Global Media Outreach

Global Media Outreach

Global Media Outreach is an entirely web-based outreach ministry. Launched in 2004 by Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), renamed "Cru" in 2011, Global Media Outreach has created dozens of websites that present its message and invite visitors to pray to receive Jesus and/or email to ask questions. Their emails are then directed to volunteers who answer them and/or pray for their writers.

Strength

Global Media Outreach demonstrates the internet as a powerful, low-cost tool that can penetrate most countries in the world and enable most Christians, including those with physical disabilities from Joni and Friends International Disabilities Center with whom Global Media Outreach partners, to share the Gospel with people around the world.

Weakness

The thrust of the message in the myriad websites created by Global Media Outreach deviate from the Gospel. Instead, they push the Four Spiritual Laws created by Bill Bright, the founder of Cru, and lead visitors to quickly say a prayer to get saved.

What is wrong with the sinner's prayer?

Sinners can pray to ask Jesus to save them and pray to thank Jesus for saving them, but the prayer itself does not save. Salvation is an act and a gift of God, not an act of man. Global Media Outreach, Cru and other ministries conferring salvation upon a prayer is as unbiblical as the Roman Catholics conferring salvation upon infant baptism, found nowhere in the Bible.

What is wrong with the Four Spiritual Laws?

Click here.

Below is a 2021 email exchange with a Global Media Outreach volunteer:

"Hello, I stumbled across your organization this past week, and saw criticized on your site Global Media Outreach, for which I personally volunteer as a global online missionary (going on 6 years, now). It is my opinion that you are not presenting information completely or accurately in your critique of Global Media Outreach. Although it is true that the “initial” presentation of the gospel and the prayer of repentance/acceptance of Christ is very brief and based on the four spiritual laws, the contacts that are reached with these brief presentations are immediately placed in touch with missionaries like me whose job it is to expound on the message of the true gospel, and educate, train, and disciple the person into a deeper and better understanding of spiritual/biblical truths, God/Christ, the Bible, etc. I, for one, do not skirt the issues about “hell”, “damnation”, “sin”, “guilt”, “dying to self”, and the “cost of committing one’s life to Christ”, nor do I compromise on issues like the gay lifestyle, (and all the other related topics) or (for that matter) divorce, fornication/adultery, using profanity, drunkenness, mind-altering drugs, pride, greed, etc. I spend thousands of hours a year counseling and discipling people who contact the ministry and who end up having me as their missionary. And of the many people I’ve personally communicated with from within this ministry, I don’t know anyone who I would consider to be proponents of the prosperity gospel, or any of the false gospels you mention on your site. I do agree with you that Global Media Outreach's extremely brief presentation of the gospel and sample prayer of repentance are both weak, but the truth is that the initial outreach methods are more about getting a person's attention with the least “data” (fewest words) so that they will be hooked (so to speak) so that when they respond, they can immediately be put with a missionary like me to better instruct and explain matters. My goal in writing to you about this is in hopes that you would reconsider what you’ve written, and make an edition and/or addition to reflect what I have shared with you from personal first-hand experience as a volunteer missionary, because I personally and sincerely believe this ministry is worthy of support... I look forward to a response from you. Loreen Pawlak"

Thank you for your email. Global Media Outreach has altered Jesus' Gospel to make it more appealing to unrepentant sinners. The issue with such a "gospel" isn't that it is merely "brief" or "weak," but that it is false (Half the truth is a harder-to-detect lie that often spreads wider and causes more damage than one that is easier to detect), and false gospel produces false converts. The main casualties of Global Media Outreach's false gospel are not the people who contact you, but those who read Global Media Outreach websites and even make a decision to believe based on what they read, but do not contact you. In its 2020 annual report, Global Media Outreach reported "131,211,259 gospel visits" leading to "17,920,534 indicated decisions" and "1,589,472 new contacts." When the leaders of Global Media Outreach stand before Jesus and report, "Lord, we presented a false gospel to 131 million people and created 18 million false converts in order to have a chance to present the true gospel to 1.6 million people," do you think they will hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Mt. 25:21)?