Coding For Jesus

by

Whether we like it or not, tech­nol­o­gy has already invad­ed the world. The inter­net was born dur­ing the 1980’s, and it changed the life in this world for­ev­er.

Chris­tian­i­ty is always counter-cul­ture for one rea­son, “it cre­ates cul­ture”.

Through­out the his­to­ry, the first Chris­tians was the first who ini­ti­at­ed out­reach com­mu­ni­ties in the world, like Red Cross, Sal­va­tion Army and the peo­ple behind great trans­for­ma­tion of a nation, like Mar­tin Luther and of course the Amer­i­ca who was once found­ed by its lead­ers and estab­lished its laws based on bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples and Jesus’s teach­ings.

Today, as Chris­tians we are fac­ing anoth­er obsta­cle. “The Inter­net and Social Media”. The Inter­net nowa­days has been used not only to con­nect peo­ple to a broad­er range of knowl­edge but also the spread of hatred and lies.

Many younger peo­ple have been bul­lied, manip­u­lat­ed for sex­u­al advances and has been addict­ed to inter­net pornog­ra­phy. Some mil­len­ni­als also are search­ing answers on the inter­net and root­ing their iden­ti­ty on social media. I have a few friends also val­i­dat­ing their exis­tence based on how influ­en­tial they are in the social media and how many likes they gar­nered every day.

Now the chal­lenge is, with so many pages and infor­ma­tion on the inter­net, how can a Chris­t­ian can stand out for Jesus? Can a Chris­t­ian pro­gram­mer or soft­ware engi­neer can have their own plat­form to share Jesus every day except being phys­i­cal­ly present with the per­son?

Hack and Make Dis­ci­ples

I nev­er thought there was a place for a “tech guy” in a church except work­ing behind the mon­i­tors.

As a techie guy, I nev­er thought that we can also bring Jesus to the lost and make dis­ci­ples in the dig­i­tal space.

Last week­end, I had this oppor­tu­ni­ty to join a hackathon event in Orti­gas held by Indig­i­tous Philip­pines.

At the back of my mind, how in the world Chris­tians can make dis­ci­ples using inter­net and tech­nol­o­gy? Oh boy, I was wrong!

It was my first time to par­tic­i­pate in a hackathon chal­lenge. I had no friends there except for Jen who signed up as well but we do have dif­fer­ent fortes. I aim to join a team who codes for an app, who loves to make strate­gies or can be a speak­er to pitch the prod­uct at the end of the event, which in turn I became one!

Dur­ing the event, the coor­di­na­tors asked us to choose at least one chal­lenge. There were so many chal­lenges:

#thegospel­sto­rychal­lenge
#jesusinthe­me­dia
#bible­box­Pl
#bible­coach­ing

And much more! As usu­al, friends teamed up togeth­er. I chose #thegospel­sto­rychal­lenge as it has been my pas­sion to share Jesus in dif­fer­ent cre­ative ways.

I nev­er thought those who came in with­out friends will also join the chal­lenge I chose, Jen a friend of mine from Vic­to­ry Fort, also chose it and what an amaz­ing team we formed.

For two days, even we lack sleep, we were able to pro­duce an out­put. Hooray! I was ner­vous because that was my first time to pitch a prod­uct or project, thank­ful­ly my toastmaster’s expe­ri­ence paved the way!

Since it’s already late night, to make this short, “WE WON!”

Yes, we are one of the two teams who chose to par­tic­i­pate glob­al­ly in the near future. What a pic­ture of grace and mer­cy of God for our team.

Our project is called “Go+Share”, ’ which was coined from the bible verse in Matthew 28:19.

Our objec­tive is to cre­ate a plat­form where­in we can reach out to the young mil­len­ni­als who we know are strug­gling with depres­sion, anx­i­ety, lack of pur­pose and significance.We also have plans of cre­at­ing viral videos that can encour­age a per­son and devel­op a mobile app where we can be con­nect­ed to these indi­vid­u­als online by email­ing them and set­ting up webi­na­rs or online meet­ings for a one on one dis­ci­ple­ship (121) for those indi­vid­u­als who want to learn more about Jesus.

We real­ized that social media can be help­ful to reach them since most of them are active on it. We made graph­i­cal images of their real­i­ty and sev­er­al spo­ken poet­ry videos with a hope that we can con­nect to them with­out push­ing the gospel or forc­ing them to change. Let alone Jesus change them.

I would like to thank Pangalan.com who offered to spon­sor our domain for 1 year (www.goshare.com.ph). Your gen­eros­i­ty will reach the mul­ti­tudes of souls wait­ing for some­one who can encour­age and moti­vate them and share Jesus with them online.

The ene­my has been using the inter­net to kill, steal and destroy lives. Why not use the same tool to spread the gospel and spread the love to those who needs it?

As I end this blog, I encour­age you to take part also in this advo­ca­cy of “bring­ing back the mil­len­ni­als back to God”. With your help, we can save many lives.

To learn more about us,  like vis­it our Face­book Page: fb.com/goshareph