This column has been going for a few years now, time enough for your reviewer to have figured out a few personal pros and cons about the internet. Here are a few observations.
Sometimes cyberspace can be a real frustration. Logging on can be a disappointing experience. It’s too easy to waste time online.
Web Review
Though slothful and ignorant in many things the wit and ingenuity of mankind when it comes to trying to build a world detached from the Creator is remarkable.
Britain’s Observer newspaper, commemorating this event, likened the influence the web has had on the world with that of Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of movable-type printing, which enabled the Bible to be mass-produced (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1843263,00.html).
There are similarities. Both inventions have brought about massive cultural and social revolutions by taking knowledge and power away from an elite and giving it to the masses. But whereas the former empowered people by opening their eyes and teaching them how they should live, the latter is arguably less impressive, governed as it is by the user’s own whims.
Web Review
If you have not heard of it, you are probably out of it. Social networking tool http://www.myspace.com is the latest phenomenon among the internet generation. In its simplest form a giant online address book, it appeals to the vanity of us all by offering a platform from which we can address the world on our own terms.
Regular readers of this column may recall the inaugural International Evangelism Day (IED) launched last year by the Internet Evangelism Coalition (IEC), an umbrella group of Christian ministries based at the Billy Graham Center in Illinois, to promote the internet as a tool for evangelism.
The second IED is scheduled to take place this year on Sunday May 7. So the IEC hopes that the day will serve to encourage churches worldwide to consider how they can develop or support web-based ministries. The organisers have created http://ied.gospelcom.net/publicity.php#news with various resources to inform churches about the potential of the internet and includes specific material which can be incorporated into church services or notice sheets on or around May 7.
Web Review
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said that, for preachers, the more they properly studied church history the better the preacher they would be. There is no doubt some truth for all of us in that, whether preachers or not, and the internet is an excellent place to start learning.
Web Review
Ten years ago the computer gaming industry was primarily aimed at the younger generation. But as that generation has grown up and technology has increased, the content of mainstream games has become ever more ‘adult’. These days family games are not good business; the biggest games are marketed as if they were movies and carry age restrictions like videos.
Web Review
Given the recent press coverage of the royal marriage, it was your reviewer’s intention to point out the best Christian websites about marriage; what it means, and how to ensure it reflects the true Royal marriage. But, alas, an extensive search proved fruitless.
When was the last time you came across a website all about aircraft? Chances are that you never have, unless you have specifically searched for one. And that’s despite the fact that there are five million sites dedicated to flying machines.
This is the type of question that a group of internet evangelists hope to raise in churches across the world during a special focus day on April 24. Only the problems with which they are concerned are not those of the aviation enthusiast but how to get the non-believer to view Christian websites? And, even if they did, how to get them to stay long enough to learn something of the gospel?
Web Review
The presence of contemporary Christian music stars entertaining delegates at last year's Republican Party conference in New York drew criticism from some corners of the European press, but the growth of Christian music is apparent in the number of online radio stations devoted to the genre.
Web Review
'God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm', sung William Cowper. Check out Puritan and other Reformed poetry on Fire and Ice at http://www.puritansermons.com/poetry.htm
None Review
As anyone who has searched will know, searching for sermons or Christian literature online can be a discouraging and time-consuming task. Though there are many wonderful and faithful websites, sadly, there is also much that is misguided, false, or blasphemous, often deliberately so.
A survey of the Open Brethren, conducted in 1998 but published last year, reveals a movement increasingly unsure of its past and much less sure of its future.
A precipice has appeared before them. Those churches, typically the smallest, seeking to maintain the traditions of the last 170 years are rapidly falling off the edge. The larger churches, casting off much of what they once were, have arrested their fall only by grasping hold of the wider evangelical world.
Book Review
FAITH, HEALTH AND PROSPERITY
A Report on 'Word of Faith' and 'Positive Confession' Theologies by The Evangelical Alliance (UK) Commission on Unity and Truth Among Evangelicals
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