It was one of those thoughts that stays with you.

In an article that ran before his keynote at the WorldFuture 2010 conference, inventor and bestselling author Ray Kurzweil said, “The major religions have embraced technology and technological progress.”

This trend has some intriguing aspects to it.

Religious leaders from the major religions have recognized the historic opportunity to advance their causes using new communication technologies.

Religious technology pioneers are experimenting and adopting the new tools quickly.

Religious messages and instruction can now be transmitted to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and the major religions are doing so.

Religious denominations, movements and groups that become the most proficient in technology are likely to experience growth in adherents.

Religious beliefs, shared through media – as in churches, synagogues and mosques – can have life changing and eternal consequences.

Still, there was something more about Kurzeweil’s analysis that continued to gnaw at me. A change of scenery and cold wintry air helped.

In the 1920s, Christians overcame their reservations about creating radio content and quickly became significant players in early broadcasting. Since then, American evangelicals have pioneered one form of mass communication after another – print, broadcast and satellite – to reach others with the gospel. Evangelicals have dominated the nation’s religious broadcast programming.

Today, when compared to the largest players on the Internet, many Christian media organizations, and churches trying to get started with new media, have been challenged by ever changing technology, a lack of staff with technology proficiency and the cost of funding competitive online platforms.

Creating an intelligent technology ministry platform while maintaining traditional media operations has not been an easy proposition either.

Help may be arriving.  A new generation of technology platforms and services  are blossoming, promising to give smaller organizations many of the tools that previously only larger corporations could deploy.

The dream

So, the dream is that one day soon evangelical Christian media ministries and Bible believing churches will dominate on Google for all spiritual searches, particularly those related to “the way, the truth, and the life.”

Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you.” Matthew 24:4

But here’s the thing: Establishing a leading, interactive and dynamic online presence may also be the dream of major religions that preach a different gospel. (2 Corinthians 11:3-4)

Or no gospel at all. Experts tell CNN Interactive the Internet is economical for cults. And computer cults may not have to rent land or buildings. The Internet becomes their virtual commune. That was in 1997.

In this paradigm shift, all organizations with existing Christian media platforms have gone back to ground zero, opening up “Internet religious broadcasting” to every religion that has no reservation about embracing technology and technological progress.

That’s what was gnawing at me.