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Campus Crusade Reaps Harvest in Online Outreach

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Friday, December 26, 2008

Campus Crusade Reaps Harvest in Online Outreach

By Jeremy Reynalds
Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (ANS) – The media arm of Campus Crusade for Christ shared the gospel last month with over 1.9 million people – 390,000 of whom expressed their desire to follow Jesus Christ.

According to a story by the Christian Post’s Eric Young, CCC’s Global Media Outreach (GMO) hopes to share the gospel with two million more people and that at least 350,000 of them will make the step toward following Christ.

“GMO is effective in sowing the good seed of the Gospel, daily, in 191 countries in 11 major internet languages,” reported the ministry’s chairman and founder, Walt Wilson, in a recent message to supporters.

With support from the Christian community, “GMO is able to reach someone in spiritual crisis every three seconds of every hour of every day,” the Christian Post said he added.

The Christian Post reported that according to the ministry, over five million searches are done on the Internet for spiritual terms, and thousands every day come across one of GMO’s websites.

“Many are searching for God; some have specific questions; others just want to know more,” the Christian Post said the ministry reports.

Knowing this, the ministry has been working to use Internet-based outreach and communication technologies in text, video, and audio on multiple platforms.

“We use computers, things that think, iPods, cell phones, podcasting, internet radio, TV, film, and other emerging communication technologies,” the Christian Post said the ministry reported.

In addition, the story said, GMO has developed a unique response system that can securely empower thousands of people as “online missionaries” to personally share their faith one-on-one through the Internet as they respond to seekers.

Each volunteer who applies is provided with online training, response templates, an answers database, an online Bible and an assigned community leader.

The Christian Post said that worldwide, more than 1,800 GMO volunteers have joined the effort to respond to seekers online with the help of more than two dozen evangelistic websites and eight discipleship websites, including WhoisJesus-Really.com, GodLovestheWorld.com, 4StepstoGod.com, and GrowinginChrist.com.

According to GMO, volunteers have answered more than 250,000 e-mails from people who were new believers, recommitting their lives to Jesus or seekers who still had questions. And so far this year, the ministry has witnessed more than a million people indicate a decision for Jesus Christ through its websites.

“We are the first generation in human history to be able to give every person everywhere multiple opportunities to know and follow Jesus Christ, and through the power of internet evangelism together we stand on the threshold of a revolution in kingdom harvest on a scale never imagined before,” the Christian Post said Wilson commented.

One of GMO’s goals is to present the gospel in the top Internet languages, namely English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Arabic, and Russian. Together, these languages cover 85 per cent of the world’s one billion internet users, the ministry noted.

Most recently, GMO launched iChristianLife Radio (www.iChristianLifeRadio.com), giving Christians a new platform to enjoy short, deep content segments to help them grow in their Christian journey.

The Christian Post said that developed especially for oral learners and an international audience, iChristianLife Radio provides information, Biblical teaching and worship music in small pieces.

“We really believe that iChristianLife Radio gives people around the world an opportunity to listen to quality worship music and solid biblical teaching,” said Wilson.

iChristianLife Radio is a segment of www.iChristianLife.com,
` GMO’s new discipleship website.

Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New Mexico’s largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org He has a master’s degree in communication from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in Los Angeles. His newest book is “The Face of Homelessness.” Additional details are available at http://www.HomelessBook.com. Reynalds’ upcoming book is “We All Need a Little Help.” It will be released on October 3 2008. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@comcast.net. Tel: (505) 400-7145. Note: A higher resolution JPEG picture of Jeremy Reynalds is available on request from Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com.