World Evangelism: Expanding opportunities for the everyday Christian to get involved

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” - Mark 16:15(NKJV)

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. - Mat 24:14(NKJV)

It is apparent that the church in this generation has more opportunities to accomplish the great commission than any other generation has had and God expects us to go for it.

The mandate is to go into all nations, publishing the gospel and making disciples. Yet today, there are entire cultural or ethnic people groups in some countries that possibly have no Christians or have no known mission effort already operating amidst them. 40.7% of the world’s population belong to people groups still regarded by missiologists as being relatively unreached. The gospel has yet never been preached or heard in certain languages, this factor alone still keeps hundreds of millions of people in darkness today. The challenges to be overcome in carrying out the mission of taking the gospel to every tribe and man, include not just political and religious setups that brutally oppose the gospel or the infiltration of missionaries, but also other difficulties like language and accessibility.

A new world of expanding opportunities

Our world is fast changing, the phenomenon of globalization, as well as, advancement in Information Technology is increasingly modifying the way we view the international world into a global village scope indeed. But I’m afraid this idea is still appearing to be merely a cliché to the church of God. In my opinion, most of the church is yet to wake up to the doors of ministry this presents to us.

World evangelism is the church’s most urgent assignment, and each of our individual assemblies must seek for ways to participate more in this mission. Organising evangelistic outreaches in our locality is one thing, taking it out to relatively unreached or un-churched places in other parts of the world is another. Of-course, not all churches may have the necessary resources for this kind of work (well, the churches that do have the resources would probably be going a long way on the job, except that they may have confused constructing mega church complexes, schools and hospitals that poor people can’t afford with the Great commission ). Taking evangelistic missions beyond our local, national and continental boundaries may require a united and strategic effort from within the global church (or say from within the parts of the globe that has been relatively evangelised) due to the logistic difficulties. Many mission agencies and churches have done well in taking advantage of our age’s possibilities to network with other international ministry efforts.

Opportunities for the everyday Christian

In this article particularly, I’m more interested in pointing at some opportunities for the participation of individual everyday Christians (who have access to the internet) in this end-time harvest of souls and in different forms of ministry, especially using the internet as a tool. There are over 1 billion people who use the Internet for one purpose or the other ranging from email, other business purposes, education and social functions.

Online Prayer Networks

If you have access to the internet, one of the ways you can be involved in world missions is to get involved in the numerous, structured, informed and united prayer programs organised by various Christian organisations committed to supporting missionary work with prayer. It has been said that the history of missions is the history of answered prayer, You can visit websites like operationworld.org, joshuaproject.net (or search for mission prayer alerts online to see other options). You can easily subscribe to prayer RSS feeds or email alerts from most of them. Another way to go about this is to research and download information that will assist you in prayer for specific unreached or un-evangelised people groups you are interested in, then make a daily or weekly prayer schedule, you can even add this to your local church bulletins or pray over it along with friends.

Social Networks and Internet friendship

Standing before the church today is the potential harvest of a generation, that prides itself in its mental and psychological independence, a breed of minds that grow suspicious and defensive at every form of external persuasion, but that seeks answers in a more indirect way and esteem very highly a sense of community and friendship. This field particularly consists of young people many of whom, though they may privately be seeking God, may ordinarily never step into a church. According to google, 2 million people conduct a search on spiritual terms daily. That translates to about two million potential seekers daily, some of which may be from places regarded as being inaccessible to the gospel by conventional missionary approaches due to religio-political barriers. Believers who use the Net, especially those who use it for social purposes often, are right in the middle of this potential harvest. We should always be ready for opportunities to meet such souls seeking for God as we make friends with people we come across in online communities, chat rooms, forums and blogs that we frequent. It may feel like looking for a needle in a haystack (really its not that bad), but think about Christ who would gladly go after a single sheep who had lost its way out of a 100 sheep that he had.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; - 1 Pet 3:15(NKJV)

Look to God for ideas or approaches to apply in this medium, but be open minded and flexible. A mere status report in facebook can put the right question mark on a sinner-friend’s heart, so can an offline instant message or a shrewdly prepared comment about the gospel cast subtly in an article or thread on an issue of common interest, posted in a web forum. Another opportunity is for believers who have a non-religious personal website or blog that enjoys good traffic, to take the liberty of sharing their experience in life, especially how they learnt about God and came to Jesus Christ in the same “expressing-myself-culture” that is popular on the web. This approach of course must be used with well informed moderation to be effective, especially if the site is supposed to be a business site. The general idea is to spark up avenues for faith discussions, that can be built on once a reader opens up.

Charity and professional volunteer efforts

Crisis situations as much as we dread and pray against them have successfully opened doors to the ministry of the gospel in some areas otherwise impregnable. Take for instance, the situation of terror in some war torn areas of the middle east, natural disasters in many other parts of the world, which has made many individuals and families more open to the message of the gospel. Many Christian ministries bring relief to these destitute and needy people and gain a better opportunity of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. The act of kindness shown, in many cases, makes some more conditioned to be interested in the message. You can research on this kind of relief efforts and support with your substance. Technology has made giving over the internet easy by use of credit or debit cards and other forms of online money transfer. if your local church isn’t into much missionary activity or you want to do something beyond what your church is doing, you can commit to supporting numerous genuine missionary agencies elsewhere, even overseas. You can also minister to other Christians in peculiar situations like extreme suffering, persecution or imprisonment by praying for them and also through personal letters of encouragement – it doesn’t matter that they may be complete strangers to you, the bond of Christ is stronger than any earthly bond.

Remember the prisoners as if chained with them – those who are mistreated – since you yourselves are in the body also. - Heb 13:3(NKJV)

In certain cases of unlawful imprisonment of believers or missionaries, public advocacy and petitions by way of letters, phone calls , emails to public offices, law enforcement agencies and embassies towards the freedom of the affected brother(s) or sisters(s), are also useful things you can do.

World evangelism is a huge body of work, organisations committed to this business are constantly in need of certain skills some of which you might be able to offer online if it happens to be your field. For example, IT related skills like programming, web and database design and administration etc. others are writing and language skills. In some special cases some international agency doing work in your locality might need the assistance of a local person, you would easily come across this kind of situations if you frequent missionary websites.

Language Projects

According to Joshua Project, there are approximately 6,900 total languages in the world. About 2,500 of which have some or all of the bible, and about 4,400, spoken by a total of about 634 million people, without scripture portions. Translation projects are in progress in an estimated 1,600 languages that are currently without adequate scriptures , leaving 2500 that need bible translation work to begin. 90% of the world’s people, if they have access to an internet cafe and the funds, can hear the gospel in a language they understand. This implies that you can find Internet radio, or download a gospel recording or Jesus film in any of these languages to send to someone you want to reach out to, but who doesn’t speak your language or to use as a ministry tool in foreign languages, if you are the traveling kind. You can also participate in various language projects for gospel recordings, bible translation and other ministry materials in your local language by researching a number of organisations or ministries who are into such online.

Conclusion

I’ve been able to point out only a few opportunities that are available for any committed Christian who has access to or is active on the internet in this article, but I imagine that there are numerous other great ideas. The important thing to note is that nothing you do as an individual in furthering the gospel stands in isolation. God may be using you to plant a seed in someone else out there’s heart or be using you to water a seed that has already been planted. ‘Point is, the spirit of God is working out harmony in our individual offerings of faithfulness in fulfilling God’s great plan. So if you have opportunity to spend time online or interact with people, keep in mind that you’re a fisher of men, and ambassador of the gospel and you have a very capable tool in your hand.

Blessings.

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