I recently saw a post on my twitter feed that showed how Amazon has become so big, that it’s beginning to dwarf older traditional brick and mortar stores. Amazingly, 30% of ALL online shopping in December was through Amazon. Best Buy was a distant 2nd with less than 4% of the online holiday shopping market share. (Click here for an article on Amazon’s December dominance)
It’s no wonder that retail giants such as Sears and Macy’s are shutting down stores at alarming rates.
The internet has completely transformed how we shop. It’s also changed how we think and gather information. Traditional news sources such as newspapers and magazines are becoming a thing of the past as most people now utilize the internet as their primary source of information.
A few years ago, Cru recognized the potential of the internet for world evangelization, especially in countries traditionally closed to the gospel. EveryStudent.com was born and has now been supplemented with the sidekick site EveryPerson.com. In every year since it’s existence, it’s reach and influence have increased.
Last year, for example, 24.2 million people visited the site, with 343,000 people indicating decisions for Christ. That’s an average of 940 people per day, many of whom live in countries where it is difficult to even send a missionary, much less produce a genuine decision for Christ.
With the rapid growth of the site, Cru realized the need to provide resources for the growing number of converts, so they created the site StartingWithGod.com, where new believers can sign up to receive a spiritual starter kit that’s designed to provide basic follow-up and discipleship.
After receiving an update a few weeks ago detailing the performance of the EveryStudent / EveryPerson sites, I sent a quick note of encouragement to the director of the site expressing my gratitude for her leadership and vision to expand the reach of the gospel in non-traditional ways.
Though I wasn’t expecting a response, I got a reply where I was reminded that I had contributed an article that is being used on the StartingWithGod.com follow-up site.
I don’t quite recall all of the circumstances, but I had given a talk many years ago on “The nature of faith”. I took the concepts of that message and created a short article, which I submitted for use in this follow-up site.
I was surprised to learn that last year, over 6,000 people read my article on the English site alone. Considering there are alternate versions of the site in Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, the number of people around the world who read the article was potentially in the 10’s of thousands.
I was amazed, as I had no idea that many people were reading an article that I wrote several years ago. To tell you the truth, I had entirely forgotten about the article being a part of the spiritual starter kit. It was a reminder to me how God can take something seemingly insignificant in our eyes and multiply it many times over for His kingdom purposes.
Here’s what’s really exciting. YOU can begin to reach others outside of your normal social circles by utilizing the resources that EveryStudent.com provides.
EveryStudent.info/videos is a site that offers a number of short training videos to help you learn how to utilize the articles on the site within your Facebook feed to potentially reach thousands of people with the message of Christ.
In particular, the 4th Section, titled “Impact Thousands” gives some practical input on how to post links to your Facebook and other social media feeds that will direct people to the EveryStudent.com website.
Give it a try and let us know how it goes.
The Lowedown 