Digital evangelism (defined by Nelson Musonda as “the act of teaching and spreading the good news of the gospel through digital media”) is not intended to replace traditional methods of evangelizing. It is just evangelizing through digital devices - another avenue that we can utilize to spread the message of the Gospel.
Rather than allowing social media to only be a place where people are kept continually distracted by the enemy, we need to take advantage of these global platforms to evangelize to people who may otherwise not be reached. Social media allows us to reach more people with a lower barrier to entry (e.g. cost, geography, capacity, etc.) than through traditional means. It also allows us to engage in multiple conversations with people where we can answer their questions in real time at the same time. These platforms can encourage people to interact with the faith in a way that feels comfortable to them and without judgement from others.
There are countless testimonies of people coming to Christ because of social media posts - from others’ testimonies to people posting about their lives as Christians to people teaching about the faith. Any means through which we can use social media to spread the message of the Gospel will be heard.
The beauty of the Gospel is that the message does not change, only the messenger does. God gives us all different assignments in preaching the Gospel to all different people. Digital evangelism is the modern day equivalent of going to where the crowds are (like the Apostles do in Acts). He is using this digital age to reach more people than we ever could have imagined a generation ago - we only need to respond to His prompting to do so.
How do we properly respond, though? We must create a social media ministry that has a personal mission embedded into it. As we are broadcasting the message of God, we have to do this prayerfully and with proper discernment.
After taking time to prayerfully discern what God is asking us to do with our social media pages, we need to take time to think through the perspective of the group of people we are trying to reach (such as seekers, skeptics, people who have never heard of Jesus, or people who are growing in the faith). While we can be attempting to reach multiple groups, each post needs to have an audience in mind that we are preemptively responding to.
We need to make sure we are choosing the correct platform for what we are trying to do. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, X, and TikTok are great starting points for posting sermon clips, photos/videos of events happening at your church, or short form teaching. Blogs and YouTube are a great place to post longer form teachings, with blogs being written and YouTube being longer videos (such as sermons).
Before you start posting on social media, it is important that you define your goals of posting online. This will help your content feel intentional instead of just being more noise that goes unnoticed in all the distractions of social media. It isn’t about how often you post, it’s about how much quality exists in what you post. Make sure you are posting all of this content on multiple platforms as well (e.g. all short form video content can be posted on YouTube Shorts, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok).
Once you have posted your content, make sure to take the time to respond to people’s comments and direct messages. This will not only boost engagement, but will get people to keep coming back and learning more.
With all of this in mind, we need to make sure that our focus in posting online is not getting people into our churches. We are not looking to only grow the numbers of our church bodies - we are looking to bring people to Christ and strengthen people in their faith outside of our church services. Nona Jones, author of From Social Media to Social Ministry: A Guide to Digital Discipleship says “We must become less concerned about the number of likes we get on the post and the number of views we get on a video and more concerned about the number of lives that were changed because of them.”
We are creating content to change the hearts and attitudes of people towards God. This means the message must be centered on Christ - otherwise we lose the purpose of evangelizing online. Not every post we make on our social media platforms need to be overtly evangelizing - but the main purpose of our pages should be to evangelize. Even when posting about events happening at or through the church, we should be focusing on uplifting, encouraging, and teaching people about the faith. Offer all that you are doing faithfully to God.
You will not always perfectly evangelize through these digital devices - just as you may fail when you are evangelizing in person. Digital evangelization is a long game that takes creativity, patience, and prayer. Continue to show up and plant seeds. Trust that the Holy Spirit is doing something with all that you are doing, even if you do not see any benefit.
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