Think back to the year 2006. From January 2006 until now, how many people has your ecclesia’s preaching efforts been able to reach? Include in your calculations special efforts, lectures, seminars, county fairs, etc. Of all these people, how many have signed your guest book and given you their personal contact information? Compare that number, whatever it might be, with the results obtained by preaching on the Internet through www.thisisyourbible.com (TIYB).
To date, over 18,000 men and women have registered with us since January of 2006. Of these, over 3,000 are currently active on the site. Since 2006, the site has been visited over 500,000 times. About 60% of these visits originate in North America and the Caribbean, although we have many students in Europe, Africa, and Asia/Pacific as well.
The backbone of TIYB is the 716 brothers and sisters from around the world who are actively engaged in the work of corresponding with these students. Some tutors have chosen to make this a major part of their personal outreach work. For example, Sis. Joy Jennings of the Greenaway Ecclesia in Hamilton, Ontario, has currently over 300 students on her list. Only a relatively small percentage of her students are active, but it is enough to keep her busy! Sis. Dolores Fisher, of the Pomona, California meeting, has persevered as a self-described computer illiterate to become a diligent and effective tutor on the system. As she told me once, “If I can do it, anyone can do it!” Both sisters have experienced the wonderful blessing of students with whom they have worked and encouraged in their lessons being baptized. Indeed, baptisms associated with the website have taken place in such diverse locations as Russia, Malta, South Africa, Texas, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Thailand and the Philippines! We are aware of over 30 baptisms which can be directly related to the thisisyourbible.com website. There are almost certainly many more in which the website played a supportive role.
We must emphasize that we are not playing a numbers game with baptisms. While we are greatly encouraged by news of baptisms, our mandate is to preach the Truth, plant the seed and leave the increase to our Heavenly Father. When good and honest hearts respond in faith, we rejoice with the angels in heaven. Having said that, we must be clear that our primary objective is to link students with tutors and through tutors to ecclesias. As the momentum of the site builds, through the blessing of our Lord, we can expect more baptisms to follow.
The charter for TIYB is primarily focused on teaching first principle Truths. The content on the site is multi-faceted. We offer Bible courses online and by regular mail. We have a literature library consisting of most of our best known booklets. Many of the booklets in the website’s library section have been accessed over 10,000 times each. Topics that fall into this category are not surprising: the Trinity, Sabbath, Politics, Angels, Inspiration, the Devil and Demons, the Kingdom, Prayer, Israel, Life after Death and the list goes on. The top two pieces of literature accessed since 2008? “One Bible Many Churches, Why?” and “Heaven and Hell,” each being accessed more than 13,000 times! To those of us familiar with more traditional methods of preaching, these numbers are staggering. However, according to Bro. Duncan Kenzie, the Christadelphian Bible Mission of the Americas leader of the website, in the near future, when we implement more advanced techniques to attract visitors, we expect these numbers will increase many times over!
Besides courses and literature, visitors to the site may:
- Order a free DVD (thousands of which have been distributed).
- Access other video and audio content online including “Introducing Jesus”,
- Hear “Minute Meditations” read by brothers and sisters, and hymns and songs produced by Christadelphian choirs.
- Have their questions about the Bible answered within 24 hours of submitting them.
To date, close to 15,000 questions about the Bible have been asked and answered since TIYB first started in 2006. Many of these questions are saved for visitor reference in the site’s “Answers from the Question Box” feature. Since the site’s inception in 2006, this feature has been accessed more than 60,000 times! One of our most popular features is the monthly survey question. So far there have been 6,151 responses to this month’s question, “Is correct doctrine important?” Respondents are directed to an appropriate piece of literature; in this case, “One Bible Many Churches, Why?” Visitors may use a “Contact Us” feature to find an ecclesia near them — almost every ecclesia in the world is listed there.
An ecclesia may also create, or have created for it, an ecclesial webpage which will be visible on the site. This will be helpful for posting details of location – including an interactive Google Map – times of meetings and advertising for special events complete with graphics. Here is as link to a sample page for the Toronto West Ecclesia: www.thisisyourbible.com/toronto_west. Someone from your meeting may be given authority on the site to update your ecclesia’s webpage or you can send an email to me as the site administrator and I will be happy to update it for you. You can also use the direct link to your ecclesia’s webpage in your advertising. So Toronto West could advertise their webpage, instead of generically advertising the website itself.
Another major benefit of the site enjoyed by many ecclesias is that of the “Ecclesial Manager” function. This resource may be set-up to receive all students from a specified area and either manually transfer them to team members or have the transfer take place automatically. The Manager may check the progress of local students and the status of team tutors to ensure that no promising students are being overlooked or neglected.
There is a key communications benefit with this feature. All students or tutors in the zone of control of an Ecclesial Manager may be notified of upcoming events, literally at the touch of a button. No laborious entry of IDs required. This is all made possible by the Student Management System through which every Tutor has a detailed record of every activity on the website of each student in his or her care. Some of these records can be quite long as enthusiastic students read our material, order DVDs, and complete lessons!
We have plans for some radically-new developments on the site which we plan to implement, God willing, before the end of 2011. There will be much more emphasis on audio/video presentations, a new, more thought-provoking follow-up course to our current basic courseware, a multi-media correspondence course designed around “Learn to Read the Bible Effectively”, and a brand new look and feel to the site itself, which will raise its profile on the Internet and attract a much larger audience. As these new plans unfold by God’s grace, we are going to need more help! We need more tutors, Ecclesial Managers, webpage reps and perhaps some roles we haven’t thought of yet. How can you help and where can you go for more information? Call or Email me: yourbible@gto.net or (519.574.6014).
My role is to provide daily support to users of the system, be they individual Tutors, Ecclesial Managers, or ecclesial webpage reps. I will be more than happy to give or arrange for presentations to Ecclesias, provide training documentation, advertising templates, and thisisyourbible.com business cards for distribution. I am also available to consult with you regarding the use of the system in personal and ecclesial witness. There are plenty of resources to answer questions and help you with difficult students and assist with technical issues.
To join the TIYB family, it is a simple matter of going to the website, clicking on the “Tutors” tab at the left of the screen and registering. All potential tutors are checked to ensure that they are members in good standing of a recognized ecclesia. If you are young in the Truth and are keen to witness but unsure of your agility, this is the perfect method for you to build your confidence with lots of backup and support. If you are retired, what a wonderful way of using your free time! If you are leading busy lives already but stills feel the need to witness, this is the perfect method for you — you set the pace and can limit your number of students to that which you are comfortable with.
What other medium can allow us to bring the Truth to a world in darkness? We have individuals visiting the site from over 140 different countries. Paul’s words in Romans are being fulfilled in new ways through this exciting technologic.
“So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have; for ‘Theirs voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world’ ” (Rom 10:17-18 RSV).
Will you and your ecclesia join with us in this great work?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One