Can technology usher in another Pentecost?

DALLAS—The Baptist General Covention of Texas is pioneering a technologically advanced, language-barrier-breaking evangelism tool with the potential to take the gospel to the ends of the earth like never before.

Wayne Shuffield, director the BGCT Evangelism/Missions Center, logs onto ABBY.

The tool—called Hope Chat—harnesses the power of ABBY, an advanced online artificial intelligence translation platform developed at Carnegie Mellon University. It allows people to converse across languages in real time about spiritual matters, and the technology contextually translates what people type, allowing cross-language conversations to take place.

Historically, there have been two barriers to sharing the gospel—language and culture, said Wayne Shuffield, director of the BGCT Evangelism/Missions Center. The ABBY system removes one of those barriers and enables Christians to build bridges to people around the globe. In essence, organizers hope ABBY will tear down the language barrier in the most significant way since Pentecost.

Nondenominational Need Him Ministries, with whom Texas Baptists are partnering in this effort, holds the only religious license for ABBY, an acronym for Awareness Behavior Balancing Yield. The technology "speaks" 28 languages, accounting for 95 percent of the world population. ABBY corrects typographical errors, clarifies colloquialisms, understands cues and learns through interaction.

"I don't believe we can overstate what ABBY represents for evangelism and missions today," Shuffield said. "This new technology opens unimagined and unprecedented avenues for communicating the gospel. I believe the possibility of taking the gospel to every nation, every person, worldwide in my lifetime truly exists because of this new re-source."

Surveys show vast numbers of people—including 64 percent of Americans, according to the 2004 Pew Internet and American Life Project—access the Internet for spiritual matters.

Hope Chat will take that interest to the next level, connecting people across the globe in real time to discuss spiritual matters. Web users can access Hope Chat at www.hopechat.com, where trained Christian volunteers will be prepared to talk about spiritual issues.

BGCT leaders already have started recruiting and training those volunteers, who in turn are charged with training and recruiting other volunteers to be ready to respond to web traffic.

Even before the site address was publicized or distributed to a significant number of people, volunteers began seeing steady traffic to the site and have led some people to beginning a relationship with Christ.

"Already, people are coming to know Christ as Lord," Shuffield said. "People around the world are hungry for a relationship with God. They're seeking answers to their questions. They're seeking comfort during personal hardship. And they're finding both in Christ."

Drew Dickens, president and executive director of Need Him Ministires, is enthusiastic about how God will use ABBY to bring people closer to him.

"We are so excited to introduce ABBY and believe her technology could very well change the way ministry is being done around the world," Dickens said. "ABBY's capabilities are remarkable, able to perform real-time interactive dialogue between two or more parties chatting or speaking different languages. We are pleased to partner with Baptist General Convention of Texas, who can utilize ABBY to further the Great Commission of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth."

For more information about ABBY and how to get involved in using the technology to share the hope of Christ, call Shuffield or BGCT Local Church Evangelism Specialist Scott Willingham at (888) 244-9400.