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Religious educators across the Jewish and Christian traditions are unified in the conviction that one of the primary ways to ensure vibrant young adult participation in a religious movement is to afford them a significant experience of connection with the movement on both a regional and the national level. As we enter the 21st century, these connections are often forged through the internet. Thus, the internet is an important tool that appeals to young adult interests and needs and is therefore a valuable tool in connecting them to the broader Messianic Jewish community.
Many seminaries, such as Fuller, are offering classes devoted to studying and pioneering new ways to build community and do outreach in cyberspace (or via the internet). We must utilize this vital tool if we are going to stay relevant and engage the next generation who spend a significant portion of their time on the internet. According to eMarketer, teenagers and children account for 18.8% of all internet users in the US (over 200 million), up from 18.3% in 2004. This number is expected to increase to 20.8% in 2008. The following statistics from an article on Edupage dated 15 November 1999 further emphasize the importance of this internet and communicating with youth and young adults.
- A joint AOL and Roper Starch study of 500 children between the ages of 9 and 17 found that 63 percent of the youth surveyed would rather surf the Web than watch television, while 55 percent prefer being on the Web to being on the telephone.
- Children between 9 and 11 years old go online an average of three days per week, while those between 15 and 17 years old go online an average of five days per week.
- Two thirds of adults and children surveyed said they would prefer a computer with access to the Internet rather than a television or phone, if stranded on a desert island.
In terms of religious education and experience, 8% of adults and 12% of teenagers use the internet for religious or spiritual experiences according to the Barna Update. This is further evidenced by the success of sites such as Beliefnet and aish.com as well as the over 1,000 subscribers to the UMJC Torah list and 100 or so people who have subscribed to or make use of the Set Table every week.
In the future, the internet will not only be a key tool for fostering education among youth and young adults but also communication and connection. Email, instant messaging, threaded discussions, pod casts, and blogs are rapidly becoming the way people sustain relationships across the country. We have already begun to see the importance of these media in connecting with the geographically dispersed youth and young adults in the UMJC.
Commenting on the importance of the internet for building community, Britta Phillips, a Messianic Jewish twenty-something, Fuller student and a member of Ahavat Tzion Messianic Synagogue writes,
The biggest potential site of technologically enhanced community development comes from what might seem an unlikely source: www.myspace.com. Anyone who has spent much time with teenagers or 20-somethings in the last year has at least heard of this website. It is a friend networking site, where individuals set up profiles in order to connect with friends they already have as well as to collect new ones.
Our movement is virtually entirely made of up commuters. Very few people live in close proximity to their synagogues, and even if they do, usually most of their friends do not. This often makes socializing within our communities outside the confines of Shabbat and holiday services difficult to impossible. If we put the needed effort and commitment into it, we can craft myspace extensions of our homes, discussing our tastes, feelings and interests in an informal setting. All of this is also free to the public.
Why is this kind of site important? Because, as unquestionably vital as our time in synagogue is, when we have no extra-synagogal interaction with each other, we have a tendency to create "business relationships." All we talk about is Torah, Messianic Judaism, and "being Jewish." These are obviously sizable aspects of our lives, but so is our incomprehensible love of Pink Floyd, or our fascination with Japanese Anime, or our frequent day trips out to Zuma beach in Malibu. We need to have a way of sharing our particularities in order to deepen our relationships with each other, and while I would never suggest that the internet act as a replacement for physically assembled community, I do believe it could enable relationships to continue their development in between meetings.
This sort of activity could encourage nominal attendees to come more often because they find people they connect with on myspace. It could on occasion bring new people into a community as they stumble upon our members' profiles. But there is another aspect to the service worth noting: the free creation of private groups, monitored by the founder.
The importance of the internet is further corroborated by the research of Keysar and Kosmin, who found in their research on Jewish communication that: "Today's college students and young people in general search for information, friendships, and even spiritual activities online, using the World Wide Web. This is a high-tech generation that creates its own virtual community."[29]
Recognizing these significant trends, we must begin to better utilize the internet. We are currently in the initial stages of conceptualizing www.yachadnetwork.net, a website which will serve as a portal for youth and young adults to the Messianic Jewish community.
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