Many large Christian organizations now have World Wide Web home pages. What follows is just a sampling of the kinds of organizations and the types of information that are available.
Gospel Films' Gospel Communications Network (GCN) has created a home page called the WWW Bible Gateway (http://www.gospelcom.net/bible). This page contains the full text of several translations of the English Bible, along with translations in other languages. Every word in these translations is indexed, allowing one to search for all occurrences of a word or phrase in the Bible. Online Bibles have been available for several years, but in the past they had to be stored either on your computer's hard drive or on a CD- ROM.
RBC (Radio Bible Class) Ministries has an extensive collection of home pages on the World Wide Web. Many MB Herald readers use Our Daily Bread for their daily devotional reading. The complete text of Our Daily Bread is available on the World Wide Web (http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/odb/), and all of the devotionals for the last two years are available in RBC's online archives. One can also access the RBC Ministries home page (http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/dod/) to read about the weekly Day of Discovery television program. You might want to know about upcoming topics on the programs, or where and when the program is televised in various cities across the country.
Sports Spectrum magazine is available online at http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ss/. It also has links to other Christian sports sites, such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (http://www.fca.org) and the National Christian College Athletic Association (http://www.bright.net/~nccaa/index.html).
InterVarsity has several web sites, including one for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (http://www.gospelcom.net/iv/) and one for InterVarsity Press (http://www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/). If you are interested in attending Urbana '96, you can visit its home page at http://www.gospelcom.net/iv/urbana/ to read about scheduled events or to register. The InterVarsity Press home page contains information on recent publications, and you can search IVP's online catalogue by author or title. InterVarsity is just one of many Christian publishers that have home pages on the Web.
Those who listen to contemporary Christian music might want to check out the Christian Music Online home page at http://www.cmo.com/cmo/. The site has links to pages dedicated to artists such as Cindy Morgan, Sandi Patty, Petra and White Heart; on these home pages, you can read biographical information and, if you have a sound card on your computer, listen to a sample of the artist's music. Concert information is available for people such as DC Talk, Steve Green and Michael W. Smith. Another site for contemporary Christian music is NetCentral (http://www.netcentral.net/).
Promise Keepers is a growing men's movement in the US and Canada. It has an "unofficial home page" at http://www.whitedove.com/PK/index.html, where you can read the organization's statement of faith, as well as its mission and vision statements. A schedule of events is available, along with the opportunity to register for conventions.
Preview Family and Movie Review (http://www.cyserv.com/preview/) is a "non-profit magazine offering film and television reviews from a family and Christian perspective". This organization's reviews of new movies and television shows are available as e-mail messages, and can be received by anyone who wishes to be placed on its list. Movies recently reviewed included Toy Story, Jumanji, Twelve Monkeys and Dead Man Walking. The page also contains reviews of new television shows such as Champs and Matt Waters.
Christian Internet Directory (http://www.bakerbooks.com/ccc/cid/) is a home page published by Baker Book House. Like several other directories on the internet, this home page organizes hundreds of World Wide Web home pages by subject. A list of subjects includes: Art, Campus Ministry, Christian Colleges and Seminaries, Churches and Denominations, Devotions, Evangelism and Missions, Home Schooling, Theology, Worship and Youth. Under Evangelism and Missions, there is a list of over 80 organizations that maintain home pages. These include Habitat for Humanity, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Youth With A Mission International, and Campus Crusade for Christ International.
Habitat for Humanity's home page (http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~jwyckoff/HfH.html) contains links to regional home pages, including the Habitat Re-Store, a division of Winnipeg Habitat for Humanity. This home page provides information on the store and even includes a product list and notice of "hot specials". Other regional pages provide information on upcoming projects.
The Campus Crusade for Christ International home page (http://www.mdalink. com/CCC/) provides links to pages describing its numerous ministries. For example, the Jesus film project home page (http://www.mdalink.com/JESUSproject/) provides information on how to order a copy of the Jesus film on video, and even gives readers information on how to participate in the showing of this film.
Other directories listing Christian resources include the Christian Resource List
(http://saturn.colorado.edu:8080/Christian/list.html), Virtual Christianity
(http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/aaronc.christianity.html), and the Christianity listing on
Yahoo, one of the internet's most popular directories
(http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Religion/Christianity).
E-mail distribution lists are another popular aspect of the internet. Individuals can sign up with any number of lists discussing topics such as the Bible, Christianity, Theology, Biblical Greek, and Leadership in the Church. Every message sent to the list is distributed to all who have signed up. The lists are usually moderated so that inappropriate messages are not distributed. There are also one-way lists, which only allow organizations to distribute messages to subscribers; subscribers cannot communicate with each other. These are basically electronic newsletters. E-mail lists are a great way to get to know other people with similar interests, and often offer quick answers to questions that might normally take hours to research.
USENET newsgroups offer another forum for individuals to discuss ideas and exchange information. There are thousands of newsgroups that are available on the internet. Unlike e-mail lists, anyone can post a message to a newsgroup, and anyone with a newsreader can read these messages, which are stored for several days. Newsgroups include rec.music.christian, soc.religion.christian.bible-study, and soc.religion.christian.youth-work.
Finally, for more information on Christian resources on the internet, you might want to resort to looking not at a computer monitor, but at a book! Internet for Christians by Quentin J. Schultze and Christian Cyberspace Companion by Jason D. Baker are two books that can help you surf the net and browse the web for Christian resources.
Richard Thiessen is librarian at Concord College in Winnipeg and also manages the Canadian MB Conference home pages.