Interview: Utilizing the MySpace Phenomenon for Christ
Tuesday, Sep. 5, 2006 Posted: 8:58:36AM EST
What does the phenomenon of MySpace.com, Xanga.com and other blog sites mean for Christians? The Internet Evangelism Coalition will hold its annual meeting on Sept. 20-21 in Chicago addressing the widely popular community websites. As media, particularly the Internet, is becoming more popular and utilized in the Christian community and Christian versions of blog sites are popping up, the Rev. Robby Richardson, vice-chair of the Internet Evangelism Coalition, gave The Christian Post a preview answer to the aforementioned question.
CP: The goal for the Internet Evangelism Coalition has been to encourage churches to use the Web for evangelism and outreach. Have you seen an increase in the utilization of the Internet especially the phenomenon of MySpace.com among churches?
Richardson: First of all, [the goal has] always been to stimulate Internet evangelism with individuals, churches and parachurches, not just churches. And yes, I think we are seeing an increase in how individuals and churches and other organizations are using the Internet for evangelism. One of the things about the Internet is that it is a constantly changing medium. If you were to go back even in a short history and trace how it was used, it went from informational to interactive. And now the big phenomenon is the whole community aspect which MySpace and Xanga and Facebook and so forth are a great example of. So one of the things we’re trying to do with this conference is to stimulate some thinking about how does that fit into the role of evangelism. It’s not anymore just reprinting a tract and putting it online, but how does this whole phenomenon of the Internet as community building … what opportunities does that give us to communicate the Gospel effectively?
CP: So can you tell me how this phenomenon of community building applies to Christians? What does it mean for them?
Richardson: Part of what we’re going to do is discuss the whole phenomenon of the community sites – the social networking – that the Internet is developing into. What people are doing now, especially the younger generation, are not using the Internet to go to websites for information. They’re using the Internet as a way of communicating, a way of online blogging, pulling together people of like minds and interacting with issues. So what we want to do is to talk about what kind of opportunities and what … dangers is not the right word I’m looking for, but what are the factors that we need to be aware of in using that. What are people looking for? One of the things we always want to make sure we’re doing – whether we’re talking to our neighbor over the back fence or whether we’re talking about using the Internet - is that what we’re doing is honestly communicating a living relationship with Christ, not just parodying words about a religion. That becomes a lot more important in the whole community-based social networking stage because people are interacting about their hearts; they’re not just putting information on a sheet of paper. So the whole opportunity it gives us is sharing our own stories. [Instead of] saying ‘Here’s what religion teaches,’ we can say ‘Here’s my experience,’ ‘Here’s what Christ means to me’ and have an opportunity then of developing that into interaction and relationship with people as opposed to putting a static message on our site and just watching hits or page views.
