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As we are nearing the end of the millennium, most people will have heard of, and have been influenced by, the internet. It is the worldwide network of computers that is now connected to most work places and many homes. The internet is used for many things, from its military beginning to the present, when it is used for commerce, publicity, electronic mail, news groups, distributed computing, and much more. The only limit to the applications to which the internet can be put is the ingenuity of its users. The internet is used for many bad, corrupt, and immoral things. Sitting at my computer as I type this I could have on my screen, within seconds, hard-core pornography, bomb-making instructions, or I could undermine the whole computer system at York University and bring it to a grinding halt. This worldwide network also provides opportunity for secure communications between spies, terrorist groups, and those intent on industrial espionage. Those with only a small amount of computing knowledge could also do untold harm to computers all over the world, as was shown a few weeks ago when a computer ‘virus’, spread via email, brought down over 100,000 computers across several different countries. Opportunities are also there for criminal types to commit fraud on a grand scale in ways that are extremely difficult to detect. All this said, the internet is still not intrinsically evil; like many things in life it can also be used for great good.
Nearly all large companies and organisations, and many individuals now have webpages: these are pages of electronically stored information that can be accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world. These pages can be used for anything from publicity and marketing, to newspaper archives or on-line shopping. The world of commerce makes good use of the available resources, with on-line trading, share updates, money transfers, banking, and more. In fact with a few clicks of the mouse I could have my bank details in front of me and pay off my latest credit card bill. Alongside these there is also room for religion on the internet; churches and Christian organisations can do a lot both for themselves and for others if they become conversant with this new technology.
There are currently many Christian resources available online. Several organisations have provided the text of the King James Bible on their webpages in a searchable format along with concordances and study notes. These however, can be awkward to access and the notes sketchy or even misleading. At York the various Christian societies all provide information on their webpages about themselves and their meeting times and they are all also contactable through email. In fact, we at Christis have an archive of our back-issues available on our website and this can be freely accessed by anyone. This, however, is not typical of the Christian population at all and I think that the religious community needs to wake up to the opportunities that are open to them.
George Carey has said that the Church of England is “one generation away from extinction”, and this runs in parallel with a huge decline in the number of active church members. In the period from 1970–1992, there has been a decrease of 40% in the Anglican church, 29% in the Roman Catholic church, and 37% among Methodists.1 In light of this it would surely be sensible for churches, corporately and individually to take note of what they could be doing. Church notice sheets and parish magazines could be provided online, this would not only cut costs but also make them available to those who could not obtain (or read) paper copies. Church bodies could also publish evangelistic information, study notes, and doctrine on webpages; this would make it available at negligible cost to people all over the world, possibly in areas where religion is oppressed.
In conclusion, I think it is important to emphasise that churches should always be forward looking, and ready to take advantage of all technological advances that can be of help. It was encouraging to see in the last year that the National Methodist Societies now have a central webpage2, and they are keeping in contact with many of their members via email, thus cutting costs and reaching more people. More church leaders should take note of this kind of resourcefulness and think of how they could apply it to the benefit of their situations. The internet is neither satanic, nor incomprehensible and I urge the reader to investigate further and explore its possibilities.
1 — Statistics
taken from an article in The Independent
2 —
http://www.methodiststudent.org.uk/
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Last modified: 25th November 2005