John Mark Reynolds - The New Media Frontier (Foreword by Hugh Hewitt): Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ

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This wonderful book explains how a new technology of communication is revolutionizing our culture, and how Christians can and must use the new media properly to spread the good news.

PHILLIP E. JOHNSON, Professor Emeritus of Law, University of California, Berkeley; author, Darwin on Trial

The New Media Frontier is a much needed book that looks at the historical, philosophical, and biblical whys behind the rising communication forms of blogging, vlogging, and podcasting. These are powerful opinion expressions and tools that can be used for good, bad, and ugly purposes. So wed better be prayerfully and intelligently thinking about the words we type or say. All persons with a computer, whether living in a major city or in an unpopulated rural area, now all have the same instant ability and potential to build, encourage, challenge, or tear down others to an unlimited audience on the Internet. You will not look at blogging, vlogging, or podcasting the same way again after reading this book.

DAN KIMBALL, author, They Like Jesus but Notthe Church

The New Media Frontier provides us with expert insight into the new media revolution transforming our lives and todays culture and how it can be used as an effective communication tool for advancing the love and truth of Gods Kingdom.

ANDREW JACKSON, author, Mormonism Explained: What Latter-day SaintsTeach and Practice

Cant tell a URL from an MP3? Heres a place to start.

MARVIN OLASKY, Provost, Editor in Chief, World magazine

The New Media Frontier

Copyright 2008 by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton

Published by Crossway Books
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Chris Tobias

Cover illustration: iStock

First printing, 2008

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: English StandardVersion. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-0211-8
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2214-7
PDF ISBN 978-1-4335-0486-6
Mobipocket ISBN 978-1-4335-0469-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The new media frontier : blogging, vlogging, and podcasting for

Christ / John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton, editors.

p. cm.

Based on the 1st annual GodBlogCon held in Oct. 2005 at BiolaUniversity.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4335-0211-8 (tpb)

1. Mass media in religionUnited States. 2. Mass mediaReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Reynolds, John Mark, 1963 . II. Overton,

Roger, 1982 . III. GodBlogCon (1st : 2005 : Biola University)

BV652.97.U6N49 2008

261.5'2dc22 2008004193

To HUGH HEWITT
our inspiration for exploring the frontier.

Contents

Hugh Hewitt

Roger Overton

John Mark Reynolds

John Mark Reynolds

Matthew Lee Anderson

Joe Carter

5
Terence Armentano and Matthew Eppinette

David Wayne

Tod Bolsinger

Mark D. Roberts

Rhett Smith

Roger Overton

Fred Sanders

Jason D. Baker

Scott Ott

Joe Carter and Matthew Eppinette

Stephen Shields

IT IS THE BEST OF TIMES. It is the worst of times. Some even believe it is the end of times.

I dont know about the latter, but I am certain about the former two observations.

These years wherein the full reach of instant and global communication was unleashed on the world, along with access to anyone with an Internet connection, will be studied for centuries, provided we retain the civilization that allows such study and the power generation to provide it.

And among church historians, the pioneers of Christian missional effort in the virtual world will receive quite a lot of attention for all that they did right, all that they did wrong, and all that they failed to see coming. Many of the pioneers of that effort are here in these pages. As we approach the 500th anniversary of Luthers nailing of his theses to the Wittenberg castle door, we are reminded of the immense numbers of years since then and his undeniable impact on the people of God, no matter what ones Christian denomination is. Luther was among the first to launch the enormous change brought about by a technology jumpthe printing pressand just like Luther and those who followed him on both sides of the Reformation disputes, this first generation of Christian bloggers and virtual missionaries are laying down precedents and carving paths through dense woods. We have to hope they are the right ones.

Even as Christian new media launch, we have to see the virtual world for what it isa deeply degraded place, even a dangerous one.

At this writing the world of commercial pornography is under assault, its sales and thus its profits plummeting, but this is no cause to cheer wholeheartedly. The revenues are plummeting because a slew of new free porn sites are exploding on the virtual scene, offering thousands of hours of the hardest-core porn for free, adopting the model of YouTube and flooding the Web every few weeks with what certainly must be more (and more distinctively bizarre) porn than the entire world had ever produced in its collective history prior to 1900, and perhaps even later.

An academic elite on edge over minute changes in global temperature is wholly indifferent to this tidal wave of porn. Global porning gets zero headlines even as global warming triggers conference after conference, film after film, award after award.

What if, as Christians suspect, porn scars the soul and disfigures the mind? What if, as experts in the field say, it can addict a young teenage boy in a very, very short time?

Then the years since the arrival of the Internet will have been the triumph of that particular evil, and the modest success of Christian blogging should not obscure that awful fact.

I have a friend who remarked to me long ago that Satan arranged for the demise of the Berlin Wall because he was doing better on our side. Would you be surprised to see the Web celebrated by Screwtape if Lewis were still writing today?

Then there is that small problem of the global jihadist virtual network, a universe of web sites peddling hate and intolerance, with many even encouraging the worst forms of extremismthe suicide murder of innocents. The Terror Web, as Pulitzer Prize-winning