This column was syndicated by Scripps Howard News Service on 05/07/2008

For millions of users, the World Wide Web has turned into a Devil's den
packed with urban legends, pop-up porn, Nigerian get-rich schemes and
tidal waves of spam pushing medical products that make sailors blush.

That isn't how the Internet Evangelism Day team sees things. It notes that
"over 1 billion people use the Web," the "Internet is changing the world"
and "God is using the Web to transform lives."

"The Internet has become a 21st century Roman road, marketplace, theater,
backyard fence and office drinks machine," proclaims the site's
webmasters. "Web evangelism gives believers opportunities to reach people
with the Gospel right where they are, just as Jesus and Paul did."

Tech guru George Gilder knows where the Web evangelists are coming from
and offers a hearty "Amen." He remains convinced that cyberspace is
territory that religious leaders have to explore and, hopefully, master.

"The Internet is very good for building fellowship. It allows believers to
reach potential followers not only in their community or in their immediate
locality, but all across the country and around the
world," said Gilder, the author the trailblazing books "Microcosm" and
"Telecosm."

"This is the power of the Net," he said. "It can free people from this
sort of entrapment in a narrow locality and allow them to find support for
their particular faith, wherever it may arise."

But there's a fly in the digital ointment. There's a reason that Gilder's
online "Telecosm Forum" is for subscribers only -- he needs to focus his
time on serious questions raised by committed readers who are truly
interested in the issues he wants to research. Gilder invests his time and
energy in this one online flock.

That's the bottom line: A decade or two down the digital information
highway, people who are serious about the Web are learning to invest their
time more wisely.

That includes religious leaders, who are as buried in digital junk as
everyone else. Many ministers who once were anxious to think outside the
local-church box have been stunned at the time commitment this kind of
"online ministry" requires.

The good news is that ambitious religious leaders can do 24/7, online,
multi-media, interactive ministry at the local, national and even global
levels. And the bad news? Users will expect them to build and maintain
these 24/7, online, multi-media, interactive ministries at the local,
national and even global levels.

This is a mixed blessing for ministers who are already struggling to keep
up with the fast-paced realities of life in the flesh-and-blood, analog
world. Websites, blogs and email can become curses, as well as blessings.

The Net is, for better and for worse, a tool for interactive
communications, stressed Gilder, who is an active churchman. Anything that
amplifies speech has the potential to help evangelism and other crucial
ministries in most churches, which are communities of believers that need
to interact with the world around them in order to survive or thrive.

However, religious leaders need to ask serious questions about the size
and shape of the online ministries they attempt, he said. Should forums
about sensitive or controversial issues be open to all comers? If a
congregation offers an interactive website for people who are asking
religious and personal questions, is there anyone with the time and skills
to maintain it? Will posting a minister's online address produce contacts
with people who truly need help? Who will screen all those emails?

There's one more tricky issue that must be addressed. Many believers are
highly skilled when it comes to talking to and arguing with other members
of their own flocks, using a kind of "preaching to the choir" lingo that
is mere gibberish to outsiders. The religious corners of the Web are
packed with websites of this kind, which do much to promote insider
debates, but little to reach people outside church doors.

"It's crucial to break out of this kind of parochial language," said
Gilder. "If you are going to try to talk to people in the secular world,
you have to have people who actually have the ability to do that kind of
work online. ...

"It's quite exciting to actually go out into the wider world. But you have
to have something to say and you have to know what you are doing."

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the Washington Journalism Center
at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes this
weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.