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"My boyfriend has been pressuring me. Lately, its been harder to say no, but last night I made the decision to wait until I'm married. Your Bible studies have helped me a lot. Thanks." This fourteen-year-old girl did not fill out a card during a worship service or at the end of a "True Love Waits" rally. She sent me an email message from our church's web site. 

Without the reach of the Internet, our church could never have ministered to this girl who lives a thousand miles away, nor could we have touched the people who've contacted us from Australia, the United Kingdom and other places around the globe. 

The Internet is a powerful tool that churches use to expand their ministry, proclaim the gospel, advertise their church, and touch people. You do not have to be a computer programer or spend a lot of money to have your own presence on the World Wide Web. It is easier and more affordable than you might think. 

A Web Site is Affordable and Easy to Create

Our Church, First Baptist Church of Alameda , is in the middle of Albuquerque's high tech community. We wanted to establish a presence on the World Wide Web to promote our ministries but didn't have a lot of money to spend. 

We visited GOSHEN, Christian Internet Resources and sent an email message to several organizations that offered free web space to churches. After corresponding with several webmasters, we selected Gentle Ministries as our host.

Rod, the webmaster of Gentle Ministries, not only provided free space to us, but taught us to do things we could not do ourselves. Initially, he helped us fix some broken links, add wallpaper and music, and register our domain with the Internic. Now we can do all those things ourselves, but in the beginning, it was nice to have some help. 

Brent Smith, Pastor of Hardin Baptist Church in Hardin, Montana picked up HTML (hyper text markup language) programming skills quickly while developing his church's web site. Brent believes anyone can develop a simple web site: "There are many web-authoring tools available, if you want to spend the money, but anyone with a word processor can author a web page." 

Specialized software is available to create more elaborate sites. Roger Williams is the youth pastor of Sequoia Heights Baptist Church of Manteca, California. He used Microsoft's Frontpage 98 and spent around 64 hours to post 83 pages. After the first 128 days of the web site's existence, it recorded 12,000 hits. 

A Web Site will Promote your Church and Proclaim the Gospel

Pastor David Cranford sees the cyber-ministry of Tioga First Baptist Church of Tioga, Louisiana, as a promotional vehicle. "I see our web site as primarily a publicity tool much like a yellow page or newspaper ad." David regularly receives email from surfers visiting his site wanting more information about his church's ministries.

Web sites will bring people to your church. Dr. Jerry Watts decided to create a web site for his church, Bay Vista Baptist Church in Biloxi, Mississippi because he believed the new people moving into the Biloxi-Gulfport area would search the Internet to find a church. He was right. "We have added several members and have had many guests come to our church because of our web site."

Like Dr. Watts, Joe Ansley, webmaster of Shadowbrook Baptist Church of Suwanee, Georgia designed his site with the new resident in mind. Though evangelism is not the main focus of the site, it does attract people to the church. "I know of at least one family that found us on the Internet and later joined our Church." 

Some people use the Internet to "narrow their search" for a church. Mark & Ann were exasperated in their search for a church, that is before Ann found East Tulsa Christian Church on the Internet. Now they are regular attenders and are growing under Pastor Terry Bell's ministry. 

Raymond and April turned to the Internet to find a church that could meet their needs. They were not ordinary church shoppers. Since April is hearing-impaired, they needed a church with an interpreter. Before they ran across Oakland Woods Baptist Church's web site, they were having to drive 35 - 40 minutes to go to church. Though Oakland Woods Church was only 200 yards from their home, they did not know it offered interpretation for the hearing-impaired until they logged onto the Internet. 

Libby wasn't looking for a church at all when she stumbled across the Jesus Fellowship Church's website. She was just surfing the net, and because she liked the creativity of the site, she left a note in their guestbook. The webmaster replied to her message with Harriett's email address. Harriett is a member of their church who was a student in Leeds, U.K., Libby's hometown. After exchanging several messages with her church contact, Libby agreed to meet Hariett face to face. Little did Libby know that she was about to meet someone else--Jesus Christ. The evening of their first day together, Harriet led Libby to pray the sinner's prayer. 

Webmasters use different themes to proclaim the gospel. Some sites use a "How to become a Christian approach" Other sites are more creative. Jeri Kolman uses her love for roses as an evangelistic tool I put a page up that asks the question: "How can something as ugly as a caterpillar become a beautiful butterfly?" to illustrate the change Christ brings in Salvation. Henk Frijters warns surfers before entering his site: "If you cannot handle extremely graphic depictions of love, Leave Now!" His site is not pornographic. It shows a graphic of Jesus on the cross and explains the gospel. 

A Web Site Will Extend your Ministry 

Dale Robbins, pastor of the Christian Life Center of Grass Valley, California says: "You have to realize that a site on the web is literally reaching the world, not just a local community." 

Some churches use their web site to provide surfers with ministry resources. The Community Baptist Church of Manhattan Beach, California posts their Pastor's sermons on their web site. The First Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana provides its visitors with "Light Readings." This page is a collection of poems, prayers and essays of interest to Christians and seekers. Other churches include audio or video copies of their worship services to minister to their world wide audience. 

In the beginning, our church's web site was no more than a computerized business card, or at best, an electronic brochure. We developed the site for our community, not the world. Then, one day it dawned on me that our web site was not reaching its potential. 

I began posting some of my published articles, but wanted to do more. For years, I'd written a weekly devotional that corresponded with my sermon topic and printed it on the back of our bulletin. We decided to place the weekly devotional on our homepage and set up a mail server to send the FreshStart devotional to subscribers by email. We posted a subscription page and offered to email the devotional to subscribers at no cost. Some people prefer to bookmark the page and read the devotional online, but the majority of the people allow us to email it to them. 

According to a recent survey, 77% of our subscribers send the devotionals to others. Fifty-five percent regularly distribute it. They average sending it to 5.5 people. Though we have less than 150 people attend our worship services on Sunday morning, this ministry expands our reach to more than two thousand people each week from Alaska to the Sudan--literally around the world. 

We hear from people on a weekly basis who are helped by this ministry. Most of the email is positive, however, occasionally it gets negative and provides me with helpful feedback. One lady fired some cyber-anger at me because I mentioned abortion in a Mother's Day devotional. Upon further reflection, I see that Mother's Day was not the best day for that subject. Perhaps it intensified guilt in some who have enough guilt to deal with on their own. 

Most of the time, Internet Ministry is to nameless, faceless people. But sometimes it gets personal. Dr. Kevin Payne, Pastor of Salem Avenue Baptist Church got a plea for help from a college professor who had a friend contemplating suicide. He quickly responded, knowing the urgency of the request. A few days later, he heard that the suicide intervention was successful. 

I got a similar request a few months ago. One of the FreshStart subscribers asked that I write a devotional on suicide because one of her friends was contemplating ending her life. Though it was painful, I wrote about my feelings when a church member I counseled killed himself. (Because of the personal nature of the subject, I did not publish this devotional in the church bulletin.) The next week, the lady that requested the devotional wrote back. "Since you were so honest with us, I need to be honest with you. It was not a friend who was contemplating suicide, it was me."

She explained her feelings of hopelessness to me, but promised me that she would not harm herself. After reading her message, I was glad that God allowed us to expand our local ministry to the world. 

Other churches embrace the world with their prayer ministry. Bob Strotman, webmaster of Harmony Grove United Methodist Church sees a prayer ministry as a central part of his site. "We want to use our website as a part of our outreach program so we added a prayer page for people around the world to use."

Pat regularly utilizes the prayer ministry of Bear Creek Baptist Church of Houston, Texas. When she makes a request, she knows it will go straight to the Church's Intercessory Prayer Room that is staffed by volunteers on Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. She prefers using the Internet to access the church's prayer room because, "It allows me to make a prayer request in privacy and without interruptions." 

Last year, Pat needed the Lord's wisdom as she was seeking a new job. The prayer ministry gave her confidence as she interviewed with a company near her home. As a result, she accepted an offer and began a new job.

The headlines are filled with shocking stories of how Satan is using the Internet to promote pornography, gambling, and materialism. Can Christian churches allow Satan to rule over this new technology, or does your church have a responsibility to proclaim the gospel to the whole world--even the cyber-world? 

Yes, Satan is active in Cyberspace wanting to harm and prey on the unsuspecting. Is God leading your church to have a presence on the Internet so you can minister to and pray with them?