ts been less than an hour since 15-year-old Jeremy Adams spoke with his friends and classmates Chris and Jessica. The three were huddled around a lab table, dissecting a worm in their biology class. Now Jeremy is in his room, anxious to connect with his high school pals again. Tossing his backpack on the bed, he flips on his computer and logs onto the Internet. To occupy the eternal moments it takes for his modem to connectMaybe mom and dad will get me a high-speed cable modem, like the one Chris has, he thinksJeremy shuffles through a computerized playlist of recent MP3 downloads.

Ten seconds pass. Then 20. Finally, the modem chirps and whirrs, signaling access to the online universe. Jeremys buddy list materializes on-screen, as does a note from his free Web-based email service informing him of a dozen new email messages. More spam, probably, Jeremy decides, and he makes the message vanish with a single mouse click.

eremy finds that Chris and Jessica are logged on. So are Nathan and GammonFiend_26, which is the nick of a guy from Denmark. He and Jeremy overcome the language barrier by playing virtual backgammon some evenings, when Jeremy is bored. GammonFiend isnt usually online at this time of day, Jeremy recalls.

Jeremy fires off a quick IM (instant message) to Chris and Jessica, and shoots a virtual note to Nathan as well.

Chris responds with news of a new MP3 download. Jessica writes that another classmate, Lucinda, is online, and she thinks youre soooo cute!

You ought to ask her out, Jessica types. Her nicks SweetLucy2003. Add her to your buddy list ... or IM her now!

Between these messages, Jeremy juggles a more serious conversation with Nathan. The two cyber pals discuss Jeremys struggles with his new found Christian faith.

Jeremy and Nathan have never met f2f (face-to-face). Yet Jeremy considers Nathan to be as close as Chris, Jessica or any of his other friends.

The two have met only virtually, in cyberspace. They first encountered each other about a month ago, after Jeremy ventured into an Internet chat room on spirituality. Nathan chatted with Jeremy about Jesus Christ as the true Son of God. For two weeks they carried on a continuing dialogue about Christianity, using instant messaging, chat rooms and electronic mail. By the end of those two weeks, Jeremy decided to accept Christ as his Savior. Nathan led Jeremy in an online, typed version of the sinners prayer via ICQ (I seek you).

Nathans approach to evangelism and discipleship and Jeremys approach to growing in the faith may seem unconventional to most American churchgoers. But a growing number of young peoplethe Net generation, or N-genersare turning to the Internet as a resource for spiritual matters.

n a 1998 study, the Barna Research Group found that one out of every six church-going teens expects to rely increasingly on the Internet to meet spiritual needs in the coming years. These teens will be part of a significant portion of the U.S. populationup to one-fifth, Barna predicts who will rely solely on the Internet for their spiritual needs.

Todays wired teens are the first wave of a tsunami of digital kids. Their generation is the first to grow up in the digital age. And at 81.1 million strong30 percent of the U.S. populationtheyve already eclipsed yesterdays trendsetters, the 77.2 million Baby Boomers who make up 29 percent of the U.S. population.

Why is the Internet such an attractive resource for the spiritual surfing N-geners? Here are a few reasons:

The Net is their element.
For most N-geners, the Internet is the communications medium of choice. Just as Baby Boomers grew up with television, the Net generation is growing up with the Internet. The Net is in their homes, in their schools and, with the advent of wireless communications devices, even on their belts or in their pockets. Most young people are at home in cyberspace. If they have questions, cyberspace is where they turn for answers.

For the first time in history, writes Don Tapscott, author of Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Internet Generation, children are more comfortable, knowledgeable and literate than their parents about an innovation central to society.

The Net is immediately interactive.
Unlike television, radio or print media, the Internet empowers users to interact, and even greatly influence, the creators of content and products of this new medium. Moreover, N-geners can interact in real time via email, message boards, chat rooms or instant messaging. This kind of immediacy is important to a generation reared on sound bites, fast-paced music videos and hyperspeed video games. While traditional media provide opportunities to interact (with letters to the editor and radio call-in programs, for example), the Internet breaks down the barriers of time, distance and access in ways unfathomable a decade ago. An Internet user in Malaysia, for example, can fire off an email to leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention in North Americaand expect a quick response.

The Net is a reservoir of unfiltered information.
With traditional media, audiences rely on the expertise of reporters, editors and producers to sift through information and present the stories that really matter.

But the Net generation casts a cynical eye toward traditional institutions such as the media, government, education and the churchand is more likely to trust firsthand reports from peers or underground information sources on the Internet. In chat rooms and message boards, N-geners can also post their thoughts on topics without going through an intermediary

The Net is a haven for anonymity.
As a New Yorker cartoon famously observed a few years ago, On the Internet, nobody knows youre a dog. The Internet allows users to veil themselves in anonymity, thus freeing them to discuss topics they might not feel comfortable talking about in a face-to-face conversation.

Christian teens may feel more comfortable discussing faith issues in an online chat room than with their peers in a youth group meeting.

Moreover, for people living in societies that are closed to the gospel, the Internet provides a safer source of information.

While the Internet will never replace the need for a real-life church, its evident that the church must be a very real presence in cyberspace. As more people turn to search engines in their quest for meaning, the church must be available online to point these seekers toward the way, the truth and the life.

Andrew Careaga wrote E-vangelism: Sharing the Gospel in Cyberspace (1999, Vital Issues Press) and eMinistry: Connecting to the Net Generation (2001, Kregel).