Evangelism efforts spike growth online
In an online effort to reach the world for Christ, Liberty University shared the gospel message with more than 1.3 million people last week.
This endeavor was made possible by a donation from an anonymous friend of Liberty University and a partnership with Global Media Outreach (GMO).
The three-day evangelism effort shared the gospel to people in countries that are generally more hostile to the gospel message, such as Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The GMO website tracked the number of indicated decisions made to follow Christ, and the total came to more than 178,000.
The outreach was part of the Global Focus Week that Liberty presents each semester. During this week, students had a chance to meet with representatives from mission agencies around the world.
According to the GMO website, Global Media Outreach is a “non-profit 501 c3 Internet ministry that was formed to present the good news of Jesus Christ online.” The organization began in 2004 and has had more than 50 million people indicate decisions to follow Jesus Christ. GMO intends to provide multiple opportunities to hear the gospel message for everybody with access to the Internet.
Johnnie Moore, Vice President for Executive Projects and spokesperson for Liberty University, explained that GMO specializes in “buying online advertising tied to particular key words to target people (who) are searching for things like ‘Jesus.’ If people are at a place in their life where they are stuck spiritually, they are directed towards links to websites that share the gospel.”
“So, you’re a Muslim and you’re in Saudi Arabia and it’s not culturally appropriate to ask questions about Jesus Christ. You go to Google one night and there you find this website,” Moore said. “What’s interesting about this is that it is a best practice in the business world.”
As a business, it is important to decide which words to buy for an online advertisement.
“They’ve taken this best corporate practice and applied it to evangelism,” Moore said. “This is what makes online ministry so powerful. We can get inside the homes of people living in restricted access countries,” Moore said.
The unnamed friend who partnered with Liberty and GMO for this online ministry wanted to house this outreach here because, according to Moore, “the students would know how to appreciate it and … could participate as online missionaries.”
These individual websites are also “sophisticated.” People can click a button and indicate that they have accepted Christ as their savior or get connected to an online missionary. “There’s a lot of ways to get connected,” Moore said.
The GMO website addresses the question of what happens after someone has indicated their decision.
“To nurture disciples, GMO utilizes online missionaries to respond to the emails of seekers in order to engage them in a dialogue about God and to connect on a personal level.”
These missionaries work under “Community Team Leaders,” who have more experience and are capable of overseeing other missionaries.
“It’s like a highway between us and them. The church just hasn’t put the car on it like we could.”
Moore mentioned that his new book coming out in January, “Dirty God,” makes the argument that “we are the first generation that can effectively complete the Great Commission. We as a generation are able to do things that no other previous generation was able to do, we reached 1.3 million people in under 72 hours.”