Battle Log

Wednesday 29 April 2020

Posted by Posted 29 April 2020, 6:51 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink

 

Time flies.  Next thing you know we will be in eternity.  I can’t wait.  But till that time, I want to use the gifts and talents God has given me to bring honour to God by making disciples.

Time flies, I can’t believe I’ve been doing online evangelism for nearly six weeks now.  A few months ago, I would never have dreamed I would be doing this.  And yet here I am.  One door closes and another opens.  And oh, what an opportunity it is!  It’s never been easier to get a gospel conversation started.

And yet, it has its downsides.  Anyone thinking of getting involved with online evangelism needs to consider these factors first, and apply wisdom.

As one of my co-elders put it, Omegle is a cesspit.  It’s a place where the depravity of man can so easily rise to the surface.  You can so easily be confronted with dangerous images, links & unwholesome language.  Much more so than on a regular street outreach.  Therefore, this kind of evangelism will not be for everyone!  If this might be a temptation for you - stay away.  If you are a teenager - discuss this with your parents first.  If you are an adult - discuss it with your Elders / Pastors.  And listen to their advice, they care for your soul.

That said, we are having wonderful opportunities to share the hope of Jesus in this dark place.  And we are learning more ways of putting appropriate protections in place.  I’ve already touched on many of those precautions in previous reports, but I’m going to mention them all again here, and cover some new ones as well.

Firstly, on Omegle, to get out of a conversation: hit the escape key on your keyboard twice.  The first time will prompt if you are sure.  The second time will disconnect you from the person you are talking to.  The other option is to just close the browser tab.

If you are doing video conversations, being able to initially (or constantly) hide the video feed of the other person is a must.  We now have three ways of doing this:

  1. Physically hide the video feed.  You can do this in many ways.  But one way is to take a piece of paper, like a gospel tract, fold it in half, and then put it over the top of your screen (as per the picture).

  2. Next is to have another window sitting over top of the video feed.  In my pictured example, I am using Notepad2 to do this.  Notepad2 is a free download from here.  The added benefit of using Notepad2 is that you can turn on the highlighted “Always On Top” feature (accessed from the Settings menu), so that even when you have another window selected (like Omegle in your web browser), Notepad2 will always stay on top of it.

  3. Finally, you can install a Chrome browser extension so that you can completely hide the video feeds HTML element.  Here are the instructions for how to do that:

    1. In Chrome, go to: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-html-elements/enegojdnkeicfoiknhfjaedhlckeahmf

    2. Click the “Add to Chrome” Bufton.

    3. To use it, press the new HTML icon that is now near your address bar and then click on the part of the website you want to hide.

    4. Press Ctrl+Z to undo what you have hidden once you know the person can be trusted.

    5. To turn off the extension, simply press the HTML button again.

    6. There is also a way to toggle the Remove HTML elements extension (that you’ve installed) via your keyboard in Chrome (without having to click the HTML button with your mouse).

    7. Go to chrome://extensions/shortcuts in your address bar and on that page set a key combination to activate/deactivate it

    8. I have set mine as Ctrl+Space

You can also use the Chrome browser extension to hide inappropriate lines of text chat (esp. appropriate if you are live streaming, as per below)

Another thing to do is have accountability in place.  Have others in the room with you when you are doing online evangelism.  Or join an online outreach team (see this link to be part of ours) where you are all together in a virtual meeting room with your screen shared into it.

Our online outreach team now live streams via YouTube - which provides another layer of accountability.  Everything we say and do can be seen by anyone.

So, in summary, online evangelism is a wonderful opportunity - and we want to encourage it!  But it’s not for everyone.  If you are going to get involved, put precautions in place to protect yourself.

As to the last two days of outreach (which this report covers), I can only summarise it as many wonderful conversations, with many who were up to no good, but encountered the gospel instead.  At least twice over these last two days, I heard people thank me for being on Omegle and sharing what I am.  And I’ve had many opportunities to tell people to get off Omegle - it's a place they shouldn’t be.  After hearing the gospel, they understand what I mean!

View previous Online Evangelism report (26 April 2020)

Online Evangelism

Online Evangelism

Here are the tentative weekly outreach times for online evangelism:

Sunday 1-3pm (Practical Training Outreach)
Monday 9am-5pm
Tuesday 1-5pm
Wednesday 1-5pm
Thursday 9am-5pm
Friday 1-4pm
Saturday 1-4pm

These times are all in AEST (GMT+10), so adjust them based on your own timezone.

How to take part

To watch any of our online outreaches, you can watch live on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Or to take part in any of these outreaches, email us for the virtual room meeting link.