Can you help us get the word out about ‘God: new evidence’?

Here are a few ideas:

• Are you on Facebook? Invite your Facebook friends to join the ‘God: new evidence’ fan page, www.facebook.com/godnewevidence
• Do you blog? Why not write a blog post about ‘God: new evidence?’
• Do you use Twitter? Tweet about ‘God: new evidence.’ We can be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/godnewevidence
• Does your church have a newsletter or magazine? How about an article about ‘God: new evidence’? There is a ready-to-use press release at www.facingthechallenge.org
  /press.php

With best wishes – and thanks,

David Couchman

This may be freely reprinted in your magazine, newspaper or web site.

The ‘Seize the Day’ podcast for March is now available. In it we’re talking to Elaine Storkey, President of Christian relief agency Tearfund, about what the church in the west can learn from the church in developing countries.

Go here to listen.

Dawkins claims that God is a delusion and that religious faith is evil. But what if the scientific evidence itself is telling a different story? Over the past fifty years scientists have uncovered a series of amazing facts which show that the creation is an extremely unlikely place, fine-tuned in specific ways that make human life possible. It shows all the signs that it has been purposefully designed as a place for us to live. ‘God: new evidence’ is a series of videos about these remarkable discoveries that point us towards the Creator.

‘God: new evidence’ features John Polkinghorne, David Wilkinson, Rodney Holder, Peter Williams and Graham Swinerd.

The ‘God: new evidence’ videos are fully available, free of charge, online at www.focus.org.uk. They can be viewed online and embedded in other web sites. They’re also available on a high-quality DVD (priced £14.99 incl P&P) from the Focus web site, for use in churches, home groups, and Christian Unions. (Please note that the DVD is currently only available in PAL format for the UK. An NTSC format DVD for the USA will follow shortly.)

Follow ‘God: new evidence’ on Facebook.

Follow ‘God: new evidence’ on Twitter.

Biblefresh is a new initiative to encourage and resource churches and Christians in the UK to put the Bible front and centre. At a time when – according to research from the Bible Society – only one in seven church-going Christians even opens a Bible other than in a church service, this has to be a good thing.

It describes itself as:

… a partnership of over fifty agencies, festivals, colleges and denominations who are joining forces to help you grow in appetite and confidence in the scriptures during the year 2011, to coincide with the 400th anniversary celebration of the King James version of the Bible. Biblefresh offers a whole host of ideas and resources to inspire and equip you, your church and your community to read, study, meditate, listen, learn and live the Bible.

Although the main focus will be on 2011 (the four hundredth anniversary of the first English ‘Authorised version’ Bible), there’s a series of launch meetings going on across the country now, spearheaded by my friend Krish Kandiah, Director for Churches in Mission at the Evangelical Alliance.

February’s Slipstream resources are now online, including talks by Krish and by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, at the Biblefresh launch event in Durham recently, as well as audio and video resources about putting the Bible at the centre, from David Jackman, Vaughan Roberts and Tom Wright.

Go here to listen and watch.

It’s interesting not so much for what it says about Afghanistan, but rather for what it says about communications in today’s world: ‘in modern warfare… information has become the new battleground.’

‘This is all a war of perceptions. This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants.’ – General Stanley McChrystal, top NATO commander in Afghanistan.

The report asks, ‘Whose interpretation of what is happening is going to prevail? This new focus raises uncomfortable questions for anyone involved in the information business.’

As followers of Christ, we are in business of communication and information. And – dare I say it – we are also in a war of perceptions. We need to be wise as serpents as well as harmless as doves. Is there something we can learn from NATO?

And if you want to think a bit more about it, follow this link to the Digital Evangelism Issues page on mobile.

The February ‘Seize the Day’ podcast is now online.

In it we’re talking again to Bob Hopkins, of Anglican Church Planting Initiatives, about the ‘Clusters’ model of church – also known as ‘mid-sized missional communities.’ In this, the third of three conversations with Bob, we’re talking about how to make the transition to a clusters-based church.

Go here to listen

The iPhone will change our lives.

In my forty-year love affair with all things digital, there have been just a few defining moments, ‘aha’ moments when I’ve realised that everything has changed.

One was when, as a sixth-form student in Fareham in the early 1970s, I was one of a small group of favoured maths students. We were allowed to travel once a week to Southampton, to use Southampton Institute’s IBM 1170 computer. (Southampton Institute is now Solent University, and the mobile phone that I’ve just discarded in favour of an iPhone had considerably more power than that 1170.)

IBM’s Thomas Watson once famously predicted that the world demand for computers could not exceed about five. I realised, even in the 1970s, just how wildly wrong he was.

Another ‘aha’ moment came the first time I saw Windows 3.1. It wasn’t the windows, icons, or the mouse that lit my fire: it was the realisation that you could have several applications all going at once, and could move information between them.

A third ‘aha’ moment was the day I installed my first broadband connection. After playing around for a while, and being amazed at how quickly emails could be sent and received, I started worrying about how to disconnect… because surely if I left the connection up, I would be racking up a bill. And then the penny dropped – this wasn’t just fast. It was on all the time. I didn’t need to disconnect.

Now, of course, we take broadband, multi-tasking, and massive processing power for granted.

But the iPhone will change everything. For the first time, we have a device that can connect to the Internet just about anywhere, and can handle ‘normal’ web sites without emasculating them like most mobile phones.

Of course, the change is not just the iPhone. There will be other, no doubt more powerful, devices. But five years from now, we will take for granted that we have always-on broadband Internet access in our pockets wherever we go. And this will change our lives.

Internet Evangelism Day is a strategic resource to help the worldwide church understand these issues and use the Web to share the good news of Jesus. It is both a year-round online guide and an annual focus day – to be held this year on Sunday 25 April.

Churches are encouraged to use Internet Evangelism Day resources to create a presentation for their members on or near that Sunday (or at any other time they choose). The IE Day site offers free downloads: PowerPoint, video clips, handouts, drama scripts, music and posters. These enable any church (or homegroup, college, or conference) to build a customized program, lasting from five minutes to fifty.

2010’s focus day will be the sixth to be used by churches around the world since the initiative’s launch in 2005. Over this period, digital media have developed dramatically with the advent of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, plus the growing use of mobile phones to access online services.

IE Day’s website is also a one-stop resource covering many subjects including: how to build a church website that is ‘outsider friendly’, using Twitter in evangelism, and ideas for blogging.

Perhaps surprisingly, you do not need to be technical to share your faith online. And you can volunteer to be an email mentor to inquirers with several large online outreach ministries.

Internet Evangelism Day is coordinated from the SOON Ministries/WEC International office near Derby. It is supported by a wide range of leaders and groups. ‘I am glad to commend Internet Evangelism Day,’ says John Stott.

View the resources:
http://www.InternetEvangelismDay.com

Online resources roundup
Internet Evangelism Day online resources include:

A new guide on how to avoid ‘Christianese’ jargon by evangelist and communication trainer Rusty Wright:
http://www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/christianese

‘Desperately Seeking Lodgers’ – a short story illustrating the pitfalls of church websites:
http://www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/church-evangelism

Self-assessment questionnaire for church websites with free personalized report:
http://www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/design

How to use popular culture as a starting point in evangelism:
http://www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/popular-culture

Internet Evangelism Day’s speaker panel offers a range of speakers qualified to address conferences, seminars or college students about many areas of digital evangelism:
http://www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/speaker

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All IE Day’s resource articles are free to reproduce online and in print.

IE Day is an initiative of the Internet Evangelism Coalition, an umbrella group of online ministries based at the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton. It is completely free and has no fund-raising component.

This news release is also available online in Word format: www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/latestnews
Royalty-free photos to accompany any story relating to IE Day: www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/photos
Interviews available: www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/publicity
More article ideas: www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/free-articles