“Active Christianity” mission initiative reaching more people

BCC has done missionary work in different parts of the world for decades. Today the Christian message is conveyed via websites and social media as well, which reach around the world. A small staff at the Oslo headquarters maintains them.


By: Johanne Reiersrud – Photos: BCC

“We started in 2008 and have seen a steady rise in readership the last ten years. But before summer something happened,” says Milenko van der Staal, editor of the website Active Christianity.

Van der Staal has responsibility for a staff of four employees, in addition to several volunteer workers. He is among those involved in publishing content several times a week in 13 different languages. Inspiration for dynamic, active Christianity is provided in articles, e-books, and posts on Instagram and Facebook.

2018 – Breakthrough rise in readership

“We`ve been systematically and steadily working on both content and platforms for several years,” says Milenko. “In 2016 we moved the website to the address activechristianity.org, and in the course of 2017 were well established in 12 languages.”

Last year the website had a pronounced increase in total readers. This spring its Google rankings improved significantly causing an almost immediate doubling in daily hits.

“It was a small breakthrough. After that, we have continued to improve and have seen increases from around 5,500 daily visitors to about 18,500 in August,” smiles Milenko.

Visit webpage: Active Christianity

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<em>Milenko van der Staal is editor for the website activechristianity.org, which is currently experiencing an exponential increase in readership. Photo: BCC</em></p>
<h3>Biggest increases are in North and Latin America</h3>
<p>The new visitors to the site clearly favor English and Spanish, and are for the most part from North, Middle, and South America.</p>
<p>“We see a big interest in Christianity in these geographical areas. For that reason, we consciously implemented English as our primary language, but on social media we plan an expansion in Spanish too.”</p>
<p>Commitment to social media is a central part of reaching more people. In addition to the website, Active Christianity has a Facebook profile and two Instagram profiles in English. Altogether, Active Christianity has over 100,000 followers on these two platforms.</p>
<p>“Social media provides much greater freedom to communicate more directly and more personally with people. We write about many different themes which Christians are interested in, and research which themes our visitors are interested in reading about,” clarifies Milenko.</p>
<p><img decoding=Visit Active Christianity on Facebook