Evangelists Are Taking Gospel to Cyberspace

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

About 30,000 are expected tonight at the 11th annual evangelical event, a mission of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside. It is being held this year at Anaheim’s Edison Field.

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 even 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 it had an online congregation of about 25,000.

Organizers this year expect about 40,000 “virtual attendees” from all over the world 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.

Started by Laurie in 1990, the Harvest Crusade has grown into an annual happening in Southern California, with sophisticated sound systems and professional rock musicians 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 20-somethings, the age range is from 14-year-olds to a 70-year-old who came to the training session Sunday.

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

Carley said about 40% of the E-Force’s contacts are met 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.

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.