CR spoke with the Christian Enquiry Agency

Peter Greystone

The Christian Growth Index, published in December, showed that more than half of people who made a decision for Jesus over the internet have subsequently shared their faith with others. One UK website is leading the way in helping those who are interested in finding out more about Jesus. www.christianity.org.uk, founded by the Christian Enquiry Agency is a non threatening environment for people to discover more. Sarah J spoke with Co-ordinator Peter Graystone to find out more.

Sarah J: Please give us an overview of the work that Christian Enquiry Agency does.

Peter: We give information about the Christian faith which is free and unbiased and reliable to anybody who's thinking about the faith and what it would mean for their life. We can send people a gospel, pray for them, find them a local church or discussion group or we can start an email conversation with them, which is one of the most delightful things, because over the course of weeks and months with that regular contact it's possible to see people moving closer to Jesus, which is a delight.

Sarah J: Most of the work that you do is internet based isn't it?

Peter: It is yes. We've been going for about 25 years, and in the early days of the Christian Enquiry Agency one of my predecessors who ran it bought the URL www.christianity.org.uk and then did almost nothing with it for about 20 years; just recently we've realised what the potential of that is. It is such a memorable title for a web site isn't it? I can't imagine how much it would cost to buy that title now, but he got it for about £10 all those years ago.

We've created on that site www.christianity.org.uk an encyclopaedia of everything you could need to know about what Christians believe, what Christians do; and the big questions about birth, life, death, sex and some pain that people have. The encouraging thing is that people are finding their way to this website. People who would never walk into a church to find answers, but are quite happy to sit behind their computer desk in privacy and think these things through are finding their way to our website.

The first thing we long for them to do is to explore the website and there's interactive bits on it so it's quite an engaging thing to do. There's this alluring button on it which says - find out more - and we're longing for people to click that, because when they do they're in touch with a real human being, who can answer their personal questions or pray for them; but again it's all at a safe distance because it's at the end of an email. People don't feel pressured or threatened; they just seize the opportunity to find out what they want to know about the great issues of life.

Sarah J: How can the church use christianity.org.uk as a tool to communicate stuff about their faith to the wider community?

Peter: Oh it's so easy. All churches need to do is put in the URL www.christianity.org.uk on the bottom of every email they send, every poster they put up outside the church, every newsletter they send out, anywhere where people who might be interested in the Christian faith and haven't found their way to a church yet might see it. The very fact people notice that URL attracts people to the website and we can do all the rest for you. It's a way of telling people about Jesus. It's not expensive to do because it costs nothing. It's not difficult to do because all you need to do is write that line. It's helping thousands of people discover the claims of Jesus who wouldn't have discovered them any other way.

Sarah J: You mentioned that if somebody wanted to then link up with a local church in their area that some of the work that you do has helped them to find such places. What if there's a local church that's thinking, oh I'd love you to hook people up with us, we've got all of this stuff that we can do that would help and you might not know about us. How can they make contact with you in order to make those connection points?

Peter: Get in touch with me. I've got a large number of churches and I use the Find A Church and A Church Near You with their permission which are two church seeking agencies. If they go to the site and contact us and tell us about your church then I will register that if anyone near them is interested we can refer people, particularly if you have a discussion group like an Alpha course, Christianity Explored or Puzzling Questions. If you've got a course like that I'd love to hear about that because then I can confidently put people in touch with a local church who is able, not just to tell them what to believe but to give them an opportunity to explore what they believe, so that slowly but with growing confidence people can grow towards Jesus.

Let me tell you some of the people who we talked to over the last year. If you'll excuse me I'll only use their initials because nobody's given permission to say their names. There's 'F' who I was talking to by email for some months. She is determined to have a new life because of the strength she feels now that she has a faith. She has gone into rehab to make her life less chaotic. Then there is 'J' a young man who I've been talking to by email for some time, who last week went to a church for the very first time in his life and I have to say it was an absolute joy getting an email from him afterwards explaining how he felt about the whole thing and how it looked through the eyes of someone who had never been to church before. I just sensed his life is about to be changed. Please pray for all these people who get in contact with us and ask that when they read the life of Jesus, if they ask for a gospel, when they ask questions - and boy do they ask some very tough questions - in everything we will know what to say and what to do to help people find the Saviour.