Online mission field

Online message boards and forums might be the next great mission field.

At first glance, the Gametrailers forums doesn’t seem like a place open to ministry. The members are mostly male, between the ages of 13 and about 24 and many play games for hours a day. But they kept bringing up religion. When I first joined Gametrailers about 4 years ago, forum members were posting threads on religion on a fairly regular basis. Most of the threads turned into arguments and were soon locked. Eventually, the forum moderators realized there’s a strong demand among members to talk about these topics and locking the threads was too much of a hassle. They created a section just for religion and philosophy. Since then, it has been very active with a wide variety of discussions.

Gametrailers is just one example of a site that has nothing to do with religion but still made a religion section because of the demand from its members.

Problems with this ministry: Each one of these communities is like their own country. They have their own history, culture, leaders and laws. Freedom of speech doesn’t apply. The sites are generally open to a variety of topics, but most will ban you if they feel you’re only there to convert people.

Just because a forum has a religion section, that doesn’t mean you can openly proselytize. Just like any mission field, you will need to take it slow, get to know the culture and people and tell them about the gospel when the time is right. Even if you take every possible precaution, you still might get banned.

One of the best things about this possible ministry is it’s flexible to any situation. If you attend a decent size church, especially one with a youth group, there are probably a few members who post on forums. Just find out who posts on forums and teach a few classes on apologetics and evangelism.

This is still just speculation. We don’t know enough about this to say how it may or may not work. But that doesn’t mean Christians shouldn’t do anything it. Hundreds, probably thousands, of people online are asking questions about religion and Christians need to be online with them and ready to respond.