The Historic Opportunity Facing The Church
Today’s church is faced with a historic opportunity. The internet gives us the ability to present the gospel to untold millions of people who have never committed their lives to Christ.

Today’s church is faced with a historic opportunity.

The opportunity which has been presented to us is, in many ways, not unlike the opportunity faced by the first-century church.

The First-Century Church
The first-century church often used a particular strategy to spread the gospel. And that strategy took advantage of the circumstances and the technology of the day.

Walter Wilson (to whom I am indebted for many of the thoughts and concepts in this introduction), in his excellent book The Internet Church, describes the circumstances which God had orchestrated to facilitate the spread of the gospel in the first century.

The Roman Empire had built a series of roads to enable them to quickly deploy their armies throughout the empire. Koiné Greek had become the common language throughout the empire. And the widespread use of writing had become the cutting-edge technology of the day.

The church’s strategy was to use all of those “technological developments” to spread the gospel.

While the Roman Empire built their road system to allow their armies to move quickly, Christian missionaries took advantage of that road system to spread the gospel.

They would travel the roads from city to city, and when they reached a city, they would very often go to the “agora,” the marketplace - the location in each city where the majority of the residents, as well as the community’s most influential thinkers, gathered on a regular basis to obtain information and for social interaction. And it was there, in the midst of the “agora,” that Christian missionaries would declare the gospel, using the common language of Koiné Greek.

And then the apostles employed written communication in the form of letters or epistles to encourage and teach existing believers. And these letters were delivered to churches via the Roman system of roads.¹

Today’s Opportunity
Today, the church is faced with a similar historic opportunity.

In many ways, English is becoming a worldwide language. It is the language of international business and economics.

Secondly, in many ways, it is no longer necessary to use roads or other physical means of travel to reach other parts of the world. Today, the “information superhighway” provides the means by which we can travel throughout the world.

The internet provides us with a means of communication to reach the entire world.

Thirdly, the cutting-edge technology of the day, the internet, provides us with a means of communication to reach the entire world.²

Finally, the “agora” of today is in many ways no longer a physical place and is much vaster than the first-century agora.

The internet (consisting primarily of the World Wide Web, email, usenet newsgroups, chatrooms, and instant messaging) is the new “agora,” the “place” where an increasing number of people, and certainly where some of the world’s most influential people, gather.

The internet is a “place” where people come together to:

• buy and sell;
• exchange ideas and philosophies;
• discuss political and social issues; and,
• access a wide range of information.

The following statistics demonstrate the fact that the internet is fast becoming the “agora” of the modern day (we should keep in mind that statistics concerning the internet are out-of-date the moment they are released; these statistics are included only for purposes of illustration - we don’t make any claims to perfect accuracy):

• Over 600 million people are currently “on the internet."³

• 38 first-time users join the net every minute in the United States alone.⁴

• In Peru, for the price of a postage stamp, you can get 15 minutes in front of a computer in an internet café and log on to a free email account and surf the web.⁵

• Computers are now outselling television sets in the United States and Japan.⁶

• Current email volumes exceed the delivery volumes of the U.S. Post Office.⁷

• Every second, 36 new web pages come online (just to put that in perspective, in the United States, there is a birth every 8 seconds).⁸

• 1.5 billion instant messages are exchanged every week.⁹

• Almost every university in the United States, Canada and Western Europe provides students with internet access. Eighty-six percent of United States college students use the internet on a regular basis.¹⁰

• Seventy-three percent of United States teenagers regularly use the internet. Using the internet is second only to movies as a pastime among American teens.¹¹

Wilson writes this of the opportunity which has been presented to us:

This is just the beginning of a wrenching change that is racing throughout the world. The term used to describe this change is radical discontinuity - change so fast that we have no explanation for it. If you think that all of this comes out of Silicon Valley, you’re on the wrong track. This is not about human inventions or creative schemes. These developments are about something much bigger and far more dramatic. In fact these events are not about technology at all - they are about the Great Commission. Change this big is being orchestrated by God, not by man.

God is doing something big, and we had best be clearheaded about what is going on around us. The church is in the information business, and we should not be surprised that God has raised up information technology to communicate His Word to the entire world. Christians again must travel the network, only this time it is electronic. This time it is the information superhighway.¹²

From a Silicon Valley perspective, we think we’re changing history with our technology, but nothing could be further from the truth. From a Christian perspective, God is doing something historic, and we need to pay serious attention to the tools He is giving us. There is no doubt he intends for us to use them to spread His Word.¹³

The internet should be a core component of the church’s strategy to reach the world with the gospel.

Today, the church has been given the opportunity to travel the world via the internet and declare the gospel in the midst of today’s marketplace. The internet is therefore a core component of what the church’s strategy should be to reach the world with the gospel.

Various Methods of Outreach
There has been much discussion of late among Christian thinkers about how best to use the internet (websites, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, etc.) for evangelism and outreach to unbelievers.

Various methods are often discussed, including evangelistic websites, frequenting chat rooms, sending email, etc.

While various methods of internet evangelism are discussed, however, we often forget a foundational biblical principle of evangelism which is just as crucial for internet evangelism as it is for more traditional methods of outreach.

Biblical Principles of Evangelism
According to the New Testament, authentic Christian community is the foundation of effective evangelism and outreach.

In John 17:21-23, Jesus prayed, “....that they may all be one, even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one. I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

Authentic Christian community is the foundation of effective evangelism and outreach.

According to these verses, if Jesus’ disciples are one, the world will believe that the Father has sent Jesus. If Jesus’ disciples are perfected in unity, the world will know that the Father sent Jesus and that the Father loves them as He loves Jesus.

The converse is true. If Jesus’ disciples are not one, then the world will not believe that the Father sent Jesus (this also implies that the world will not believe in Jesus’ mission - the world will not believe that Jesus died for their sins).

If Jesus’ disciples are not perfected in unity, then the world will not know that the Father sent Jesus and that the Father loves them as He loves Jesus.

This means that the environment of an authentic Christian community is required for effective evangelism and outreach. A conversion which takes place without a prior experiential knowledge of authentic Christian community must be considered suspect in its depth and permanence.

The Challenge Which Faces Us
If it’s true that the internet should be a core component of the church’s strategy to reach the world with the gospel, and if it’s also true that the environment of an authentic Christian community is required for effective evangelism and outreach, those two facts beg the following question: how can the internet be used for evangelism and outreach while maintaining an environment of authentic Christian community?

How can the internet be used for evangelism while maintaining and environment of authentic Christian community?

To answer this question, we make two foundational assumptions - that evangelism is at its best:

• when it is local (at most, county-based); and,
• when it places unbelievers in ongoing contact with more than one local believer with a vital faith.

These are the core concepts behind what is sometimes called “oikos evangelism” with “oikos” being the Greek word for “household.” It has been increasingly recognized by church growth theorists that the primary method of evangelism reflected in the New Testament and the most effective form of evangelism today is one in which believers reach out to the people who make up their “oikos” - their family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc., and that the message of the gospel spreads through these small networks consisting of believers and unbelievers who have ongoing contact and relationship with each other.

Michael Green, author of the foundational work Evangelism in the Early Church, agrees that the oikos, “consisting of blood relations, slaves, clients and friends, was one of the bastions of Graeco-Roman society. Christian missionaries made a deliberate point of gaining whatever households they could as lighthouses .... from which the Gospel could illuminate the surrounding darkness.”

Andrew Careaga, in his book E-vangelism, adds the following insights:

For many Christians, evangelism has become institutionalized, impersonal, and far removed from our everyday lives. We tend to think of evangelism as a professional ministry - the duty of the pastor or select lay leaders in our church, people with “the gift.” With our culture’s emphasis on bigness - huge, evangelistic extravaganzas, big-name preachers, and mega-churches - we sometimes forget that many people come to know Christ not through the efforts of superstar evangelists, but because of personal contact with caring and devoted Christian friends.

Building relationships with people - one to one - is the New Testament model for evangelism. As pastor, evangelist, and missionary Tom Stebbins notes, the majority of early Christians were influenced by those in their “networks of trust relationships,” in which the gospel is presented by someone the person already knows and trusts. With this approach, the gospel can be shared in an unhurried manner, and the witness’ lifestyle, already known to the non-believer, adds credibility to the message.¹⁴

How can “oikos evangelism” take place in the context of the internet?

How can “oikos evangelism” take place in the context of the internet, which affords us unprecedented breadth of communication, but which also can often serve as a barrier or impediment to authentic relationship?¹⁵

How can we take advantage of the cutting-edge technology we have been given and yet remain faithful to the biblical call to authentic community as the foundation of effective outreach? Are the technology and the biblical call mutually exclusive?

How can our two foundational assumptions be maintained in the context of internet evangelism? How can internet evangelism be local (at most, county-based), and how can internet evangelism be used to place unbelievers in ongoing contact with more than one local believer with a vital faith?

Our Challenge: To use the internet to place an individual unbeliever in close contact with several believers with a vital faith who live in the same county as the unbeliever, and to repeat that facilitation of contact numerous times.

This is our challenge - to use the internet to place an individual unbeliever in close contact with several believers with a vital faith who live in the same county as the unbeliever, and to repeat that facilitation of contact numerous times.

The Solution to The Challenge
The solution to the challenge of how to use the internet for evangelism and outreach while maintaining an environment of authentic Christian community lies in an enhancement of a concept in internet evangelism which is growing in popularity - community websites with an evangelistic focus.

Tony Whitaker of Web-Evangelism.com describes the concept effectively:

Community pages are the amazing strategy for online outreach which very few people are yet using. The concept is to create a site based on the local community - town, local area/county, state, even a small country. The site must offer the best secular links for the community in a range of categories. It must be a genuinely useful resource at this level. But it also contains appropriate Christian links in various categories. The more comprehensive it is, the more that people in the area will use it as their one-stop local neighborhood site, maybe setting it as a ‘start page’ in their browsers, and become frequent return visitors.

The whole strategy is based on having secular links which really are well-chosen and useful. A good site based on this strategy could become the definitive resource for a town or area - thereby getting potentially thousands of hits a day. The Christian links are there when people wish to look at them, and precisely because they are not preachy and in your face, they have credibility. The page should not ‘look’ Christian at all.

There are many other creative ways that a Community Portal could genuinely serve people in its local area and build popularity:

• Feature short stories from local writers
• Showcase work of local photographers
• Children’s pages and competitions
• Online games
• Chat rooms and bulletin boards on specified topics
• Host announcement pages for local organizations if they don’t have their own pages
• Sales, wants, and swaps bulletin board
• Two-way email discussion lists on matters of local interest¹⁶

The potential flaw in this approach is that it does not facilitate contact between believers and unbelievers in a particular locality, which, if our assumptions are correct, is crucial for the effectiveness of internet evangelism.

We need websites which will draw general traffic (not just believers), and will create interest among unbelievers in the stories of real people who are believers, and which will then facilitate contact between unbelievers and believers.

SantaCruzLife.com will be such a website.

SantaCruzLife.com
SantaCruzLife.com will be a website dedicated to presenting the gospel to unbelievers in Santa Cruz County, California by facilitating contact between local believers and unbelievers with similar interests. Such contact will be facilitated primarily through the presentation of hundreds of profiles of local believers, corresponding to various categories of interest.

SantaCruzLife.com will be a website dedicated to presenting the gospel to unbelievers in Santa Cruz County.

SantaCruzLife.com will draw traffic to its website through becoming the de facto web-based resource for residents of Santa Cruz County. This will be accomplished by featuring a comprehensive set of links to websites of particular interest to Santa Cruz County residents, a county-wide calendar of events, local news items of interest to families, a classified advertisement system, etc. The site will include links to the websites of local businesses, schools, churches, youth organizations, community organizations, family resources, senior resources, government agencies, employment resources, entertainment options, etc.

In many ways, we will develop a “Yahoo!-like” portal for Santa Cruz County.

Through the website’s comprehensive set of links, as well as ongoing marketing activities such as search engine optimization, online and print advertising, word of mouth, etc., SantaCruzLife.com will draw an increasing number of visitors. Our goal will be for SantaCruzLife.com to become the web-based resource to which Santa Cruz County residents turn first for information on their county.

SantaCruzLife.com will then intrigue those visitors who do not know Christ by presenting online profiles of hundreds of vital believers living within the county. These online profiles will include:

• life summaries;

• interview transcripts which will focus on the believers’ interests as well as their testimonies (presented in a tasteful, non-preaching manner since our initial objective is not conversion but a face-to-face introduction of unbelievers to believers);

• video portions of the interviews;

• photographs; and,

• collections of favorite web resources which will correspond to various subjects and interest categories which will appeal to Santa Cruz County residents.

The idea will be to present an engaging profile of each believer which will include information on their interests and life experiences (auto racing, surfing, cancer, music, art, hepatitis c, etc.), but which will also include a tasteful presentation of their testimony and how their relationship with Jesus integrates with their interests and life experiences.

We will present engaging profiles of believers, including information on their interests and life experiences, but also including tasteful presentations of their testimonies.

We will obtain introductions to believers to be profiled through our relationships with the pastors of local churches. We will also make our profiles available to the churches of profiled believers for use on their websites.

SantaCruzLife.com will enable website visitors to contact the people who have been profiled on the website through the use of email and instant messaging technology, thus facilitating face-to-face contact between unbelievers and believers with similar interests and life experiences.

These contacts will draw unbelievers into the circle of friends and acquaintances of one or more believers, thus exposing them to the authentic Christian community which will demonstrate to them the love of God and the reality of Jesus’ mission.

For example, a page of links to cancer resources in Santa Cruz County would also contain links to profiles of 3-5 believers who are cancer survivors and who live in Santa Cruz County. These profiles would include general information about the believer, how they felt when they discovered they had cancer, how their faith enabled them to cope with the disease, what their ongoing struggles are, etc., along with the opportunity to contact the believer through an email form.

Our ultimate goal will be to include at least 3-5 profiles for every link category on the website.

Other categories which will include such profiles will be (this is definitely not an exhaustive list):

• single parenting
• surfing
• music (various genres and artists)
• auto racing
• art
• parenting children with terminal illnesses
• camping
• vegetarianism
• spirituality
• hepatitis c
• accounting
• heart disease
• baseball
• strokes
• gourmet restaurants
• foreign students studying in the U.S.
• gardening
• owning dogs
• owning cats
• stamp collecting
• financial planning
• local authors
• environmentalism
• etc., etc.

Through this system of interest-related profiles, our mission of connecting believers and unbelievers in Santa Cruz County and facilitating face-to-face relationships will be accomplished.

Through this system of interest-related profiles, our mission of connecting believers and unbelievers in Santa Cruz County and facilitating face-to-face relationships will be accomplished.

We will maintain ongoing contact with all profiled believers (at a minimum, through online message boards, chats, emails, etc., but ideally through face-to-face conversations and phone meetings) to monitor our progress toward meeting our objectives and to encourage profiled believers in their contacts with unbelievers facilitated through SantaCruzLife.com.

Our Target Audience
SantaCruzLife.com will focus on a target audience of people living within Santa Cruz County, California who have not committed their lives to Jesus Christ.

The approximately 260,000 residents of Santa Cruz County¹⁷ are generally middle class (the median family income was $65,500/year, higher than the national average of $52,500/year)¹⁸, evenly split between male and female¹⁹, and primarily Caucasian (69.3%) and Hispanic (24.9%).²⁰

The population of the county is generally well-educated, with the number of high school and college graduates higher than both the state and national averages.²¹

80% of the population of Santa Cruz County uses computers, and of those who do use computers, 85% use the internet, which bodes well for our strategy.²²

Approximately 70% of Santa Cruz County residents use the internet.

29.8% of the population has some affiliation with a Christian church. This is much lower than the national trend, as 43.75% of the U.S. population has a similar affiliation.²³ These figures do not entirely represent what we would think of as committed, evangelical or born-again Christians. They only represent the percentage of the population which claims some affiliation with a Christian church.

George Barna’s “Faith of Choice Index” estimates that 11% of Americans who claim an affiliation with Christianity actually subscribe to what he calls “Biblical Christianity” ("full acceptance of the authority of the Bible, total trust in Christ for salvation, involvement in evangelism, active participation in the life of a church, seeking continuing and more intense spiritual development, life informed by faith principles, moral absolutes exist.").

He estimates that 46% of Americans who claim an affiliation with Christianity actually subscribe to what he calls “Conventional Christianity” ("total trust in Christ for their salvation, involvement in church life, appreciation for the Bible, general privatization of their faith, life only vaguely influenced by faith views, morality is relative.")

Finally, Barna estimates that 43% of Americans who claim an affiliation with Christianity actually subscribe to what he calls “Cultural Christianity” ("universalism and works-based theology, nominal church involvement [’Christmas Christians’], non-practicing, Christian in name and [perhaps] heritage only, morality is relative.") ²⁴

If we apply those national percentages to the figures cited above for Santa Cruz County, we can estimate that 3.3% of the population in Santa Cruz County subscribe to “Biblical Christianity,” 13.7% of the population in Santa Cruz County subscribe to “Conventional Christianity,” and 12.8% of the population in Santa Cruz County subscribe to “Cultural Christianity.”

Although we at Strategic Digital Outreach believe that Barna’s definition of “Biblical Christianity” is the ideal, we also recognize that those who subscribe to “Conventional Christianity,” according to Barna’s definition, are trusting in Christ for their salvation and are thus believers. This would mean that 17% of the population in Santa Cruz County are believers. The target audience for SantaCruzLife.com is made up of the approximately 216,000 unbelievers (the remaining 83% of the population) who reside in Santa Cruz County, California.

Specific Objectives
We have 4-5 specific objectives for each of our first three years of operation, as follows:

First Year Objectives

• Objective #1: Launch initial website at http://www.santacruzlife.com with a comprehensive set of links to websites in Santa Cruz County
• Objective #2: Obtain buy-in and philosophical support from a minimum of 10-20 local pastors
• Objective #3: Add 50 profiles
• Objective #4: Promote website through search engine positioning, advertising, word-of-mouth, etc. so that site will draw traffic of at least 2,000 unique visitors per day

Second Year Objectives

• Objective #1: Obtain buy-in and philosophical support from a minimum of 20 additional local pastors
• Objective #2: Add an additional 100 profiles
• Objective #3: Increase traffic to at least 5,000 unique visitors per day
• Objective #4: Facilitate a minimum of 50 face-to-face meetings between believers and unbelievers in Santa Cruz County
• Objective #5: Begin considering other counties in which to duplicate the concept behind SantaCruzLife.com

Third Year Objectives

• Objective #1: Obtain buy-in and philosophical support from a minimum of 20 additional local pastors
• Objective #2: Add an additional 100 profiles
• Objective #3: Increase traffic to at least 10,000 unique visitors per day
• Objective #4: Facilitate a minimum of 200 face-to-face meetings between believers and unbelievers in Santa Cruz County
• Objective #5: Facilitate launch of website in another county to duplicate the concept behind SantaCruzLife.com.

What Can I Do To Help?
We have identified several ways in which you can help us in this ministry:

Pray For Us
We would very much appreciate it if you would pray for us in the following areas:

• Please pray that we will be able to launch SantaCruzLife.com soon.
• Pray that the website will be effective in presenting the gospel to unbelievers in Santa Cruz County.
• Pray that the Lord will prepare the hearts of those who will visit the website.
• Pray for a spiritual bond to be created between unbelievers and believers with common interests and life experiences.
• Pray that we will obtain the necessary financial support to initiate and continue the ministry.

Advertise On ChristianCruz.com
Revenues which are earned through advertising opportunities on ChristianCruz.com go to offset the expenses of ChristianCruz.com but also serve to support the ministry of SantaCruzLife.com.

Tell Your Pastor
We are convinced that SantaCruzLife.com will not be successful without the support of local pastors throughout Santa Cruz County. Because of this, we would be very grateful if you would be willing to tell your pastor about SantaCruzLife.com and point him/her to these pages on ChristianCruz.com.

Tell Your Believing Friends
The more believers who learn about SantaCruzLife.com, the more they will ultimately (once the site is live) recommend it to their friends as a valuable resource for residents of Santa Cruz County. Such recommendations can only serve to enhance the effectiveness of the website.

Volunteer Your Technology Skills
As we envision a website which will present hundreds of profiles and interviews, we anticipate needing volunteers who possess expertise in the areas of database-driven websites, streaming media, and website security.

Allow Us To Interview You
Since SantaCruzLife.com is only in the formulative stages, we are not currently conducting interviews for the website. However, if you would like your story to be considered for inclusion on SantaCruzLife.com, please speak to your pastor and ask him/her to recommend you to us as an interview candidate.

Monthly Financial and/or One-Time Project Support
We are currently exploring avenues through which we will be able to accept tax-deductible monthly financial support as well as one-time donations to cover the expenses related to various equipment purchases and projects. We have an estimated monthly budget of $10,000.00. If you are interested in providing monthly financial support or in making a one-time donation, please let us know, and we will place your name on a list of interested parties so we can contact you when we have the ability to accept tax-deductible donations.

If you would like to participate in the ministry of SantaCruzLife.com in any of the ways described above, please send an email to us at IWillHelp@SantaCruzLife.com

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¹ Walter Wilson, The Internet Church (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000), pgs. 12-15.
² Ibid, pgs. xiii-xiv.
³ “How Many Online” (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online), Nua Internet Surveys.
⁴ Walter Wilson, “The Internet Moment in Human History,” Christian Computing Magazine, September 2002.
⁵ Leonard Sweet, Plenary Session, Internet Evangelism Conference, November 2, 2000.
⁶ Wilson, The Internet Church (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000), pg. xii.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Wilson, “The Internet Moment in Human History.”
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ September 15, 2002 press release (http://www.pewinternet.org/releases/release.asp?id=50), Pew Internet & American Life.
¹¹ “Teenage Life Online” (http http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=36), Pew Internet & American Life.
¹² Ibid, pgs. xiii-xiv.
¹³ Ibid, pg. 4.
¹⁴ Andrew Careaga, E-vangelism (Lafayette, Louisiana: Vital Issues Press, 1999), pgs. 29-30.
¹⁵ While chat rooms, instant messaging, and email lists can be valuable supplements to community, it is our conviction that electronic modes of communication will never replace the accountability and encouragement that is found in face-to-face Christian community. When I’m in front of my computer, I can always “turn you off” if I don’t like what you say. That’s not so easy in the context of face-to-face relationship.
¹⁶ http://www.gospelcom.net/guide/mypage/community.php
¹⁷ United Way of Santa Cruz County, Community Assessment Project (2001), pg. 2.
¹⁸ Ibid, pg. 28
¹⁹ Ibid, pg. 5
²⁰ Ibid, pg. 3
²¹ Ibid, pg. 91
²² Ibid, pg. 94
²³ http://www.thearda.com
²⁴ George Barna, The Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1996), pgs. 124-125.