A Comparison between Selected Virtual Churches
and Lutheran Churches on the Net

The virtual churches (included the selected real' churches as well) have mostly been active on the Internet since 1995 and have already a well-developed Internet ministry. Not so with the Lutheran churches. About 85 percent joined the Net in 1996 or early this year. The Lutheran churches have small Web sites. As many as 30 percent have less then five pages, and a total of ca. 90 percent have less than 25 pages. Only one of the virtual churches has less than five pages, and eleven have more than 26 pages. Since the Lutheran Web sites are new to the Net one may, however, expect that they will expand and become more sophisticated within a year's time.

The Lutheran Web sites are also very small regarding the number of visitors, and many Internet sites had not installed a counter to keep records of the number of hits. As many as 40 percent did not have any estimates, and about 50 percent reported that they only have had less than 1,000 hits since they started. Several older' virtual churches had between 10,000 - 50,000 hits, and three churches more than 100,000 hits.

Conservative estimates on the collected data from the 18 virtual (and real) churches show that they get between 6,500 - 10,000 hits and 500 - 700 actual responses per month. The Lutheran churches report that about 57 percent had only received less than five responses via e-mail or in the guest book last month. Also other questions show that there is not much interaction between the Lutheran Church Web sites and the visitors.

Also, when it comes to the spiritual' side of the Internet ministry the differences are clearly visible. About 78 percent of the Lutheran churches had not had any prayer requests, and those who received requests for prayers had only got a few during the last month. According to the other survey, eight of the other virtual (and real) churches did receive more than 300 prayer requests per month.

Different Visions?

The major reason for all these differences may be a result of a very diverse vision and focus for the Web ministries. The Lutheran churches report that the major purposes for their Web sites are to (1) inform the local community,
(2) invite people to join the church and,
(3) to serve needs for internal communication.

Only after that do they list a desire to present the gospel to the visitors on their Web site. Generally, the Lutheran Web sites function very limited in the same way as a newspaper advertisement and a billboard' to keep people informed about some key church activities.

The virtual and other churches have a very different focus for their ministry. Their major vision is to present the gospel. Secondly, they wish to give visitors an opportunity to communicate about faith and life, personal struggles, and to have an opportunity for counseling, etc. Thirdly, education on various spiritual issues is important. There are several differences in the way the virtual (and other) churches are doing ministries which are well worth noticing:

Firstly, the focus is the visitor (the audience), the person, and his or her needs, and not the church (the sender), and what it needs to inform whatever person who may be surfing by the Web site.

Secondly, the spiritual issues are in focus, not church business' or activities. Much creativity is invested into presenting the gospel and above all, interacts with the visitor. Many church Web sites are more concentrated on pushing' their agenda than being open to invite people into a dialogue and get to know them.

Thirdly, most of the virtual and other churches in the first survey are much more aware of the global nature of the Internet and the profound opportunities it provides for human interaction in an emotional setting, being always curious and open in a (mostly) friendly atmosphere to meet and interact with all kinds of people from all over the world. The Lutheran churches are dominantly focused to promote themselves and their church to a relatively narrow, local audience.

Fourthly, among the virtual' churches there is an eagerness and openness to explore new tools and medias to encourage the visitors to interact with the Web church.' 17 out of 18 participants in the survey either already had or planned to implement audio tools on their Web site. Also, video, search engines and IRC are becoming popular. The contrasts to the Lutheran church Web sites are clear, with little enthusiasm to use new tools like audio (only ca. 33 percent), search engine, IRC and video. By promoting new technologies the Web sites are active in the Web market' and attract curious and interested people to try out new things.

In summary, there seem to be very different basic approaches and attitudes between the two groups covered in the two surveys. These differences seem to give important clues to understand why some Internet churches and ministries succeed and others do not. Even more so when one considers that there are some basic similarities between the two groups: They are both using very limited financial resources to develop and maintain their Web site and they are mostly alone in their volunteer work, using their free time to do this ministry.

Although seven of the Webmasters for the virtual churches were professional Internet designers, this does not fully explain the difference. Many churches with volunteer Webmasters have very high quality Internet ministries with very low cost that do influence the lives of several hundreds or thousands of people on the Net. The small survey among the virtual (and other) churches documented that 44,5 percent of them positively affirmed that their ministry had contributed in leading one or more persons to Christ.

The crucial point is the question: Why are we doing the ministry on the Internet? To communicate the living Lord and Savior Jesus Christ or to promote church activities? In its core essence, any Christian Internet ministry must define itself as a part of the old commission declared by Jesus himself: To proclaim the gospel until He comes.

Rev. Arne H. Fjeldstad, D.Min.

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