Christians may find some encouragement in the development of cyberspace and cyber-concepts. People who once scorned the notion of 'spiritual reality', and who rejected Christianity accordingly, might find their ideas transformed by experience in cyberspace. We should beware, however, of replacing one crass perception of the whole of reality as 'just material stuff' with another of 'just immaterial stuff'! Related to this, we should insist that Christians do not think of spiritual things as being opposed to physical ones. Cyberspace may offer us a rich new store of analogies and parables - 'intelligent agents' in cyberspace may seem a bit like angels. But we must always be aware of the limitations of these analogies, and not become so enamoured either of them or of cyberspace itself that we set up false understandings and false gods.
Historically, every new advance in communication has been a means of proclaiming the gospel, and cyberspace is no exception; cyberspace can be used in the service of the gospel. However, those hostile to Christianity have always looked to the latest developments in any field for proof that the gospel is false, irrelevant or outmoded. Christians will need to be aware of such arguments in this developing area, and show up their weaknesses in logic or science. {erratum - the text as published said "beware" but this was a misprint. One example of such use of the web is here, but see also a helpful essay submitted by an e-correspondent}
Putting material up in cyberspace is easy. If every Christian with an account at an ISP puts up some material with explicitly Christian content and links in to other beneficial sites, cyberspace becomes increasingly populated with helpful content. It's rather like adding a stone to the marker cairns on mountain paths - if we each do a bit, the result is significant. Participate in online debates, so that Christian voices are heard. Churches should be very proactive about a cyber-presence: cyberspace is increasingly the most important source of information about organizations. It should be as easy to find out about local churches as local cinemas!
Cyberspace is a strong force for social change, and Christians should be using it to work for social justice and evangelization. To give just one example, could your church promote socially responsible economic causes through its web site?
For Christians, one way of realizing their dependence upon God, and the characteristic way of expressing their concerns to God, is in prayer. There are a number of ways in which cyberspace can be relevant to our praying, some of them simply useful extensions of our existing means of sharing our needs for prayer with friends. Cyberspace is a place where relationships are forged and sustained. So we need to appreciate that the words Jesus gave his disciples to pray, 'forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us', form a prayer which, in our own context, applies to cyberspace relationships too. As we pray for healing of damaged and broken relationships, we may do well to extend our concerns towards events and relationships in cyberspace.
Cyberspace tends to reduce the 'real' contacts that people have at work, and there is a risk that workers in cyberspace become increasingly remote, and that is increasingly important in our fragmented world; gathering people together in real communities becomes an increasing human necessity. For twenty centuries the Church has been serving in this way, and it will go on until the end of time.