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Charles H. Ebert

AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE MISSIONARY MEMO WINTER 2001

"That the Word could be written on our earth is because the art of writing has existed here from the most ancient time, first on wooden tablets, later on parchment, afterward on paper, and finally it could be published in print. This has been provided by the Lord for the sake of the Word. " Arcana Caelestia 9353

Those who want to spread the Word may take this passage and similar ones as a call to action. The Internet and the World Wide Web can be used to spread the Word and in particular the New Word revealed through Swedenborg, which is still known only to a relatively few people. The number of people who know about this new revelation are very few compared to about 300 million plus people with access to the Web.

The Internet and the World Wide Web can be used to spread the Word and in particular the New Word revealed through Swedenborg, which is still known only to a relatively few people.

Several years ago, Rev. Grant Schnarr and the General Church Evangelization Committee began a web site (www.newchurch.org) expressly for the purpose of spreading knowledge of the Heavenly Doctrines. This site is rich in graphical quality and textual content. It includes a bookstore, maps of the United States and of the world that allow seekers to find the nearest General Church society, and a number of doctrinal explanations and FAQs. We seem to be reaching a wide audience. During December 2000 we had 135,000 hits on individual pages and 10,000 user sessions (a single user session is all activity that a user has at the site). An interesting statistic is that the user sessions averaged 9 minutes in length. As for response, we get about 20 e-mails per week. Some of those are questions on our beliefs or an attempt to set us straight. Others are responses to the thought for the day. On average there are about 6 book or free cassette orders per week.

The Office of Evangelization has planned several new initiatives. One is an online advertising campaign for the site. Another is a very creative use of rich media to illustrate stories from the Scriptures and to show something of the internal sense. The committee feels that this is an exciting avenue to explore. We will carefully monitor the web visitation statistics and see what feedback we get.

The idea of using the Web to spread the church is not, of course, limited to the evangelization committee. Others are trying to communicate New Church ideas to the rest of the world. We are not aware of all of them, but a few sites with great potential are:

www.baltimorenewchurch.org
www.bouldernewchurch.org
www.swedenborg.ca
www.swedenborg.com
www.washnewchurch.org

The General Church Office of Education is working on a searchable database of lessons for children (New Church Vineyard). Ultimately this will become a web site that can attract families who are seeking religious instruction for their children. There is an on-line searcher for the Writings. It is being upgraded to be more appealing to new comers.

Dr. Kurt Simons has built a web site, www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org, to encourage New Church people to use the web for evangelization.

The potential of the Web is so great that we need to make a major effort to develop technologies and communication methods that will fully use this potential. We need to watch developments in 'personalization', artificial intelligence and rich media delivery so that we can adapt them to spreading the Word.

Bryn Athyn College of the New Church has recently decided to recruit seekers to the New Church. The college has always accepted sincere students who, while not baptized in the New Church, are looking for a religious answer to life. The College will be recruiting such people directly. We feel that the Web has great potential for this project and we are planning to develop an experimental site to try out some new ideas.

The purpose of the site we are proposing is to develop a web-based community for 16-20+ year olds. The key elements are personalization, community, and offering service to them. There is currently a great deal of research on "personalization" (e.g., ACM Journal July 2000) that can contribute to the effectiveness of this effort. The idea is to develop a site or sites with depth. The plan is to engage the potential seeker. For example high school or early college students may be wrestling with intellectual or life issues. How can I reconcile a Creator with the evidence of evolution? What is the real goal of marriage? Is there life after death? A student who finds useful material or dialog will return. It can be personalized to that user. For example, "I see that you have visited the 'Swedenborg and Science' page a number of times, would you like to see some modem examples of religion in science?" After a while, the student/seeker may be invited to join an on-line discussion led by one of our science professors. Another example: the student looks for pamphlets, etc. about life after death. Perhaps a discussion group follows and then an invitation to join an on-line course on "Heaven and Hell" for college credit. In developing such a site, the College hopes to work with the Office of Evangelization and the Young Adult Connection (www.newchurch.org/resources/youngAdults).

We don't begin to have all the answers as to how to do this. However, our target audience is almost all online. The goal is to develop seekers who then might be motivated to come to Bryn Athyn College. We think this could be a pilot project for other New Church evangelization efforts. The Church is blessed with people who see the vision of spreading the Word and who have acquired skills in communications, visual arts, and computer technology. Young students at Bryn Athyn College are learning how to make web sites and some of them express interest in the spread of the Church through that means.

It is my hope that this new means of com munication the Lord has provided will, in a matter of decades, lead to much wider distribution of the New Word.

Dr. Charles Ebert is an academic dean and professor of mathematics and computer science at Bryn Athyn College, and an active member of the General Church Evangelization committee and the Bryn Athyn College recruiting committee. He is director of the STAIRS project for computer based use of sacred texts. He and his wife Faith live in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and travel frequently to Colorado to visit their children and grandchildren.