A New Mindset: The Church Is Truly Word Wide At Your Finger Tips
I remember as a child singing “He’s got the whole world in his hands… He’s got you and me brother in his hands, etc.” Missionary stories, stories of the Church universal, were almost like fairy tales taught by Sunday School teachers, romanticizing people who were willing to leave their homeland, their culture, and their families to share the gospel in distant lands, in jungles, desserts, desolate places to desolate people. The Church taught the Great Commission, and with it the condition that the Lord Jesus’ return for his Church depended on the Gospel going to all peoples and language groups, thus organizations like Wycliff Bible Translators, Mission Aviation Fellowship, Youth With A Mission, etc. being formed.
The Church to me as a child was localized, the fabric of the local community, on many street corners in the city where I lived. To travel to churches outside our county was a big deal, and attend our denomination’s annual conference bringing churches of like mind nationally together fantastic beyond belief. I personally have friends who are on the mission field, yet they still seem so unattached because of distance and lack of communications.
Today, with the development of the World Wide Web, the Internet, I am forced to change my point of view, my perspective of the Church, for I do have access to “the whole world in his (my) hands” as I sit here with a laptop computer. In fact, I can have the “whole world in his (my) hands” through a wireless super juiced up telephone. I can literally communicate with anyone anywhere in the world who has access to the internet. This is challenging my limited point of view of what the Church really is.
With the proper emails, websites, blogs, chat pages, facebook, tweeting, and Skype accounts I can literally be in communication with someone else in almost every corner of the world, and not only verbally talk with them, but see their picture live. A recent “streaming” program over the internet where over 2,5000 “hits” were simultaneously watching from all around the world amazed me. But in the score of the entire glob, what is 2,5000?
I use to think that I would like to be in a “first century” church! There over 2,000 were saved at one location, the Temple, at one time, yet I have seen greater numbers respond to a Billy Graham invitation in a mega outdoor sports facility in my lifetime during the 20th Century! No, we are blessed to be in the 21st Century where millions can be reached, millions can communicate, we just need to know how to use the technology to influence the masses of spiritually lost and dieing as well as communicate with the other members of the family of God.
Guttentburg’s printing press placed the Bible into the hands of the masses, ushering in the Age of Enlightenment and bringing an end to the Dark Ages. This technology revolutionized the world that has never been the same because of it. The internet, world wide web, computer social networking age, is ushering in another technology that has revolutionized the world in our life time. Communicating with the world has been literally put into the palms of individuals hands like the communication of the Word, the Bible, the Logos word, was placed into people’s hands in Guttenburg’s day. Individual believers in South Africa can communicate with those in Siberia, Russia, Argentina with Canada, New Zealand and Australia with Europe, and Lapland and Iceland with Antarctica.
Wow, I got the whole world in my hands. Now to figure out how to use it for the Kingdom of God, to propagate the gospel of Jesus Christ, in a new way fulfilling the Great Commission. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word… and the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1) Today we have even more power at “our finger tips” to share the gospel than any generation before us. Let’s seek how to use it properly, effectively, and powerfully in sharing Jesus Christ to the world!