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7. W o r l d :
"VIRTUAL" TRACT SIGNALS NEW ERA IN "HEADLINES EVANGELISM"AN UNRECORDED "FIRST" at the summer Olympics heralds a new era in literatureevangelism which can bring the timeless truth of the gospel into the tragedy of today's headlines.
Within hours of the bombing in Centennial Park, Atlanta - which left two dead - a small team of Christian communications workers around the world had begun creating an evangelistic tract responding to the event. The production of the article "Can There Be Peace In A World Without Guarantees?" demonstrated how computer technology means that evangelistic literature relevant to world events can be distributed globally almost instantly, according to one of those involved.
"In just a few short hours it's possible to produce a message that, with photocopiers in thousands of churches, means that we could have literally millions of tracts in the hands of Christians around the world within just 24 hours," said Allan Carrington, a print and publishing trainer with Youth With A Mission's University of the Nations.
"Major world events provide an opportunity to share Christ at strategic times, to offer answers to questions people have. In the past one of the main problems with tracts has always been the slowness of distribution. The advent of the Internet changes all that dramatically, and Atlanta gave us anopportunity to show it."
The bombing tract - which also referred to the TWA flight bombing, and pointed readers to Christ as the only true security in the world - was posted to the Realgold website covering evangelism at the Olympics, and downloaded and printed in several countries.
Realgold was a collaborative effort between communications and technology experts from several groups, including Youth With A Mission and its University of the Nations, the Moody Bible Institute, the American Tract Society and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Members of the "virtual" Realgold team worked from terminals in Atlanta, Dallas, Hawaii, Sweden and Australia.
The homepage featured prayer requests, photographs and reports from evangelistic events at the Games, and devotional studies. Ten thousand people from around the world "visited" the site from their computers during the event and in the week after.
The Olympic tract demonstrated how it was possible to harness technology for world evangelization, and pointed to "exciting possibilities", said Carrington. "Jesus always communicated with cultural and timely relevance. He understood the felt needs of his audience - and even referred to the news ofthe day, at times."
He added: "When we produce an evangelistic piece like a tract, the large audiences always add diversity, but a critical event - and it doesn't have to be a disaster - focuses people, and allows a mass-produced piece to be so much more personally relevant."
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