E-vangelism: Harvesting Souls on Net

Carrying the quest for converts into cyberspace, volunteers are going into chat rooms, sending instant messages and using online bulletin boards and newsgroups to get out the word on this year’s Harvest Crusade.

The 11th annual evangelical event, a mission of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, is being held this year at Anaheim’s Edison Field, where officials say they expect as many as 30,000 people for tonight’s opening.

About 150 people are involved in “Harvest E-Force,” a team of students and adults sending e-cards and cyber-invitations to Web surfers. E-Force leader John Carley said the goal is to draw people away from secular sites and into the Harvest domain. In particular, he said, the E-Force hopes to reach the unchurched.

“We want to invite people to the Crusade first but also share our testimony about Jesus Christ,” said Carley, 24, president of Trinet Internet Solutions in Irvine. “It’s neat that God has given us these tools to use for good purposes.”

For Karen Jacobsen of Riverside, the E-Force has been an invigorating opportunity for her and her two sons to be a part of cyber-evangelization.

“I believe that the Internet is the best vehicle that God has ever given us,” said Jacobsen, 34. “Not only can we reach our next-door neighbors, we can reach so many people from all over the world with Christ’s message.

E-Force had its genesis several years ago, when Carley approached Harvest Crusade founder Greg Laurie after attending a session and said he wanted to help boost the Harvest’s ministry by putting it on the World Wide Web.

Laurie and Carley’s collaboration led to a text-only broadcast of the crusades on a Harvest Web site in 1995, which attracted nearly 2,000 visitors. The next year, about 8,000 tuned in to the crusade, and the year after that had an online congregation of about 25,000.

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Organizers this year expect about 40,000 “virtual attendees” will tune in to the spiritual rally through live audio and video feeds online and text translations in seven languages.

“We seek to bring the Gospel to our generation using the latest technology available,” said Laurie, pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship, the nation’s eighth-largest church.

“Jesus said for us to go into the world and preach the Gospel,” Laurie said. “I can’t think of a better place to do that than in cyberspace. The whole world is connected through the Internet.”

Started by Laurie in 1990, the Harvest Crusade has grown into an annual happening in Southern California, with professional rock musicians and sophisticated sound systems drawing throngs of worshipers, especially young Christians who want not only to pray but to party.

Carley said that, though he expected the E-Force team to be mostly twentysomethings, the age range is from 14-year-olds to a 70-year-old who came to the training session Sunday.

The two main rules set out by Carley and the Harvest officials for E-Force members is that they be at least 14 and must have been believers for at least a year.

They also need to sign a code of conduct promising that they will represent Harvest well online and avoid “prolonged dialogue” with members of the opposite sex, stay out of inappropriate chat rooms, “be Biblical” in their approach and pray each time before they log on.

After last week’s training, the E-Force team members started sending dozens of electronic invitations to friends, relatives and strangers to invite them to the online Web cast to see if any interest arises for talk about a relationship with God.

Carley said about 40% of the E-Force’s contacts meet with hostility because some people online feel that Christianity is being pushed at them. If that happens, the E-Force member is encouraged to just drop the dialogue and exit the chat room or discussion.

But despite some negative responses, the anonymity of the Internet is a perfect place to fish for potential Christians, Laurie said.

“Many people would be willing to visit a Christian Web site more quickly than they’d be willing to darken the doorway of a church,” he said. “They can poke around and look at what we’re doing without feeling like someone is breathing down their necks.” Next year, he said, the goal is to have an even bigger E-Force team.

At the event, which opens at 7:30 p.m. today and continues at the same time Saturday and Sunday, the E-Force will be working at 40 computers in the stadium’s press box, headquarters for the Internet operation. Like last year, one staff member will have the job of standing on the sidelines and praying that the jumble of terminals, wires and high-tech equipment doesn’t crash.

New this year is that counselors will be at the keyboards during each service to answer questions immediately from online participants. Organizers say they want to make sure people who connect with Harvest online aren’t left in limbo if they want to convert to Christianity during the crusade and have questions.

“We are trying to use the Web so that it’s a warm environment and create a person-to-person setting,” Carley said. “We want to make sure it doesn’t feel sterile, so that our Web-site experience is much more than reading plain text.”

The gates open at 6 p.m. each night for the crusade, which is free. The Web cast begins at 7 p.m. each night at https://www.harvest.org.