Anglican Media Sydney is taking the diocese’s witness on the world wide web to a new level from today with the launch of two new evangelistic sites targeting the planet’s web-savvy citizens.
"Thanks to the vision of the 2005 Synod, we've been able to develop two on-line resources we hope will prove to be powerful tools for evangelism," says Allan Dowthwaite, CEO of Anglican Media Sydney.
The Diocese's communication division is using part of a special grant voted by Synod towards media evangelism (see It's a deal! 12/10/05) to mount a multi-media campaign challenging the hugely successful novel, and upcoming film, The Da Vinci Code.
A central part of the campaign is the web site Challengingdavinci.com.
"The novel and soon to be released film are based on a number of false assertions about Christianity that are in danger of being swallowed whole by an ill-informed public," Mr Dowthwaite says.
"Our goal was to create a buzz with a prominent cinema advertising campaign, then resource parishes with marketing material and a well thought out web tool to help them take advantage of the resulting questions."
Click here to view Challengingdavinci.com resources
Anglican Media relies on second site
But web developers say the creation of the Challengingdavinci.com campaign called for the launch of a second site.
"Challengingdavinci.com was always going to be an apologetics site " the people coming there are going to responding to the hype surrounding a major film," says Sydney Anglican's Multimedia manager, Mark Hadley.
"We had to make sure that we were ready for visitors who wanted to explore the broader claims of Christianity, beyond those raised by Dan Brown."
The result is today's unveiling of a second site " the re-built, re-written re-launched Christianity.net.au.
Anglican Media assembled a team of evangelists, educators and web designers to create an on-line resource it says is very attuned to the way modern internet users operate.
"You can't create a corridor of neatly linked ideas on the Internet and expect people to simply wander down it," says Mr Hadley.
"Post-modern web users want to investigate, interact, follow their own noses. They can arrive at an evangelistic site with any number of a dozen questions in mind, and they have to feel like they have the freedom to follow their question through," he says.
Anglican Media Sydney worked with internationally acclaimed author John Dickson and Youthwork's writer Simon Smart to develop a gospel presentation specifically designed for the Internet's youthful audience.
"The "God makes sense' message presents all the truths of the gospel in a way that appeals to the teenage and 20-something desire to personally evaluate Christianity, rather than simply accept a rational argument," Mr Hadley says.
Christianity.net.au combines this message with the ability for visitors to submit any question on Christianity they have and receive a personal answer from a team of volunteer writers.
Click here to visit the new Christianity.net.au
Anglican Media says it is committed to developing the site as a major resource for parishes, with a marketing and resource kit set to be released in the second half of the year.
