An online worshipping community has been relaunched this week, two years after the world’s first internet 3D church shut down.
St Pixels, sponsored by the Methodist Church of Great Britain, and created by the UK Christian webzine ‘shipoffools.com’, is being showcased at the Churches Media Conference at The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanick, taking place from 12-14 June.
After a four-month trial of an online church in the summer of 2004, shipoffools.com hopes to generate a similar impact today, creating an online community where people from all over the world log in as cartoon characters, and meet up with others in a gothic-styled church.
Speech bubbles are used for the virtual congregants to speak to one another, and hymns are also sung, with sermons given and prayers said. Visitors are able to choose a cartoon double, walk around, kneel, pray, shout hallelujah and even ring the church bells!
Launched originally as the UK's first 3D online house of worship, the Church has reopened once again as a place for private prayer and reflection.
On its busiest day of the trial period in 2004, 41,000 attempts were made to log into the church, and an average of 7,300 visits per day were recorded throughout the four months.
Simon Jenkins, editor of shipoffools.com, spoke of the success of the trials; “This kind of response begins to dispel the notion that church is only of interest to silver-haired spinsters...the church ("St Pixels") became a visible sign of the worldwide Body of Christ.”
Jonathan Kerry, of the Methodist Church also spoke warmly of the reopening; "'Foolish' was the reaction of some stalwart Methodists to the news that we were supporting an online church but many more were delighted, intrigued and inspired by the pilot project."
He continued "Methodism's 18th century founder, John Wesley said: ‘The world is my parish?’ and 300 years later that parish includes cyber-space as well."
"We are extremely glad to continue our support of the project into its next phase as St Pixels. Bricks and mortar churches will continue, but now supplemented by on-line Christian communities."
You can visit 'St Pixels' by clicking here now
