"Some teens today will need an untraceable web history if they will have any chance of entering a nation that officially bans Christian missionaries."

It is true that it is important to manage what information we put online. However, I know many missionaries to restricted access countries that use the internet. They are cautious about what they say and how they say it, but they use the internet. On the other hand I would think having no information on the Internet might raise red flags as well.

I think it is also ironic that a few men writing a blog caution others about the dangers of blogs. Do all of these men assume they will not be called to a restricted access country?

The author is correct: people that have obvious “religious” footprints online can look forward possibly to not entering that place as a missionary, or even as anything else.

But one of the comments raises a bigger point to me. What would it say of a person entering the field if they had an online footprint, but nothing in it pointed to them being a Christian? Is that the kind of person we want to send to the field? It would seem we are approaching a day that looks more like the first century, where people can’t sneak in as missionaries, but will have to go in boldly, risking everything to do so (please don’t take that as me having something against current missions practices).

So, have an online presence that points to Christ, and you can’t be a missionary to closed fields. Have an online presence that doesn’t point to Christ, enter freely. Have no online presence at all, risk scrutiny or something like probation when you enter. What’s a person with a burden for a closed field to do? Pray that the Lord will get them in. If God could bring Paul before the emperor of Rome, surely He will bring His word to the farthest places that need to hear it.

You raise a very good point. It seems to me that we need to approach missions with a circumspect perspective, which would require any potential missionary to take into consideration the political, religious, and social climate of a nation. The variety of scenarios that exist seems to suggest that we should keep all options on the table. For situation A, it may be optimal to enter as an educator. For situation B, it may be optimal to try entering openly as a missionary. For situation C, it may be necessary to enter illegally and covertly, but preach boldly. No situation is just like another. For some, a clear, Christian footprint online may place them in the right position for missions in a given environment. For others, it may be optimal to have no such footprint at all. If entering a mission field covertly and illegally is the only option, then the online footprint may not necessarily be that big of a deal anyway. The only thing needing to be hidden in that case would be the current activities and whereabouts of the missionary. Either way you cut it, it seems to be within the realm of reasonable possibility that some may be advantaged by having no online Christian footprint. But that certainly would not be a universal principle that is true for every believer in every place. In fact, it may be true only to a small (very small) minority.

All of that said, the concern has been raised that an issue to be more concerned about is whether or not your online footprint damages the testimony of Christ. The sites you visit, the searches you perform, the content you upload, the things you say (online)—does your history contradict your identity as a Christian? This is a very good point to make and certainly overshadows the thoughts I raised in my post.

There are some assumptions which are not valid in the article. Yes, facebook, discussion sites, the sharperiron forum, discussion groups have some information which is available. But, how would anyone know if I was actually who I registered as, as opposed to an alias. This happens all of the time. But, more to the point of my post:

Web Searches are only valid trails if performed when you are logged in to a specific site as a user. Generic web searches are not really capable of being tracked back to a specific person through information available universally on the web. Sites such as Google and Yahoo retain the IP address of the computer performing the search, but, unless you are logged in to their site, there is no easy method of tracking who performed the search. Also, these sites, at least currently, keep this information private, even from Government scrutiny unless forced to release it due to some legal request (in the US, and some differences in other countries such as China). An IP address just tracks the search to a specific computer (or, as in my house, to a whole group of computers). Site visits are the same problem unless you are logged in.

A lot of this information can be made even more meaningless if users would become more computer savvy and clear caches and cookies, refuse various cookies and minimize their activities when they are logged in to a site. But, the information available to general site searches is minimal at best without some sort of identifying information which is attached to the user, such as an email address. If a secondary email address is used for posting to sites and establishing logon information, then this will conceal the user (I do this regularly for some sites).

The article is interesting, and provides some good points to most users of the Internet and online services (especially the social networking sites), but some of the statements are a little to broad and do not apply, especially if someone takes minimal actions to avoid this type of tracking and web searches.

Jim

Thanks for providing a more tech-savvy and informed perspective on some of my statements. Your input is very helpful and clarifying. I suppose, as you’ve recognized, that my biggest point of caution would be related to the social networking dimension of the internet world. That sector may not be as private or protected from inspection as we may think, which should cause us to be reflective and circumspect in our use of it—in this specific case, regarding its possible effects on missions.