Articles - Miscellaneous

Church Web Sites

In February 2002 Ecclesiastical Insurance launched a competition to find the best parish web site in England, Scotland and Wales - the winner to receive £1000 in prize money. Entries closed in October and by then 600 entries had been received. The size of the response may explain why the competition has not been repeated in subsequent years. The first, second and third placed sites continue to be maintained and extended and still represent what is best in church web site design and content.

The first prize went to St Paul's in Dorking, Surrey (http://www.stpaulsdorking.org.uk/). St Paul's describes itself as a lively friendly evangelical church with a congregation of around 350 which includes around 100 children. The site is very extensive with links for courses, events, groups, messages, prayer, etc, etc. A lively home page with extensive use of animation - falling snow was strongly featured on the page in December. The site is bang up-to-date. They record all their services and many of the sermons are available on the web site to listen to online (typical length 20 minutes!). You can also download the speaker's notes.

In second place was St Mary & St Nicholas in Spalding, Lincolnshire (www.spaldingchurches.org/mandn). Another very busy home page with many links including ones to the readings for the coming Sunday, the weekly notice sheet and a calendar of events (which even includes the facility for 'Assistant Webwardens' to enter new information directly online).

The third placed site was Holy Spirit in Southsea, Hampshire (www.hlyspirit.org.uk) whose home page is relatively uncluttered with a random image from 'the Gallery' and the words of a song to the tune 'my Favourite Things' which begins 'Sidespeople welcoming, all smiling faces'. On a negative note the site disables the 'Back' button on the browser which means that you cannot easily exit the site once you arrive there - not a technique web designers are encouraged to employ. A much more static site than the other two, i.e. it is not updated regularly.

27 December, 2003