Here at ISOW, we are on the cutting-edge of not only educational technology, but also trends in ministry. While many churches around the world found themselves suddenly unable to meet in person in 2020, others were ahead of the curve with their livestream capabilities and video chat meetings. Our online Bible school, likewise, saw incredible growth last year due to hungry Bible students who needed an avenue to learn more about their faith – unfortunately, some of this growth was at the expense of some more traditional institutions.
The events of 2020 and the changing culture in general have brought questions about digital communication to the forefront of church discussion. While we believe that you can never replace face-to-face fellowship with believers and the Body of Christ, the fact remains that the expansion of the internet and information technology have granted us the opportunity to reach exponentially more people than we would have been able to just two decades ago.
While there is something to be said about the reliability of the internet and the potential for systems to break down, the same could be said about any emerging infrastructure throughout human history, and we’ve now reached a point where ISOW can teach students in rural, developing nations in a way we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago. It was the Roman road system that enabled the disciples to spread the Gospel so quickly in the first century, and it’s the internet that is enabling us to teach ministers without access to other biblical education now.
The Center for Online Evangelism says that social networks (such as Facebook and Twitter), media-sharing networks (such as YouTube and Vimeo), discussion forums (such as Reddit and christianforums.com), bookmarking and content curation networks (such as Pinterest), and blogging networks (such as Word Press) are currently the most effective ways to expand your audience to the most people today.
The Gospel does not change, nor does any of God’s truth. But our world has been changing at a pace that some folks simply cannot follow. If we want to continue to reach the unreached and multiply our efforts a thousandfold, we have to adapt our methods. It has been ISOW’s goal from the start to do just that, and the list of countries we’re in grows every month. We offer world-class teaching to ministers and Bible students for free or reduced rates in much of the world, and our distribution of this material would never have been possible in another format.
We couldn’t do any of it without you. Thank you to all of our students and everyone who has contributed to our scholarship fund. If you’d like to help us out, you can give at Mission Connect today so we can continue to offer free and reduced rates to those in need.
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