Introduction

The internet is a fast-growing source for dissemination of religion and faith. Through standard websites, informational resources, podcasts, religious media, and email the internet is used to convey religious messages across a broad medium to an immense audience. This presents unique opportunities and challenges to those who seek to present their message and those seeking information.

The Interactive Web

The internet is a place of instant information. Gone are the days where websites were static business cards. Today, they are an avenue for information. The phenomenon is called web 2.0. With blogging, social networking, syndication, and subscription, people worldwide are communicating with each other more effectively.

Education and Evangelism

The internet is an effective medium for both education and evangelism. Each goal presents a unique motive. The education model presents information for consideration as fact. We look at this information as historical, statistical or explanatory. The evangelism model is presented to convince others to a particular point of view.

How effective the internet as a medium serves these roles is a point of discussion. Ideas can be presented and evaluated with ease on the internet, which lends itself to the former. However, intangible components to presenting one's faith to a person may be lost from computer to computer.

The challenge to education is maintaining reliability and validity of information.

The challenge to evangelism is maintaining relevance and a relational component.

Malicious Misinformation

Some users purposefully misrepresent information to mislead others online. This has occurred in situations where abusers alter something presented on someone else's website, impostors create websites (as parody or to do harm) that trick genuine consumers, and email hoaxes.

This darker side of the internet has made some people and organizations wary of using the internet to get or disseminate information.

Emerging Trends

Podcasting (or web casting) is becoming the "tape ministry" of the twenty-first century. With a relatively similar investment, a ministry can post its message online and syndicate it for a worldwide audience.

Blogging is more than a voyeuristic look into people's journals. It has become an effective way people and organizations disseminate their message.