EveryStudent.com is an effective evangelistic site, that helps students understand who God is and what it’s like to know God.
Students come to the site looking for answers to questions they have about their life or about God. While there, God speaks to them. Many indicate they have received Christ while on the site...an average of 400 people a day!
Because of the vast reach of the internet perhaps the most effective evangelistic strategy of the last decade has been Everystudent.com.
The following results will give you some indicator of the impact of an evangelistic website:
ENMESHED IN STUDENTS’ WORLDS
In the Campus Ministry, what does the Internet mean? We will still share the Four Spiritual Laws booklet with a person sitting next to us, but that’s no longer the only way. The Internet means that we can share the gospel with students in their dorm room, or in their apartment without actually being with them. If students don’t know who Jesus is, we can give them the Four Laws, plus much more.
We will still be committed to initiative evangelism. But with the Internet, an unbelieving student can now initiate, with us. Their search is under their control. On the Internet, they can look at what they want, read what they want, click away whenever they want. They can search for answers without feeling foolish for wanting to know, or be at risk for asking.
In cultures where we are viewed as a cult or infidels, where students might resist talking with us in person, they will come to us on the Internet. A small staff team, or a few Christians students, can reach several thousand students in one day, on multiple campuses.
In the course of following up a new believer, we often will help that student prepare their testimony and share it with a group of people. Now with the Internet, when a student receives Christ, that new believer might share their testimony in their blog, just a few minutes later, with 20 or 300 friends. They might also give their friends a full Website to go to.
The Internet means that a group of Christian students can grow together in their relationship with Christ, share deeply personal struggles, pray with one another, study Scripture together, see a video clip together, and bond with one another, even though they live in New York, London, Manila, Lagos and Delhi. We will still have groups of students meeting in a room on campus. But that won’t be the only way of approaching discipleship.
The Internet means that we can train students in ministry online. It might need to be online perhaps, because so many of the tools they would use to evangelize and disciple would also be online. In the training, students would need to reference Websites, write blogs, IM each other, upload videos, download podcasts to listen to at a later time.
A study was done in 12 countries, 77% of those in the student age bracket said they’d rather give up TV than go without the Internet. In China, 87% said that.
In the Campus Ministry, we look forward to the day when 100% of campus staff say they couldn’t imagine doing ministry without the Internet.
CASE STUDIES
Here is just a few examples of the sorts of opportunities available when we use everystudent. com as a resource. Consider these case studies:
Student # 1 (reported by Cru staff or Christian student): I arrived just in time to lead worship. Then I sat down with some people I had not seen in Student Life before and the girl to my right asked “how do you know what to sing?” From this I gathered this wasn’t the kind of meetings she was used to. By this point the meeting was in full swing and I wasn’t able to keep chatting.
She told me that she had never been to anything like our Weekly Meeting before. She had seen the topic, “Christianity Explained” in the flyer. And said she was there because she wanted to find out more about God!
I was like “Really?” And she was like “Yeah, I want to know who you say god is.” I asked her if she would be happy to meet up and chat about it more so I could share with her what Christians believe.
We worked out that the only hour I have off on a Tuesday is the hour before Weekly Meeting, and this was the perfect time for her as well.
Student # 2 (reported by a Christian student): At the end of the lecture, William and I were just casually talking, and he was sharing about his best friend, and how that friend is a CHRISTIAN. Somewhere along the convo he said, “so I’ve been thinking, I might want to be a Christian!”
My face, if it could, was in EXCLAMATION MARKS! So I asked him a few questions
about what it meant to be a Christian, and in the 2 minutes I had with him, he was able to reveal a little more of himself and what he thought Christianity is about. That was totally answered prayer, cos it helped me SOOO much more to identify where he was in his ‘spiritual’ understanding, and where I should start praying and thinking about.
I would love it if you could all pray that I will have a chance to really sit down and have a chat with him about Jesus more, be able to identify his barriers to Christianity, and just pray that God will be the one working in and guiding this situation. [praying for an opportunity to talk further]
Comments and observations
In both of these examples, it would have been great if the staff or Christian student had told them about www.EveryStudent.com. They were hungry and open, but the staff/students felt like they alone needed to explain the gospel, and they put it off until schedules worked out.
(Old approach: Christians must personally present the gospel and answer questions themselves. New approach: take advantage of the Internet!)
Better to tell these students about the site right then AND still try to get together with them. Here’s how:
“Hey, there’s a great site that I think it will be very helpful for you and answer many questions you have. Why don’t you take a look at it? It’s called EveryStudent.com. Here, I’ll write it down for you. Also, here’s my email address, if you have questions you’d like answered right away. How about if you take a look at the site and let’s get together to talk further? What time is open?”
To check out the site go to everystudent.com and to learn how to maximize the use of these resources go to http://EveryStudent.info .
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