Every Christian An E-Pal!

An E-Pal is someone who intentionally makes spiritual conversations with his non-Christian friends, over the Internet.

As the influence of internet permeates into the lives of campuses students, we must go to where they are to reach them! The student’s world is in the Internet, and we must learn to engage the lost students with the gospel of Jesus Christ on the internet. We are encouraging crusaders to use online platforms i.e. blogs, Facebook, Youtube and websites to share their faith and start spiritual conversations with their pre-believing friends.

At such a time like this, we believe that God has led us to start a spiritual virtually-led movement to reach every campus student on the internet.

Here are some things you can do as an E-Pal:

What Happened At The Virtually-Led Movement Unconference?

Click here for the minutes and the photos


Doing Internet Evangelism

OIC Coming Soon...

But first here're some tips how to make your blogs more meaningful to the public

Many of the words we use to share our faith may be meaningless, too churchy or clichd to the people we're attempting to reach. In finding alternative ways to tell about our faith, it's tempting to replace one set of clichs with another. However, what communicates with one person may be different from what works with another. For that reason, the following words and the alternatives listed are only suggestions.

In some cases you may want to avoid using theological words such as justification or the sovereignty of God. If you pray with a nonbeliever, be careful how often you address God by name in prayer. In normal speech you wouldn't continually repeat someones name, but many Christians think it necessary to mention God's name after every five words or so. This is disconcerting to non-Christians. Above all, be real and be normal.


Promoting EveryStudent.com

EveryStudent.com is a safe place for students to explore who God is and what it's like to know God.

Here are two sites where you can know how to promote and use EveryStudent.com to reach out to your pre-believing friends. You can also know what God is using EveryStudent.com to reach millions of students around the world.

More questions on EveryStudent.com, go to EveryStudent.com FAQ.


Singapore EveryStudent.com Statistics & Results


Accumulated visits since Jul 2007: 47,103
Total number of PRC since Jul 2007: 559

Accumulated visits since Jan 2008: 32,969
Total number of PRC since Jan 2008: 433

You can also click here to find out the statistics and results of EveryStudent.com from around the world at EveryStudentResults.com.



Replying Someone's Email On EveryStudent.com

There are many people out there who are curious about God. Some of them actually email us questions or queries about God and Christianity on EveryStudent.com. If you are interested to reply them and give them a Christian perspective on who God is, sign up as an Email Responder with us.

Before you are accepted as an Email Responder, we would like you to take time to carefully read through the TERMS and CONDITIONS of being an Email Responder. We would also like to receive your feedback and queries that would help you minister more effectively to pre-believing friends online.

Click here to continue viewing the TERMS and CONDITIONS of being an Email Responder.


Virtually-Led Movement Unconference 2008

More than 30 students and staff attended the VIrtually-Led Movement Unconference on 2nd August 2008.

At the unconference we wrestled with the question, "How Does A Virtually-Led Movement (VM) Look Like On Campuses?" We also broke up into three different forum groups to brainstorm ideas how we could use the Internet resources and mobile technology to expand the Kingdom of God.

You can click below for the minutes of the various forums and topics discussed in this VM Unconference:

Click here to view more photos of the VM Unconference.


How Does A Virtually-Led Movement Look Like On Campuses?

At the unconference, the attendees were divided into 3 groups to dream about how a Virtually-Led Movement (VM) could look like on their campuses. Here are the pointers that each group of students and staff pictured about how VM could look like:

Group A

  • “Spam” email
  • Pre-Evangelistic videos online
  • Through song lyrics (downloadable)
  • Start forum topics on EveryStudent.com
  • “Hook” to lead people to think (spiritual matters)
  • Online games

Group B

  • Using every platform available (online) to reach out
  • Every student playing a part
    • “Tipping Point”
    • E.g. Creating critical mass of pushing videos and Christian messages online and causes chain reactions of forwarding the videos and messages i.e. viral marketing
  • Understand the “surfing” patterns for different age groups
    • Videos – popular amongst vast majority
    • Read blogs
    • Contribute videos
  • Flash presentation of gospel
    • More interactive ways of sharing the Word
    • Problem: How to bridge the next step of bringing pre-believers or new believers into the community?
  • Email mentoring?

Group C

  • Blogs or facebook groups etc
  • IM (instant messaging) / MSN
  • Post movies / videos e.g. Godtude
  • Forums
  • Private chat
  • E-Pal
  • Create “hype” videos e.g. Discovery channel song
  • Mobile TV channel
  • Parable project films
  • Banner / links from school website
  • Links from virtual to realty and vice versa

Minutes For VM Unconference Forums

Click >>> Minutes For Blogging Faith & E-vangelism

    BIG IDEA:
    • Using blogs for witnessing.
    • Making Christian voice heard online.

Click >>> Minutes For Virtual Community Forum

    BIG IDEA:
    • Assimilating and nurturing new believers
    • Bringing the church to the unchurch online

Minutes NOT Available For Growing E-vangelism Edge

    BIG IDEA:
    • Understanding the trends and behaviors of internet users
    • Tapping on existing online resources for E-vangelism



Minutes For Blogging Faith & E-vangelism

BIG IDEA:

• Using blogs for witnessing.
• Making Christian voice heard online.

Reasons why we blog:

- Personal sharing about life, how we became Christians
- Connect with people, ex- classmates
- Blog-tag others
- Get comments from others
- Tell stories

How can blogs be used to share Christ?

- share struggles how we overcome them
- post questions about life
- using photos
- cheer people up
- product placement: reviews on what we use/ talk
- Link ‘secular’ things like movies to God

Any observations/ trends in your blogs:

- Wordpress – can find stats
- Sites with applications to track trends – check Google

Reasons why we don’t blog:

- don’t want to share private info
- facebook, friendster enough – pics tell everything

Guidelines for good blogs:

- Keep it short
- Don’t be pushy
- Can use videos, photos
- Photo-blogging (use captions, photoshop it)
- Be “smart” – know what to put on what not to.

Others:

- Group Blog


Minutes For Virtual Community Forum

BIG IDEA:
Building an online community for new believers and pre-believers to assimilate them and follow up with them.

  • Engagement- Build strong rapport in virtual community and slowly bring them back to face-to-face. Build relationship within your groups e.g. gaming, share things with your life, be there when they are there. As Christians, we need to improve our relationships with NC. If you are interested in something, you will bring the people who are interested.
  • Have attractive elements for people to visit and want to come back
  • Community contributions
    • Upload own videos, news etc
    • Like STOMP website
  • Be aware of target audience e.g. outreach video to put on Godtube o Youtube
  • Reaching out on existing platforms e.g. Music, games ,product reviews etc
  • Allow public to participate on controversial topics
    • Through forums
    • Movies discussion e.g. Chronicles of Naria or Sex in the City
    • Parable Project → allow public to comment on videos made
  • Actively seek and build relationships online
    • Intentional evangelism
    • Learning rules on of the cyber world
  • E-cards ==> To say your well wishes
  • How do we stay engage online?
  • How do we learn the rules when we don’t know the rules?
  • For SCCC, we don’t have a strong online virtual community for NCs. Create something that has common, attractive relevant platform with Non-Christians.
  • STOMP – great way to create virtual platform
  • Create sites that are relevant or create interest group
  • Godtube – the name of “God” filters off
  • Everystudent.com is a one-way communication
  • Facebook group has too many groups. E.g. Online Gaming
  • Hook- E.g. post a photo or controversial video to engage people online
  • E-card to send invitations for birthday and connect
  • Jaslin, a RP contact who exchange emails with QW and came for the RP LM
  • Forum- invite Non-Christians to go there, but who will continue
  • Blog site and email for Non-Christians to contact us
  • Under EveryStudent.com, can have some interest groups e.g. movies, songs for people to comment