E-vangelism: Sharing the gospel online

According to a recent survey amongst new Christians, one of the first places they had gone to find information about the Christian faith was the internet and social media.

This is unsurprising! As statistica.com reports, the UK has 55.5m internet users and 92% social media penetration overall, rising to over 98% amongst GenZ. Ofcom says that the average UK adult spends around 4.5 hours online every day.

One girl joined our church earlier this year, saying her spiritual searching had started on TikTok – and she is far from unique.

So how can we be faithful to Jesus and effective witnesses online? Here are some tried and tested ideas.

1. Don’t only post about family and football (etc), also talk openly about your faith and your church. Too many Christians seem ashamed of Christ in their online profiles or are reluctant to be publicly identified with Him.
2. Don’t only post about your faith, also post about your family and football (etc)! If your social media feeds contain only overtly Christian content, you will only attract and keep followers who already share those beliefs. It’s better to weave life and faith together and, where you can, show how your faith in Christ shapes everything else you do.
3. Don’t discredit the gospel by mixing up your Christian posts with anything vitriolic, unpleasant, unsavoury – or mingling it with conspiracy theories. Posting the gospel alongside fringe beliefs will usually just discredit the gospel. Also be very careful how you post politically. Always speak respectfully of your opponents, never suggest that God approves uniquely of your party or your nation – and make sure that your highest allegiance is to Christ and His gospel, not to secondary causes.
4. When you post Christian material, think about your audience and what is helpful for the non-Christian viewer. Church politics isn’t helpful (neither are church fundraising initiatives). However, showing the difference that faith in Christ makes to life is very helpful.
5. Where you post about important ethical issues, make sure that you also post about grace and forgiveness. Christianity impacts ethics, behaviour and politics – but if our posts are only about them, we will be misinterpreted as wanting primarily to adjust people’s behaviour or voting patterns, rather than to encourage them to run to Christ for forgiveness.
6. Don’t over-rely on the internet. Whilst it is important not to neglect this space, it cannot replace relationships and real-world interactions. Rather, allow your real-world witness to overflow online.
7. Tell stories! Scripture certainly contains raw doctrinal truths, but it also explores what truth means as worked out in the lives of kings, fishermen, farmers, widows, and more. Your story of faith is especially interesting to people you know. Where tokens of grace have been especially evident, don’t just tell the story at church, mention it online!
8. If you don’t feel able to create your own content, there are many Christian organisations who make good free gospel resources. In fact, they are longing for you to share it because you can reach people that they cannot. These days the algorithms feed people content they have already expressed an interest in – so getting Christian content in front of new audiences is only possible if you have a significant advertising budget. But you can share gospel resources for free with your friends! At Solas we have a whole online library of short videos for you to make use of: solas-cpc.org/category/video/ as well as Instagram reels. Glen Scrivener’s SpeakLife YouTube channel youtube.com/@SpeakLifeMedia is very helpful and there are plenty more. Maybe your church even produces gospel media shorts, rather than just sermons. The point is, unless you share it, the world is never going to see it!

Sharing the gospel online won’t make you popular with everyone, but evangelism never has. Why not have a look through your feeds today and see if they adequately reflect who you are and your faith in Christ?