Going Through New Doors to Preach the Gospel With Power

Aug 14, 2008
8 minutes read time
Going Through New Doors to Preach the Gospel With Power
Going Through New Doors to Preach the Gospel With Power
UCG.org

Members with expertise in the latest technologies and methods are helping map out an effective plan for preaching the gospel to the 21st century world.

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What do you want the Church as an organization to be doing? The resounding answer from recent member surveys is, "Let's preach the gospel more effectively." This is a universal sentiment because it goes to the heart of why we are in the Church. Yes, we all want to be in God's Kingdom, but we also want everybody else to be there! We want to see the horrific suffering of mankind come to an end. An important part of our calling is to preach the gospel, walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who made the supreme sacrifice to save mankind from destruction. Our Heavenly Father did not send Jesus into the world "to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:17). God is in the process of "bringing many sons to glory" (Hebrews 2:10). The world is in the throes of a knowledge explosion. According to e-learning expert Dr. Tony Karrer, the "amount of new information doubles every two years." Yet man has not found the true knowledge of why he exists and what his future will be. Nor can he! Humankind has been cleverly and thoroughly deceived by the god of this world. His nefarious lies have corrupted man's thinking in every academic discipline and every practical endeavor. When God says that Satan "deceives the whole world" (Revelation 12:9), He means just that. From the beginning, the serpent did not attempt to convey only false knowledge, but rather a deadly mix of good and evil. This volatile mixture has allowed man to assist in his own confusion by accomplishing things he can be proud of while thinking he doesn't need God. Our feeble flesh, endowed by the Creator with a human spirit component, has collectively been able to learn about the physical world and the factors that make it work—in minute detail. Yet while we depend with great faith upon the laws of gravity and inertia—and don't hesitate to call them laws—we are incapable of seeing the parallel spiritual laws that govern our quality of life. We can kill people with gunfire from drones controlled by computer operators half a world away, but we cannot live in peace within families. Without God's intervention, man would destroy himself. Jesus said so! We are blessed with the knowledge that God will send Jesus Christ to save mankind from that fate. Such assurance changes the way we think about the future and how we live today. If we are truly converted and looking forward to salvation that brings eternal life, then surely we want to share that "good news" with all people. Our message is the same one that Jesus brought, saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). The need for that message grows more desperate every day. Think about your family, your friends, your coworkers who see no way out of their troubles. How much do they need God's precious truth? Taking Advantage of Communication Advances Having confounded man's communication way back at the tower of Babel, a loving Creator has now allowed man to discover progressive technologies that give His Church the potential to project the gospel into the whole world. Every previous advance in communication tools has been used in that effort to date. Today, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the most far-reaching and cost-effective tool available to us is the Internet. We are already using it at a high level, and I want to publicly thank Aaron Booth, our Web managing editor, for his tireless efforts in this pursuit. Still, we must find new ways to position our message that will make it much easier for people to find on the World Wide Web. Using the Internet, we have the potential to reach many times more people than we can reach in print—or even television. One of the greatest advantages of communicating with people on the Web is that we can provide vast amounts of information and allow each user to determine what he wants to see and hear. The Web gives us the capacity to lead people from milk to meat at whatever speed they choose to go. Those who want to study deeply can do so, but those who reject the message and click off it will have had an opportunity to hear what they chose. They will also be able to find their way back to the material at any time! By contrast, a printed booklet thrown in the trash may be gone forever. Efficient and Cost-Effective Preaching the gospel electronically does not require the high costs of printing and postage, which can go on for years. It reduces the ever-present concern that magazines and booklets are being mailed at great expense to people who simply don't read them, while others go wanting. Many of us believe that we now have the most thorough and accurate written explanations of the true doctrines that the Church has ever had. On the Internet, we can arrange the message in ways that give interested parties almost instant access to anything we teach. By contrast, the time lag for viewers receiving printed literature is several weeks. More and more people are reading such material on the Web, but much of ours is too long and complex for it to attract first contacts. It is also not written with the Internet audience in mind—particularly the need to be highly visible to search engines. Moving more and more of our work to the Internet does not mean we will not use printed literature. Rather that literature will be used more appropriately to help those who are being called by God to a deeper understanding of the truth. However, we will undertake in the immediate future an editing process for converting all of the teachings to shorter, more specific pieces. These will be tailored to the Internet, taking advantage of known words and phrases that the world most often uses when looking for answers to life's problems and biblical questions. We believe that we can attract much more Web traffic to our sites without paid advertising just by careful content management. Investing in the Future The primary expense in building up our Web presence will be in manpower. Once we have gained a contact through the Web, it is important to serve that person regularly through electronic means, rather than in print. As knowledge increases and many run to and fro, as described in Daniel 12, people need a place to turn for answers and help. Since we have been freely given the truth and instructed to freely give it to others, it is critical that the Church become a primary resource for people who are willing to seek God's solutions to the problems they face. If we are going to provide compassionate, personal guidance and counsel in a timely manner to those who seek us out, we will need more people who can respond to their needs. For example, we might need staff to help maintain around-the-clock chat rooms or answer desks. We might ask a number of people with special expertise to maintain blogs about their specialties and link them to Church Web sites. Members will be able to assist in increasing our Web visibility by social bookmarking and social networking. As we reach beyond our current language capacity, we will surely need individuals who can work with subtitles to interface with online translation software. Much of our future manpower needs will be met by volunteers within the Church—and some of you are already doing some of these things—but we will also need full-time staff and equipment. The money to meet these needs will come from print and postage savings as we put more emphasis on communicating with first-time respondents via the Internet instead of through printed magazines and booklets. You should be prepared to see print circulation numbers go down in the short term, not continually up. Nevertheless, printed literature will be sent to all who request it and will be used to feed those who want to study more deeply and prefer having printed material in their hands. The Web will give us access to far more people than we can ever reach in print. Magazines and booklets will continue to be used, but not as our preferred means of sowing the seed throughout the world. Planning to Multiply Our Effectiveness This description covers only part of the planning that is now underway to multiply our effectiveness on the Internet. Many capable, qualified members are working to find the best ways to use the Web for preaching the gospel and to give the administration sound counsel on how to walk boldly through this exciting door. As time goes by, brethren will be asked to answer surveys to help us stay on track with the message and its delivery. We expect more and more members to have the opportunity to get directly involved in spreading the gospel as our Internet strategy develops. As mentioned in the first paragraph, we in the home office know that you are dedicated to preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God and anxious to see us make significant progress in reaching the world. Toward that end, we request your fervent prayers and enthusiastic support. UN
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Larry Salyer

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