Planning activities for your church or group

We encourage churches and other Christian groups to build a short ‘web evangelism awareness’ program about within services or other activies.

This focus day material is designed particularly for individual churches. However, we also encourage other Christian groups and organizations to hold an Internet Evangelism Day. Such groups include:

• Bible colleges and seminaries
• Christian schools
• Interdenominational groups
• City/area inter-church collaborative fellowships
• Mission agencies
• Conferences

Churches

We suggest that churches create a slot within Sunday services for a Web Evangelism focus, and/or use part of an after-church, midweek or housegroup meeting. This focus could be:

• as short as a 2-minute announcement in conjunction with a paragraph in your announcement sheet. Here is a possible announcement wording. This could be augmented by playing our 1-minute MP3 listen | download over the church PA system.
• a 10+ minutes presentation slot using your own choice of the downloads from this page
• an entire meeting around this theme
• Bible readings and sermon can also reflect the urgent need for worldwide evangelism

An IE Day program can take many forms! Please read these examples before continuing down the page. Read how other churches have done it.

Even if your church program is already planned, please at least use printed/verbal announcements on that Sunday, to draw your members attention to the IE Day site.

If your church already has a specific mission interest in one country or area of the world, you could focus on this country/region within the context of online evangelism, using statistics [www.web-evangelism.com/world.php] and examples of websites targeting this audience. Please ask us for further information or examples of specific web outreach to particular countries.

If your church already has an effective website, you can also use IE Day to honor your webmaster or web team, and allow them to share about their ministry with the fellowship. An interview format might work well for this.

Other groups

Other types of Christian organization can find appropriate ways to include IE Day material within their own settings. Our material will easily expand to fit a one-hour seminar format, or even a series of seminars. If your organization is already involved in online outreach, you can build your own ministry emphasis into IE Day.

Even if you are unable to arrange a specific Day program within your organization, please feature IE Day in your newsletter, or link to this website.

Our resources

You can build a short program to suit your needs, based on the downloads and other ideas we offer. These will be continually updated and developed, so please bookmark this page and return from time to time to check for new material or updated versions. In particular, there may be new video/music clips listed, and the PowerPoint presentation and presenter’s notes are occasionally upgraded. Get update notifications using the ‘Page change advice’ link at foot of page.

Ideally, you need a data projector for the PowerPoint and videos: if you do not have a projector, there are alternatives. Please encourage us by telling us you hope to create an IE Day program. We have spent hundreds of volunteer hours creating this resource, and it is a blessings to know how it is being used!

• PowerPoint or Flash slide presentation
  Our PowerPoint/Flash presentation summarizes the message of this site for a general audience. It is designed for a presenter to explain the summary points on each slide. An essential set of Presenter’s Notes is provided to help the speaker do this (in Word or RTF versions). [More advice on using this set, how to view or edit it if you do not have the PowerPoint program, and general advice on how to create good PowerPoints.]

  Please edit, shorten, or customize this presentation for your own needs. If you are not familiar with creating/editing PowerPoints – is is extremely easy to add, delete, temporarily hide, or re-arrange the order of slides according to your own requirements. You can also embed video clips or audio clips into your presentation if you wish. (However, editing is only possible with PowerPoint or OpenOffice – you cannot edit the Flash or PDF versions.)

  You might wish, for example, to present a short selection of perhaps 5-10 slides within a church service slot, but then show a longer presentation in an after-church or midweek meeting.

  Note that updates of this slide presentation have a version number. This is displayed bottom left-hand corner of slide 1.
  Preview version 2.3 in Flash or Preview version 2.3 in PDF – watch the presentation in Flash or PDF, or download if you do not have PowerPoint or OpenOffice installed. (With a dialup connection, takes about 10 seconds to appear in browser window. How to use later as a presentation)
  Download version 2.3 – left or right-click depending on browser, select ‘save link as’ or ‘save target as’, choose a suitable directory on your hard drive to download into, and press ‘Save’ button. 7Mb file: download time – dialup: 15 minutes, broadband: 2 minutes. [en francais]
  Presenter’s notes version 2.3 – MS Word commentary and advice to accompany latest-version PowerPoint presentation. [RTF version] Left or right-click the link (depending on browser) and choose a suitable directory to save the file.
  

• Videos
  We offer four 5-minute video shorts – testimonies of people who became Christians through internet ministry. These are ideal to project within a meeting, to demonstrate the Web working in the lives of real people. We also have links to other evangelism-challenge video shorts which could be used for an IE Day presentation, or in some other context. [Note: when downloaded, these videos run in better quality from your hard disk than when you view them ‘streamed’.)
  View or download here

• Drama
  Our short dramas are a memorable way of presenting the need for effective evangelism. Do you have people in your church or organization who can act? Perhaps the youth group? Some could also be adapted for puppets too. If you have never tried drama before, maybe now is the time to start!
  • Why drama is useful and biblical
  • View our short free drama scripts
  An alternative to a full drama: dress up some younger children in a variety of worldwide ethnic costumes, to demonstrate the global potential for online evangelism. They might also perform an appropriate song (for instance Lord, Help Me To Tell Your Story). Or if you have someone in your church gifted in puppet ministry, maybe they can develop a brief skit.

• Articles and handouts
  Consider a special feature in your newsletter, or a stand-alone handout about web evangelism, to distribute on IE Day. You can use or adapt any of this site’s pages, or the short articles on the publicity page (which can also be syndicated into any website using a single line of Javascript).

  Particularly suitable are:
  One-page 400-word handout: Word format | RTF version
  1300-word overview of web evangelism is one of several longer articles to consider. Also available in RTF.

• Music
  You may wish to use a musical introduction or interlude within an IE Day program. If you have a church music group, they can choose and sing appropriate material; or you may have pre-recorded material of your own that can be used. We also offer a range of evangelism-challenge songs for you to download in MP3 format (plus a range of other suggested titles). They are mostly available with full vocals, MP3 backing tracks, and lyric/chords/music:
  Listen or download here

• Live Internet
  If you can use an internet-connected computer with a projector, then consider a brief live demonstration of some chosen websites within your IE Day program. This could include examples of outreach websites such as PowertoChange.com or WomenTodayMagazine.com. Or you could actually demonstrate the use of adding sensitive feedback to bulletin boards and forums such as YahooAnswers.

• Quiz
  A short quiz with questions relating to Internet Evangelism could be a fun interlude, and may also keep people concentrating on the program better! You could devise specific questions relating to the materials you have chosen to use. Questions might include worldwide usage figures for the Web (possibly multiple choice), or facts about any of the participants in the video clips, if you have used these.

• Evangelism & Population ticker
  This world population/evangelism status table can be challenging if projected at some point during a presentation, or left on-screen when the projector is not otherwise being used. [Tips for projecting in full-screen mode, resizing fonts, and saving page]
  View ticker

• Discussion questions
  This short set of questions about Internet Evangelism can be used for individual reflection or group discussion. They could be printed on the back of our single-sheet handout. (Note that all pages of this site are printer-friendly, and can be also used within group discussion, and also reprinted in any newsletter.)
  View questions

• Prayer
  You could include a short prayer time relating to some aspect of online evangelism. This might take in prayer for:
  • known individuals and ministries involved in online outreach. (If you do not know any, perhaps select one or more of these web evangelists.)
  • the development and effectiveness of your church website
  • that God would call many more people into this type of ministry, and reveal any plan He has for those in your meeting

• Poster
  This poster in PDF format for your noticeboard will print out in color or grayscale, on A4 or 8½" x 11" paper. It is also available as a 2-on-1 sheet, to cut up as flyers.
  View posters

• Photos
  We offer a range of photographs. These can be used to accompany printed news about IE Day or the high-resolution versions can be printed out as display material on a church noticeboard for the Day.
  View photos

• Books
  We recommend a small range of excellent books which cover internet evangelism, broader principles of effective outreach, and related topics. Please consider adding copies to your church bookstall or library. You could also feature one or more of these titles as a short book review spot, within future services or in your church newsletter.

• People
  If you have someone within your church or organization already involved in online evangelism or the church website, this is an ideal opportunity for them to share about their activities and vision (perhaps in interview format). This may enable you to support and encourage them in a more informed way.

  If your church already supports an organization involved in web evangelism, ask them for specific material about their ministry to include within your program. It may even be possible for them to send a special speaker. We also may be able to suggest available speakers in many parts of US, Canada, S. America, UK, Europe and Australia, who can also give related web evangelism seminars at other times in the year. Please ask.

• Screensaver and free stuff for your members
  Please encourage your church members to download the free screensaver. Alternatively, you are free to copy this onto CD to distribute to your members. You might also wish to add our other free resources to such a CD – the MP3 music and the PDF book downloads.

• Other ideas...
  Banners
  We cannot offer any downloadable banners! But if you have people with the appropriate gifts to make them, church banners or other types of visual aid could give an added emphasis on your Day.

  Practical sessions
  If there are still people in your church unfamiliar with the Web, you could offer at a different time small group hands-on web experience, studying different outreach websites. This could include an informal discussion time, using our downloadable discussion questions.

  Some churches also plan to teach and implement chat room witness on IE Day.

  Cross-cultural missions and Bible colleges
  Missions should also look at this page [www.web-evangelism.com/mission-agencies.php] and Bible colleges/seminaries should study these links. [www.web-evangelism.com/training.php] You may wish to create a longer in-depth seminar for your staff and students.

How to plan it

Use your group’s normal decision-making and planning procedures to decide how to implement IE Day in your own context. There is a 3-minute MP3 and short PowerPoint presentation you can use to describe the purpose and scope of IE Day to your decision-making body, download this 17-slide set and accompanying notes. NB:
  • This is not the same as the PowerPoint/Flash set to show on IE Day – it is purely to help an executive group understand more about the Day.
  • Not got PowerPoint? Alternatives and editing advice. Preview in Flash – watch the presentation in Flash (takes about 10 seconds to appear in browser window using a dialup connection), or download 165k file if you do not have PowerPoint installed. If using it in a presentation, press F11 for full-screen. More help on downloading and viewing.
Download PowerPoint – 2Mb presentation to decision-makers
Accompanying notes – slide-by-slide comments [RTF version]
There may also be contexts where you can use a 10-minute audio/Flash presentation by eChurch Essentials, which presents a strong case for effective online evangelism strategies: view presentation.

It may help if you have one or two people who really understand the nature and challenge of the Web, who can be delegated to carry out the practical preparations, and involve others as needed.

Please register your intention to hold an IE Day. It places no obligation on you, but encourages us – and others involved – to know how many churches and other groups are planning activities. It also allows us to send you our email newsletter, with ideas and news.

Before the Day

• Display our downloadable printed posters in your church building or organization.
• Tell your members about IE Day in your newsletter or website, or even use the mini-PowerPoint or MP3 audio file as a taster. Encourage them to check this site and its related links.
• If your plans are particularly comprehensive, they may deserve wider publicity. Consider sending press releases [www.web-evangelism.com/writing-pressreleases.php] to the local media. Perhaps you could invite Christians from other locations to share in your IE Day program. We can also add such special programs to our events page.
• Decide what elements will work best in your church services or other meetings.
• If you have good ideas for presenting an IE Day focus that we have not suggested here, please email us. Your suggestions could help influence people around the globe!
• Do test the downloads you plan to use, with the equipment they will be running on. Strange incompatibilities can happen! Be sure that the PowerPoint or video clips play on the actual computer to be used on the Day, either installed on the hard disk, or run from a CD/DVD or memory stick.

  NOTE: a home-burned CD/DVD will not always play on a computer CD/DVD that does not also have its own burner. It really is best to actually transfer any PowerPoint or video clips to the computer hard disk that will be used to play them.

  If you are connecting your own laptop into a church projection system, try it in advance, ensuring that sound output for the video is working well, and that it is compatible with the data projector. Be sure that you, or the computer operator, knows exactly where each file is located, when it is to be used within the program, and how to adjust the video screen size or display a browser window in fullscreen mode.

• Practice the PowerPoint presentation. Time yourself. You should not speak faster than 50 words a minute, so you will probably need about one minute per slide. Be sure you know which transitions are automatic and which need a mouse-click. (Clicking when they are automatic spoils the effect.)

After the Day
Please discuss at leadership level the outcome of your IE Day participation. Here are specific questions to consider. Then please send us a report of your experience.

Possible ongoing outcome to consider: a study program based on one or more of the recommended IE Day books. Most of these contain study questions. Many are ideal for discussion within housegroups or communication seminars. Some churches have organized church-based web evangelism training using these resources.

One of our recommended books I Hate Witnessing has a related downloadable 70-minute talk which is very useful in a small-group context (possibly split into two sessions):
Part 1 | Part 2

We also have other MP3 presentations which could be used in an ongoing study program.

Alternatively, our discussion questions can be used in any group setting.

Meetings
You could also arrange small meetings to help those who would like some involvement in online evangelism. Suggestions for these are included at the end of the downloadable Presenter’s Notes that accompany the main PowerPoint.

Our vacancies page will also help people looking ways to serve God within web evangelism. It emphasizes that there are many ways to minister online without any technical knowledge. One such area is email mentoring. People with a possible interest in mentoring should listen to this audio interview with an experienced TruthMedia.com team member:
Audio – introduction to TruthMedia’s email mentoring. [Lowfi Dial-up]
Part 2 [Lowfi Dial-up]