One Million Decide to Follow Jesus

UPdate: One million reached tonight. Well done Eric!! A big moment for the web!

Original: You might want to consider deciding to follow Jesus today BECAUSE . . not only will you be restored to your Creator . . and enter eternal life . . but you might also be the one millionth person to make a decision to follow Jesus on my friend Eric Celerier’s website. No prizes, btw, for being the one millionth person. Not from Eric, anyway.

Heres a screenshot from a few seconds ago. The real thing is at GodRev.com , a site developed by ConnaitreDieu.com (LookingForGod.com) where you can watch the decisions in real time. You can Google earth them if you want.

Picture 6-3

Hey – no cheating you Christians – you cant do it twice [dont think i cant see you!]

Eric invites you to join him tonight: “At 6pm CET (Central European Time), we will praise the Lord with all the faithful Internet Users of our French portal: TopChretien.com, live on our Top Tv: http://www.topchretien.com/toptv/view/live

Andrew

Andrew Jones launched his first internet space in 1997 and has been teaching on related issues for the past 20 years. He travels all the time but lives between Wellington, San Francisco and a hobbit home in Prague.

16 Comments

  • Rob Grayson says:

    Awesome. France is typically way under-resourced relative to the US and UK in all things relating to the Christian faith, but Topchretien and connaitredieu.com are blatant exceptions. They are both excellent sites.

  • mattias says:

    Really cool website, I must say! And encouraging. Only 14 more to go… sorry, I mean only 12 more to go… ah, I mean only 11 more… need to post this now because that thing is ticking fast!

  • I must confess to being sceptical about the way the gospel message is often presented. Looking through this site I was pleased that there were many glorious truths there but I just felt that the presentation was too slushy and too simplistic.
    It is a cliché to say that decisions don’t make disciples but our obsession with decisions continues. I would be much more excited by a smaller number of people clearly committing themselves to a life of sacrifice in a small relational community than a million people clicking on this prayer.
    The truth his you can get lots of decisions at an event and not see any of them again. Of course some do become Christians and live the life but the majority don’t. I think this is just another blurring of what it means to be a Christians that is harmful to the gospel.
    Also I think it is valid for Christians to pray prayers like the commitment prayer as part of their daily devotions. Everyday I want Jesus to come into my heart. Everyday I want to receive him and make him Lord of my life. My continual longing is to know him. But part of our evangelical revivalist subculture tells us that prayers like this are for people making first time commitments or rededicating their life to God after straying from the faith.
    And finally, the idea of counting the hands in the air or clicks on a website and bragging about them particularly galls me. It smacks too much of a business model for the church. I think this is can be a distraction from getting on with the humble missional incarnational living that we are called to.
    Reactions please?

  • Nico-Dirk says:

    Hi Andrew,
    I guess I have become a bit (too?) sceptical about conversion stats to take them very serious.

  • JohnFOM says:

    Great stuff! If only 1 in 100 sticks then that is still a pretty large expansion of the kingdom. And it’s a lot of people who’ve been introduced in some way to God regardless of the uptake on the relationship.
    We are witnesses, not salesmen. We don’t get bonuses for ‘decisions’, we don’t get bonuses for repeat customers. That 10 million people have seen the site is worth applauding and that 1 million have felt moved enough by what they saw/read/whatever to register as having made a decision is worth celebrating.
    I haven’t looked at the site myself yet, but I have a hope that there is some mechanism that connects these people to a community of believers so they can be involved in that other ‘great commision’, to make disciples.

  • Adam S says:

    I worked with a denominational evangelism referral service (call this number for more info about Jesus type of thing) about 5 years ago. I had a number of churches that didn’t want any names because such a high percentage were cranks, patients in mental hospitals, etc. I frequently had to go outside the denomination (against policy) because I couldn’t find a church willing to follow up. (I won’t say the denomination but it rhymes with SBC). I had a number of instances of the name already being regular attenders of the local church. It is not that I am completely opposed to using media or mass markets for evangelism, but it is so rarely effective. People like it because it is flashy, but the real work of evangelism is rarely flashy.

  • Andrew Jones says:

    John – there is a referral system but a lot of people like Eric are asking about better ways to form new communities and no one yet has given a satisfactory answer. if you have any ideas, let us know.

  • Andrew Jones says:

    David – having met Eric a few times, I can say that “bragging” would be the furtherest thing from his mind. He is a man who is accountable to use his resources wisely and who makes the process transparent for those supporting him.
    He might have said that a WHOLE BUNCH of people made decisions from a lot of countries, including the middle east and north africa, but instead, he created a process that tells its own story as each person enters that story and leaves their footprints.
    i personally like the fact that we can see the stats – it gives us a good reason to party.
    “But we had to party” Jesus, Parable of Prodigal Son, Luke 15

  • Sorry about using the word ‘bragging’. I think I was being a bit OTT to get the discussion going. Well we’ve got a few comments so far. Any more thoughts?

  • craig says:

    Thanks for directing us to this site. I am quite impressed with how well done it is and how God is using it to bring people into His Kingdom!

  • Cathryn says:

    Lord, touch those hearts deeply, give them a revelation of You that will spread like wild fire. Pour out Your Holy Spirit…..protect them Abba………… Lamb of God, receive the reward of Your Sacrifice. Amen

  • jason says:

    interesting…I did not know they had something like this out there…

  • JohnFOM says:

    I wish I knew an answer to the problem of setting up new communities. It was a problem I noticed when I was evangelising in yahoo chatrooms a few years back.
    Still don’t have a great answer to it as yet. I’ll be sure to spread it as far and wide as I can if I ever hear of one.

  • Dana Ames says:

    I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s just that it’s not local, and so it would be difficult to follow up with people, see if they need help and help them get it, hearkening back to AdamS. And I wonder if becoming a Christian isn’t a continuum of decisions, not just one.
    I think a lot depends on how one defines “gospel” and “witness”. Again, they are doing good; I’m just not sure it goes far enough.
    Dana

  • andrew says:

    dana – agreed. it would be great to figure out a way to connect new believers, and we are all open to it.
    of course it would need to be sensitive to the fact that many of these “decisions” are coming from [as you probably noticed] countries that do not appreciate people saying yes to Jesus and respond with violence if they know anymore details than are given on the website.
    so – how to connect new believers and, at the same time, keep them alive for the next month – now that’s a challenge.

  • This reminds me of the time a few of us sat down to watch the ‘Jesus’ movie. Someone was talking about lending it to a neighbour and others were saying we’d be too embarrassed to do that. I wasn’t the only one sniggering at the poor quality of the acting. We could hardly believe the massive impact it was having worldwide.

Leave a Reply