WEB EVANGELISM BULLETIN

. . . learning from each other
W-E-B Issue 141 ~ October (ii) 06
Twice a month ISSN 471-0323

News this time...

GERMAN OUTREACH SITE USES BRIDGE STRATEGY
PODCASTING
INTERNET EVANGELISM DAY 2007
THE WORLD WE LIVE IN
WEBSITE PROMOTION
GOT A BLOG?
TIPS
COMMUNICATING WELL
THE 'WE-THINK' PHENOMENON IS CHANGING THINGS
MORE WEB EVANGELISM STUFF
TAILEND

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember the airplane takes
off against the wind, not with it" - Henry Ford

"I don't want to be a passenger in my own life" Diane Ackerman, poet and writer

GERMAN OUTREACH SITE USES BRIDGE STRATEGY

'DER WEG' is an outreach paper designed primarily for those in E Europe and elsewhere learning German. Its 'bridge' is: to offer information on German culture to these language learners, along with appropriate Christian content.

A website is integrated into the strategy, receiving a remarkable number of visitors. They write, "Over the last three months, we have had half a million visitors. The most visited page was the testimony of Bethany Hamilton, 'Bitten by a shark', accessed 6000 times. Help with the site is needed, so if you are a German speaker, contact Volker Schmidt via the website:
http://www.derweg.org/

PODCASTING

One of our roles is to look at every aspect of the Web, and see if it lends itself to appropriate evangelism. Podcasting is increasingly popular due to the invention of the iPod. How can it be used for outreach?
http://ied.gospelcom.net/podcasting.php

INTERNET EVANGELISM DAY 2007

It's scheduled for 29 April. Would you consider holding an IE Day spot in your church?
http://ied.gospelcom.net/planning.php

Can you make it known in different ways?
http://ied.gospelcom.net/helping.php

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

MOBILE PHONES IN AFRICA: necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and Jan Chipchase spends his time seeking out the world's poorest people and finding out what they have been inventing. The results are amazing in their ingenuity and directness. Anthropologist Chipchase says: "I travel to the ends of the earth to find out what people actually do with their mobile phones." Phones are helping the poor, illiterate and disadvantaged - a huge leap from the time when handsets the size of house-bricks were for rich business-people:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,28729-2417886.html

50 YEARS ON: it is 50 years since Billy Graham founded Christianity Today magazine to bring "intellectual respectability and spiritual impact to evangelical Christianity."
http://www.christianitytoday.com/anniversary/index.html

TECHMISSION is recruiting:
http://www.techmission.org/jobs

LITERACY: despite all the noise about Google's purchase of YouTube, Google is doing other things too. Like launching a worldwide literacy project:
http://www.webpronews.co.uk/2006a/1010.html

HALLOWEEN - thoughts and angles -
Redeeming Halloween:
Part 1 http://www.crosswalk.com/family/parenting/1356581.html
Part 2 http://www.crosswalk.com/family/1356585.html
Other articles:
http://www.crosswalk.com/faith/1168227.html
http://www.crosswalk.com/faith/1442423.html

BASKETBALL - the story of basketball play Pete Maravich, who became a Christian five years before his early death at the age of 40:
http://www.MaravichBook.com/

WEBSITE PROMOTION

Learn Search Engine Optimization - some free video tutorials (others are pay-for):
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=209

GOT A BLOG?

There is now a blog link in the footer of every page of the IE Day site. Click on it, and the first paragraph of that page appears in a popup, plus a link for more information, ready to paste into a blog. So if you have a blog, please consider using any of these page summaries. If you want to offer this system on your own site, it's done by PHP scraping the first paragraph.
http://ied.gospelcom.net/index.php

TIPS

- non-techies look away now

FIREFOX 2. Latest version now out. Existing FireFox versions will not update to 2.0 just by 'check for updates' - it is a complete new download. Also, Firefox 1 extensions you have installed may or may not work in v2 until they also get upgraded:
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2006/10/firefox-2-review/

YAHOO now supports the no-ODP tag, if you need it:
http://www.websitenotes.com/2006a/1025.html

SPANISH. Quick way to type Spanish accented characters:
http://bushnells.teamexpansion.org/Misc/KeyboardLayout.htm

ONLINE CONVERTER to change many different file types from one to another:
http://media-convert.com/convert/index.php

MOBILES: building sites and CSS for mobile devices:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/pocket

STOCK MUSIC - for websites, podcasts, etc:
http://www.stock20.com/

SOCIAL BOOKMARKS: add social bookmarking links to your page. Can be done in ASP:
http://www.devwebpro.co.uk/2006a/1027.html
or with PHP, as we have done in page footers here:
http://ied.gospelcom.net/index.php

FINDING CHURCH SOFTWARE. This guide may help:
http://www.capterra.com/download-church-software-buyers-guide.html

COMMUNICATING WELL

"WHAT WE LEARNED About Doing Christian Ministry in a Pagan Environment." Donald Miller has written a set of 13 observations about effective evangelism which are challenging, biblical and significant. They apply just as much to web evangelism as to face-to-face ministry. You may not agree with the strength of every point - for instance perhaps the use of 'few people' instead of 'nobody' would allow for some exceptions! But they make a useful starting point for a ministry team discussion, whatever your own conclusions:
http://www.donaldmillerwords.com/pdf/thirteenparadigmshifts.pdf

CHURCH GROWTH made easy - not:
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7222

YOUNG PEOPLE. It may surprise those in countries with strict separate of religion and the state, that in secular UK, it is still possible for Christians to be invited into schools to teach religion, or take assemblies, and the problem is often the shortage of Christians able to take up the opportunity.

Damaris and Stapleford Centre produce material to help plan these:
Damaris: http://www.assembliesonline.com/
Stapleford: http://www.stapleford-centre.org/index.php
Most are pay-for (though well worth it), some are offered free - for instance a ready-made Halloween Assembly:
http://www.damaris.org/cm/home/secondaryaol

There is certainly a need! In secular non-churchgoing UK, children have increasingly limited knowledge of who Jesus is:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2381668.html

THE 'WE-THINK' PHENOMENON IS CHANGING THINGS

"Google paying over a billion for YouTube, a business little more than a year old. Wikipedia continues to draw more traffic than much more established media brands that employ hundreds more people. Open source programmes such as Linux insistently chip away at corporate providers of proprietary software. Immersive multi-user computer games, such as Second Life, which depend on high levels of user participation and creativity are booming. Craigslist, a self-help approach to searching for jobs and other useful stuff, is eating into the ad revenues of newspapers. Youth magazines such as Smash Hits have been overwhelmed by the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo. What is going on?" asks Charles Leadbeater on his website and new book project. "My argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work. People want to be players not just spectators, part of the action, not on the sidelines."

His proposed book, in draft form, is reflecting this same collaborative spirit. He will modify its shape and content in the light of the feedback he receives.

It seems that in some ways, the Web is taking us back to the days before the mass media, when people created their own entertainment in the evening, rather than being passive recipients.

London Times article:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20411-2400772.html

Leadbeater's book site
http://www.wethinkthebook.net/book/home.aspx