Taking the Battle to the Enemy: by Tim Kernan

Why do we use Technology? Internet minstry by Phil McCallen on the 22nd Feb 2009
[audio:WhyWeDoWhatWeDo/PM_Tech_2009-02-22.mp3]

Colossians 4: 2-6

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

This is an amazing passage by Paul who is writing to the Colossians from his jail cell in Rome. He is telling them to devote themselves to prayer and be watchful, thankful, wise and making the most of every opportunity. They needed to stay ahead of the waves of false teaching and Satanic misinformation so that they would be ready to answer everyone.

Its actually an incredible charge to the church. Paul is telling them to stay sharp personally and he is also telling them to be ready to take advantage of every opportunity. What is every opportunity? Its EVERY opportunity.

Of course as we look back at the first century church we find them looking forward at us! The first century church (only using biblical sources) was spread out over 3000 miles as the crow flies! It varied vastly in culture, race, education, wealth, and social status; considering many of the first disciples were women and slaves who had little legal protection under the Roman Empire. As a result of the obsticals they had to overcome they used some of the most bold technological advancements of the day. In fact it was the first century church that invented the codex which is the bound book that we all grew up using. They spoke greek, improvized, adapted and overcame. As the passage suggests, they took every opportunity to advance the gospel.

Sadly today Christianity has become largely a museum of the past. Instead of adopting the forward looking and bold attitude of the first century church, today many professing Christians are ultra conservative. They fail to copy the heart and mission of the first century church as they imitate as precisely as possible the descriptions and meaningless ritual that actually mostly comes from the 3rd century forward and has little to do with biblical Christianity.

We need to raise up the modern disciples who are taking the battle to every nation using every opportunity afforded them in our technological information age. Around the world there are spiritual warriors who are full of vision and zeal for Christ’s mission. Here in London the brothers and sisters of the cyber evangelism ministry have unleashed an absolute onslaught of techo wonders in their drive to save souls. Half the disciples in the church have blackberry, Iphone or some facsimile. All the members are using one or more of the following: skype, facebook, meetup, myspace, bebo, wordpress, googledocs, various weblogs, MSN/Yahoo/Google/Blackberry Messenger, ICQ, Photobucket (or other photo uploading sites), along with our very own… Google Top Rated… www.londonchurch.org.uk! Out of thousands of churches in London… go type “London Church” and be amazed… we are number 3; ahead of the Anglican and Catholic churches. Our rating is largely due to new articles almost weekly and our awesome brother Niyi who puts all the sermons up like clockwork. I would also like to lift up our dear brother Jason Green who started his International Skype prayer group which you can sign up for on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15897980479 Already hours of prayer has been shared by brothers and sisters all over the world.

That being said, no one knocks it out of the park like Jeremy Ciaramella in the great Eugene church (our modern “Sons of Thunder”) and his funky bunch of cyber warriors. We are so proud of all you guys do for the movement. We would certainly not be where we are now without you. You guys are the finest cyber evangelism go getters out there and we are all learning from you as you learn from Christ.

In London we have been blessed with a baptism every two weeks for eight weeks in a row! Of our last six recent baptisms two of them came directly from disciples reaching out online. We are talking about two incredible encouraging sisters we might not have been able to reach otherwise… You can have your own opinion, but you can’t have your own facts… The fact is that Cyber Evangelism equals awesome baptisms. That means the Cyber Evangelism Ministry is a baptising ministry. Lets make sure that we are inviting people to church, bible talks, ministry meetings, and bible studies when we are spending time online. Lets take every opportunity to preach the life giving, incredible, Word that fires me up everyday.

Love,

Tim