Web Evangelism Project CIS

Recently I tried to put together some facts, ideas and figures regarding the ways of developing the evangelistic resources in RU/UAnet. The project proposes to reach out to the fast growing internet audience in the countries of former USSR through building the system of evangelistic resources utilizing the synergies with and the experience of today’s leading Web Evangelism resources developed by Campus Crusade (and not only by them) worldwide. COMMENTS from enybody involved in such kind of ministry ARE VERY WELCOME.


Unprecedented Ministry Opportunity

Today the Internet provides an unprecedented opportunity to “go and make disciples of all nations” living in the countries of former USSR. Historically, Russian became a universal language of communication, sort of Lingua Franca, for the population of about 280 million people of the countries whose territories together cover 1/6th of the Earth’s surface.

According to the latest statistics, the total number of Internet users in these countries is next to 32 million people. If we will apply a “2% rule ” (which says that at any one moment in time, generally two-percent of any audience is at the point of conversion and ready to receive Jesus) to this audience, we’ll end up with a huge number of 640 thousand people (128 thousand just in Ukraine). And it is rapidly growing (see the table below).


Internet Usage and World Population Statistics were updated on March 31, 2005.
Information: www.internetworldstats.com ©Copyright 2005, Miniwatts International, Ltd. All rights reserved

The internet usage in Ukraine survey results (March 2005) indicate, among the other interesting trends, a very high rate of growing number of internet users - 13.5% per month! Within less than half a year the unique internet audience has grown by 60% and today it is close to 6.5 million people – every 7th person in the country or 16% of people 14+ years old!

At the end of March 2005 the unique monthly audience of UAnet (i.e. the number of different people from .UA domain going online at least once during the month) was 6 414 405 people. In comparison with Feb 2005 figures the number of unique internet users grew by 761 012 people or by 13.46%.

Guess, how many web-evangelism resources in Russian (not to mention Ukrainian) which target those people are there? - Almost a pure zero... "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matt 9:37).


Web Evangelism In The World

Since year 2000, when the International Christian community started looking carefully at the new fast emerging media of WWW (see the philosophy of WWW in Appendix 1), the system of excellent online resources focused on evangelism or on training and equipping the emerging breed of web evangelists has been developed.

The TruthMedia project http://www.truthmedia.com/ developed by CCC Canada gives an excellent example of the resource which provides training, tools and services for online Christian ministry. There is nothing even close to that is available in RUnet so far. That's for the one side.

On the opposite side, there is a widely developed system of the resources implementing the “Bridge strategy” (addressing people’s real needs by meeting their felt needs in cultural, educational, counseling, etc. areas).

Good examples of such resources in English are:

- CCC's Power To Change (compare it with the Russian version of it -- will have much fun... interesting, who from the target group will ever visit such a site?);

- IamNext is another valuable site from CCC. Using the same strategy as Women Today Magazine , this highly effective, non-preachy site can easily engage young people and students. Other top teen/student sites: Every Student; Hopenet and Gloriazine ;

- One of the most popular evangelistic sites on the Web (with many millions of hits) is Pastor Dave Bruce's Hollywood Jesus. He used to work in the film/broadcasting industry and writes about recent film releases, not as normal film reviews, but instead looking for parable meanings from the story-line.

Some of the interesting resources were developed lately in the countries of Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia.


The Project: Web Evangelism In CIS Countries

The basic idea behind this project is to create a bunch of the web resources with similar content and functionality in Russian, promote them among appropriate target groups and train train the new generation of web missionaries capable to share the Gospel using new environment, new methods and tools.

The efforts should be made in four main directions:

• Creating the online resources focused on non-believers utilizing the Bridge Strategy; promoting them trough various online and offline activities;
• Creating the online resources focused on Christians who feel a call to serve in the web environment which help to train web missionaries plus organizing appropriate offline activities;
• Creating the informational/analytical online resources dedicated to help the churches and other Christian institutions to effectively jump into the internet ministry;
• Providing for the resources mentioned in 1-3 versions in other languages spoken in the countries of former USSR for easy downloading/printing/distributing training materials, testimonials, etc.

Basically, the content of these online resources can be formed largely using publications from the English resources (created by Campus Crusade Canada and others). The translation, cultural adaptation and enhancement by local materials (personal witnessing, testimonials, etc.) should be made to the best concept utilization.

Available Resources

Today, Ukraine For Christ (UFC) – a Campus Crusade division in Ukraine – has one full time staff person trained in the web evangelism program and capable to take on the leadership and supervision functions in the missionary part of the project: in particular, train and instruct the web missionaries.

Since 2002 UFC is doing an annual magazine for the first year university students called “Bolshaya Premyena” (“Big Brake”) utilizing the same “Bridge concept”. In previous years though it was just slightly associated with UFC online resources, but the editorial team is ready to expand the project heavily into internet and use the well-known brand and the printed magazine with 50 000 run to actively promote the online resources.

The project will be done in close collaboration with Christian publishing group NARD, where people have a good experience in publishing projects, both printed and online, and publishing infrastructure necessary to effectively manage the online content. NARD is a member of GCIA – Global Christian Internet Alliance. It is currently involved in several publishing projects with UFC, including “Bolshaya Premyena” magazine, FamilyMinistry publications, etc. The group is currently involved in launching together with leading Christian internet portal http://www.jesuschrist.ru/ the online version of “Christinity” magazine focused on the next generation of church leaders. The magazine is done with close collaboration with Christianity Today International.

Taking into account that the project has no spatial boundaries, it could be done by the joint forces of the divisions of Campus Crusade in the countries of former USSR.

2005 Project Plans

The content management requires 2-3 freelance translators, 2 editors working full time, 2 persons full time to do web design and programming. The volume of content can be reasonably estimated as about 2.5 mB of text per year.