In the early church, the two ways to evangelize involved traveling to and from places to meet people in person or sending letters like the apostle Paul to different locations. Thankfully in the 21st century, we have many more options with the advent of technology. In this article, I will go over practical tools that can be utilized for evangelism.
A common tool that churches have been utilizing is social media. Social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok allow users to connect with many people and demographics in seconds. YouTube allows users to create long video content that is informative and impactful to viewers. Instagram and TikTok enable users to make short-form video content that can especially make an impression on teens and young adults.
One thing to note is that while using these apps, it's essential to produce content that is high quality consistently. This is imperative to both attract and maintain your audience. As believers, we should be aware of what people use to communicate and obtain their information, especially the youth. So, if we use these methods, we can spread the word of God to them in a way they can identify more with.
One method of evangelism that has become less and less common over the years is email evangelism. In his article "8 Digital Evangelism Methods Every Ministry Should Use In 2022", Nelson Musonda says that email evangelism is one of the best and most effective methods of digital evangelism despite being underutilized. He defines email evangelism as spreading the Christian gospel to people who have subscribed or permitted you to receive emails from you.
He says this method helps nurture souls after our initial contact with them. Musonda also says churches can create newsletters that churches send to their subscribers. He says that personalizing emails also helps nurture individual souls. To effectively run an email evangelism campaign, he says that churches should find a way for people to subscribe to their newsletter easily and that they need to use email automation software that gives them the ability to send personalized emails. Even with the rise of social media, email is still a prevalent way for people to communicate with each other. For this reason, we should utilize this method more in our evangelism efforts.
Other forms of digital evangelism Musonda talks about include video and content evangelism. Video evangelism is a method that allows churches to spread the gospel in live video formats like YouTube and Facebook, etc. It's also possible to do this on your church website with the right software. This method allows people to view your services and events online in real-time. Content evangelism is a method that involves churches creating material like blogs, videos, books, etc. This method allows people to engage with material that has already been prepared and lets them see what messages the church is speaking about from the word of God.
Another effective tool for evangelism is using technology that allows users to engage with a large group of people actively. For the past several years, we have seen the demonstrated the most through the video communication technology known as Zoom. Despite being around for several years prior, Zoom increased in popularity during the pandemic in 2020 when everyone was forced to stay home.
This technology allowed users to communicate and collaborate with their co-workers, teachers, classmates, and congregation in a similar way they would in person. Other technologies that function similarly are Google Meet and Cisco Webex. Thankfully, Zoom and other technologies like it have become a very effective tools for evangelizing and preaching God's word.
Online evangelism might be more convenient than in-person evangelism, but it takes time to utilize it effectively. Many tools are available to reach the lost, but if we neglect to use them because they are unfamiliar or don't fit our preferences, we could miss out on the many souls wanting to receive the gospel. We should humble ourselves and seek ways to reach this generation with the word of God, for the time is short.
(written by Derrick Watson Jr.)
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