When the Lord gave me the idea to start a small magazine called Charisma 39 years ago, the personal computer hadn’t been invented and what we now know as the Internet was in its infancy and only available to the military.
Today, the Internet has interrupted everything in the media. The entire media landscape has changed. Yet today I’m still doing much the same thing I did when I started as a 24-year-old journalist. I’m trying to use the journalistic talents God gave me for His glory by covering the church and the work of the Holy Spirit in the world in spite of or maybe because of some of the negative changes that have happened in our culture.
I thank God for the technological changes because it makes it easier to interact with you, our readers. Communication is faster and we can reach millions—yes millions—online we could never reach in print.
Now don’t misunderstand, I love print. I love to hold a magazine and read it. I even love the smell of ink. And I believe magazines will be here for a long time. But I also love the Internet. For example:
- We have an app for Smart phones that make it easy to get the nearly 50 articles we post a day across our websites. You can touch the app on the Smart phone and read it anywhere anytime mere seconds after we post the article online. We can only put a tiny fraction of that material into print.
- With pass-along readership, we reach 225,000 people a month. That’s a lot. But online, we reach that many people in two days. That’s right. We’re reaching 4 million different people every month online and it’s growing exponentially. And it makes it easy to send around articles on social media. Several of our articles have gone viral.
This week, for example, our new ChristianLife.com had a graphic of Acts 2:38 go viral. Video sites like ChristianLife.com are the latest trend online. You’ve probably visited some of them. Well, we have a vision for a Spirit-filled video site where Jesus is glorified. Our motto is “like the Gospel, things worth sharing.” You can help participate in our vision by visiting christianlife.com. It’s currently in beta mode, and we need your help getting a steady stream of wholesome and catchy content to help grow the site and increase its impact.
Here are examples of the types of videos we want:
- One was of Delia Knox being healed right before your eyes at the Bay of the Holy Spirit revival a couple of years ago.
- Another was a funny video parody of a “super cool” Sunday morning service.
- A video made by Lake Mary Church (affiliated with the Every Nation network of churches) that rents the meeting room in our office building. They showed it on Sunday morning to let people tell how Jesus and the church had changed their lives!
So please, check out our website, and help us find good content to fulfill our vision. And if you see things you like, share them with your friends, and help us increase our impact for Christ’s kingdom.
Steve Strang is the founder and publisher of Charisma. Follow him on Twitter @sstrang or Facebook (stephenestrang).
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