“Secret Church” service under apparent cyberattack

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Organizers of the April 24 “Secret Church” online event reported that a cyberattack may have blocked many participants from logging on in real-time. Focused on God, government, and the Gospel, the event is simulcast to around 50,000 people worldwide and is centered on Bible study and prayer for persecuted Christians.

David Platt of McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Va. started “Radical Secret Church” after teaching and ministering in Asia, where believers had to meet secretly in houses because of violent opposition from governments and their communities.

The six-hour Secret Church event aims to provide what its website calls: “a helpful corrective to the desire for entertainment that characterizes many church gatherings in the US.” The website explains that: “With few opportunities to gather and little access to biblical teaching, our persecuted brothers and sisters may meet for eight to twelve hours at a time, simply to sing, pray and study God’s Word.”

On April 24, however, many people were unable to get on to the website and join the event in real-time. Radical Marketing Administrator Mandy Hewitt told CBN News: “We experienced unusually high traffic in a short period of time, and after further investigation, though the results are not entirely conclusive, some of that activity seems to be suspicious and not due to a larger number of registrations attempting to log in.”

Hewitt added: “This is not the first time we’ve had suspicious activity targeting our site and overwhelming our system, but this is the first time we have experienced that type of activity in a way that it affected registrants’ ability to access the live stream the night of the Secret Church simulcast.” Technicians were investigating to see if there was a cyberattack or a failure in the event web system. A recording of Secret Church is now available online.

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