Andrew Careaga, a volunteer minister at Salem Faith Assembly Church in Salem, Mo., says the Net "is perfect for storytellers." Recently, he worked with two Swiss evangelists on how to use the Web for ministry.
The Swiss evangelists bounded off the plane looking around the Lambert Field gate area for their good friend Andrew Careaga, a youth minister in Salem, Mo. The three men were "e-friends" and had never seen each other face to face.
The Rev. Daniel Hari, 35, of Lucerne, and the Rev. Beat Baumann, 31, of Zurich, had laptop computer bags slung over their shoulders. They quickly spotted the waiting Careaga, 40, with his laptop computer bag over his shoulder.
The Swiss came to Missouri to visit Careaga Feb. 7 and learn more about how to use the Internet to tell Swiss and German youths about the Christian Gospels. Careaga, a volunteer minister at a nondenominational Christian church in Salem, Mo., has spent as many as 20 hours a week over nine years conducting research on the Web. He has written two books on the Web.
"Today's kids have 'Web feet' and are eager to communicate with the whole world," Careaga said. "The Net is a place where kids go to hear stories. The Net is perfect for storytellers."
Personal stories are powerful
All evangelical Christians know there is great power in personal testimony, he said. Stories of faith are key to worship services, renewal events and major stadium events such as Billy Graham's crusades and Sunset Hills evangelist Joyce Meyer's conferences.
"Personal witness stories really work on the Web, too," Careaga said.
All three men believe that the Web is where youth ministers can tell stories of faith to the young. Too often, preachers have been so enthralled in systematic theology that they forget stories of the heart, Careaga said. If they do that on the Web, surfers will just jump to another page. Careaga has participated in faith chat rooms on the Web since 1992.
Sometimes when people try too hard to be evangelistic, other Web users "flame them" - or send them e-mails criticizing their evangelistic messages. But others enjoy free-wheeling discussions about God and beliefs spoken in the anonymous chat rooms.
Even a few of Careaga's youth group members at Salem Faith Assembly Church discuss dating and strained relationships with parents and siblings more comfortably with him via e-mail than they would in person.
In e-mail shorthand language, teens sometimes pour out their hearts, fears and religious doubts, he finds. Ministers can follow up discussions with regular messages or additional materials.
The Swiss evangelists and Careaga piled their gear into Careaga's car for a two-hour trip to Salem. They joined an evening session of Careaga's youth group at his church. Careaga's father-in-law, the Rev. Bill Anderson, is pastor of the church.
Careaga follows up after meetings by sending messages to the youths. He also communicates on the Web with other youth ministers about how they stay in touch with members who miss meetings. A few churches have some youth meetings by e-mail.
Visitors get tour of Web sites
The next morning, Careaga gave the Swiss ministers a tour of his favorite bookmarked Christian sites on the Web. There are tens of thousands of Christian Web pages and thousands of Christian-oriented chat rooms, news groups, forums and online communities. Some youths think it is cool to read a religious article on the Web that they would never bother with in a print magazine or textbook, he said.
Thousands of Missouri houses of worship have Web pages but only use them as basic bulletin boards, posting information about weekend services, special events and staff. Some reprint the pastors' weekend sermons. That's only a start, the three evangelists said.
Hari, a leader of the Salvation Army in Lucerne, has spent several years doing face-to-face youth evangelizing at Swiss New Age fairs. There, people tell him about experimenting with a range of ideas such as channeling, previous incarnations, crystals and Eastern poetry. Hari tells them about the Gospel from his chair behind a Salvation Army table.
Some fairgoers eventually have attended a Salvation Army course he calls Alpha that compares Jesus to other spiritual leaders such as Gandhi and Buddha. He wants to have the same chats, even his course, online and not just with German-speaking Swiss, but with youths in Germany as well. His voiced trilled with excitement at the idea.
"Today's youth are really seeking God, hungry for faith, and we can reach so many more on the Net," Hari said.
All three ministers believe they are following a tradition of Christian evangelists using technology to spread the Gospel. Some of Jesus' disciples took the fastest ships to go as far as they could to preach the Gospel in England and India. In the 1500s, after Gutenberg invented movable type, more people learned to read, and evangelists helped readers study the Gospels.
"In the 1950s, while many people were talking about television as being a negative thing that would corrupt the morals of the youth, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen preached once a week on (prime time) television," said Careaga.
Other television evangelists - good and bad - followed, reaching millions of people who never went to church, he said.
The Salem church's youth members were surprised that two evangelists would stop in their city during a brief U.S. trip to study how Americans use the Internet, even though the two had read Careaga's new book: "Connecting with the Net Generation: eMinistry" (Kregel Publications, $10.99).
"It's takes a lot to impress any teens, but I think they were interested that the (Swiss) had come so far to talk about Christianity on the Web," said Careaga.
The Swiss evangelists also visited Vancouver, Canada, to study the Canadian Campus Crusade of Christ Web outreach and some Texas churches.
Faith is a hit on postnet.com
Careaga has found no good statistics on how many youths are looking for God talk on the Web. More generally, Careaga usually quotes a 1999 Yahoo Internet Life survey that says 70 percent of youths occasionally look at the Web for any topic. In St. Louis, on postnet.com Community Web Sites, a youth faith Web site is the biggest draw by far.
Last year, the highest number of page views received by a postnet Web site ranged between 5,000 and 6,000 per month, but last month, the 4-month-old St. Louis Archdiocese's Young Adult Ministry site received more than 20,000 page views - more than three times as many as the next most popular site.
"The church needs to walk along the Net generations as they enter the digital world," Careaga said. "Today's youth understand the digital world, far better than most of their elders. Ministers need to catch up."
=====================================================
An assortment of favorite evangelical Christian sites
www.gospelcom.net/welcome/categories/children.shtml
www.kidsurfer.org
www.ChristianityToday.com
www.Jesuscafe.com
www.ultimateveggie.com
www.teencentral.net
www.bible.org
Some of Andrew Careaga's favorite Christians search engines:
Goshen.net
www.fishthe.net
=====================================================
