Mission Resources on the Web

In this edition of Missions on the Web, we explore what the Internet has to offer in terms of information resources on the Middle East.

In the early days of the Internet, many hailed what they thought would eventually become a paper-free world. They reasoned, “Why buy hard copies when electronic texts are available and cheap?”

Few topics have more coverage on the Web than HIV/AIDS. A Google search results in nearly ninety million hits. Having been a major world concern for years, AIDS finally seems to be gaining broad attention by evangelical Christians worldwide.

Perhaps no other topic has generated more recent interest—not to mention heat, light, and storms!—among missionaries than contextualizing the Christian faith in Islamic settings.

One of the earliest editions of “Missions on the Web” offered tips and techniques for those developing their agency’s first website. Surprisingly, most of the principles discussed there still apply.

Following up our look at Europe on the Web in the January 2004 issue, in this issue we present Web resources for Oceania.

Europe remains perhaps the most overlooked mission field in the world today. Even the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches admitted, in a recent address to the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order, that Europe has become “a continent full of people who have never heard of the faith.”

This issue of Missions on the Web focuses on practical resources and services that cater to the needs of international missionaries.

The number and quality of contextualization resources on the Web is constantly growing. Here we concentrate on the element of contextualization most frequently discussed: theology.

No doubt many EMQ readers learned their missiology the academic, propositional way—from books and lectures. It’s only natural for us to teach the way we have been taught, but as the Turkish proverb says, “You can proclaim the truth also in a friendly way.”