By Amanda Wells
A virtual Presbyterian minister celebrated its first birthday in December.
E-minister, hosted on the church’s website at www.eminister.org.nz, lets people anonymously address questions to an equally anonymous minister. Replies and responses can go back and forth between the two without any identity details being divulged.
To ask a question, people can either fill in the form on the site, which means they do not need to reveal an email address, or they can send an email direct to eminister@ presbyterian.org.nz.
Questions and the identity of those who ask them are kept strictly confidential. E-minister has dealt with pastoral issues as serious as those encountered in face-toface ministry.
As well as counsel concerning personal pastoral issues, people seek directions to a good church in their area, or want to engage in the finer points of theological debate.
Conversations have canvassed the problems of suffering and evil, cults, and addictions, among other subjects.
Some users have wanted to discuss issues the denomination is dealing with but the majority appear to lack a Presbyterian background.
Despite the anonymity the web allows, e-minister says questions have been serious rather than frivolous: “It’s a very clever innovation on behalf of our denomination to tap into a medium that is more and more a part of everyday life.”
The volume of email received varies, with an average of 12 a month arriving during project’s first year.
A dialogue can be created over the course of several emails, with one finishing so positively that the user discussed donating money to the church.
Searching for other similar services on the web draws a blank. There are lists of spiritual questions and answers aplenty online. At many Christian sites, you can click on a topic, scroll through the list of tough or easy questions and read “200 answers to life’s most challenging questions” or “10 questions for God”.
Some sites offer an informal question-and-answer service, promising to respond to email queries, but free, professional services like e-minister are elusive.
Often questions received by email will be answered with a post on a site, but a service like e-minister that tailors answers to specific questions from a specific individual is much more difficult to find.
Google ranks the Presbyterian site no.1 in the world if searching for the terms “eminister” and “faith”.