Potentially The Most Important Technology For Spreading The Gospel Since The Printing Press
At the end of last week, I had the opportunity to live-blog the John 3:16 Conference for Challies.com [my posts from this Conference are linked HERE].
That Conference was intended to be "a biblical and theological assessment of and response to 5-point Calvinism."
The most interesting thing said at that Conference (from my point of view), however, had nothing to do with "5-point Calvinism."
In the concluding presentation of the Conference, Dr. Charles Stanley did not mention Calvinism, but repeatedly made the point that our theological reflection must lead to greater efforts in evangelism, or else it will be fruitless- something every Christian needs to remember.
Dr. Stanley was asked by Jerry Vines to share how In Touch Ministries is taking the gospel throughout the earth; Dr. Stanley told about using short-wave radio and TV programs, but he also spoke of a new technology that In Touch Ministries (ITM) is using: hand-held, water-resistant, solar-powered audio players that ITM is calling Messengers. You can read about ITM's use of Messengers HERE. These Messengers can be programmed with 35 sermons (Dr. Stanley, I thought, mentioned "70," so they may have recently improved the memory capacity). ITM has translated sermons from Dr. Stanley into Spanish, Arabic, French, and Mandarin, and has created Messengers available in each of these languages.
I sincerely believe that other ministries need to utilize this technology as well. The drawback of the printing press, and many other technologies such as posting articles on the Internet, is that people must be literate in order to benefit from them, yet a large percentage of those whom we need to reach with the gospel are unable to read. Previous non-literate technologies such as TV and radio have often depended on electrical outlets or batteries, and there are many areas of the world where these are unavailable as well. As "faith comes by hearing" (Romans 10:17), we should rejoice over and be quick to utilize a technology that will enable people across the globe access to numerous gospel messages.
That Conference was intended to be "a biblical and theological assessment of and response to 5-point Calvinism."
The most interesting thing said at that Conference (from my point of view), however, had nothing to do with "5-point Calvinism."
In the concluding presentation of the Conference, Dr. Charles Stanley did not mention Calvinism, but repeatedly made the point that our theological reflection must lead to greater efforts in evangelism, or else it will be fruitless- something every Christian needs to remember.
Dr. Stanley was asked by Jerry Vines to share how In Touch Ministries is taking the gospel throughout the earth; Dr. Stanley told about using short-wave radio and TV programs, but he also spoke of a new technology that In Touch Ministries (ITM) is using: hand-held, water-resistant, solar-powered audio players that ITM is calling Messengers. You can read about ITM's use of Messengers HERE. These Messengers can be programmed with 35 sermons (Dr. Stanley, I thought, mentioned "70," so they may have recently improved the memory capacity). ITM has translated sermons from Dr. Stanley into Spanish, Arabic, French, and Mandarin, and has created Messengers available in each of these languages.
I sincerely believe that other ministries need to utilize this technology as well. The drawback of the printing press, and many other technologies such as posting articles on the Internet, is that people must be literate in order to benefit from them, yet a large percentage of those whom we need to reach with the gospel are unable to read. Previous non-literate technologies such as TV and radio have often depended on electrical outlets or batteries, and there are many areas of the world where these are unavailable as well. As "faith comes by hearing" (Romans 10:17), we should rejoice over and be quick to utilize a technology that will enable people across the globe access to numerous gospel messages.
Labels: evangelism
posted by Andrew Lindsey | 11:44 AM
1 Comments:
That is interesting. I've never even seen one of those!
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