of dragging in an audience who he expects to keep silent.  In my opinion he should also start having interactive sermons in which the audience members can ask questions and take turns sharing what they have learned, in an attempt to duplicate something similar to the practices in 1 Corinthians 14.

6. Televangelism and Radio-evangelism

These had an important place and time to outreach to a large number of people.  But when the internet is available today there large cost raises ethical quandaries when the same messages could be distributed over the internet at a cheaper price, which in some cases may be the difference between hundreds of dollars in a year and over a hundred thousand dollars in a year.