Digital Evangelism - how?

I have come across an interesting ministry role and an interesting ministry opportunity.  The role is Digital Evangelist and the opportunity is to participate in an online ministry program.

I caught up with Paul Watson who is the Digital Evangelist and chatted to him about him and the online ministry program he is organizing.

1# Tell us a bit about yourself?

Well…for starters, I was born in Fort Worth, Texas. My parents were in ministry together and started churches in the United States among the deaf community. God called them both into missions and, at the age of seven, I moved with my family to Hong Kong. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I lived in Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and Singapore before returning to the USA for University.

I met my wife, Christi, the first week of University. We were good friends for some time. I proposed to her in my second year. We’ve been married ten years now and have two children. My daughter is 6 and my son just turned 4. We live in Texas and my wife is a science teacher at a local middle school.

I work with CityTeam Ministries and started their Reaching the Online Generation Initiative to create and implement the strategies necessary to catalyze Gospel Movements among online communities.

#2. What does a Digital Evangelist do?

I divide my time roughly into thirds. One third of my time I’m online ‘walking’ through different social media and following the breadcrumbs of human interaction that guide me toward communities. When I find a community, I search for the person of peace Jesus describes in Luke 10. Specifically, that is a lost person who is spiritually seeking for answers and will respond to the Gospel and open up their home or community for a Bible Study to learn more about the God of the Bible.

I spend the second third sharing what I’ve learned with anyone who will listen. My hope is that they will either start looking for persons of peace online or use the experiences God gave me to strengthen their own online presence - whether evangelistic by nature or not.

Finally, I spend time developing the resources required to implement various strategies to minister within the online generation. Often this is involves learning more about the online world, finding partner ministries, finding team members, training other, and raising funds for compassions ministries and various other projects.

That is what I do, but I don’t think that should be what every digital evangelist should do. Most should spend an hour or two a day developing an online presence and engaging lost people in conversations about their lives - all while asking God to lead them to the person He prepared to receive His Word.

#3. If a church or church org. wants to get involved in planting churches/evangelism on the net, what do you suggest?

Well, I would tell them to become students of how the Gospel moves among decentralized systems. These are typically called ‘Church Planting Movements’ or ‘Gospel Planting Movements.’ They are the only offline example we have that imitates what we want to see happen among the largest decentralized system on the plant - the internet. You can learn more about these systems by clicking here, here and here.

Second, I would tell them to jump in and do quite a bit of listening to lost people talking. Don’t try to push a religious agenda, just get in among the people, listen, and pray.

Finally, after a few months of listing and learning to care for people online, I’d get them to implement one or two simple strategies I describe in my blog. Which you can read here and here.  Hopefully they can give you a good start.

#4. Tell us about the summer mission opportunity?

This summer I hope to mobilize five teams of five people each to purposefully set aside time during their day to walk among online lost communities and search for persons of peace. We are asking them to commit to four days of training in one of two (currently) offline locations and then return to their homes. Five days a week they will meet with their team for an hour online for further Bible study and prayer. Then they will spend at least two hours a night infront of the TV (or wherever) with their laptop in their lap. This will last for eight weeks. At the end of eight weeks, we will gather again for a party to celebrate what God did through us and what He taught us in the process. It will be a learning experience for all of us.

The idea is, in these economic times, to keep the expenses to a minimum and to keep the time requirements to just enough to actually accomplish something. Many of our online missionaries will be able to work part-time jobs. Depending on their job requirements, they may be able to hold full-time jobs. They don’t have to raise support for more than their airfare to an offline training location (if you want to start an offline training location in your area, let me know quickly), and room and board during the training. They would also do the same for the two day gathering at the end of the summer. If they need equipment, they can raise support for that, although most probably already have everything they need.

We aren’t charging anything for people to be apart of this program. For more info click here.

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Check out Paul on Twitter: @pauldwatson  and Facebook.

Filed under Future, Social Media/Web 2.0, Web 2.0, resourcing | |