Worth Valley Churches take to the internet!

News Release from Worth Valley Churches Together

A group of Worth Valley Christian Churches have employed 21st Century technology to deliver their age-old message during the Covid-19 crisis.
Not being able to worship at Church during crisis has been a major problem for many Christians in the Worth Valley. But, a group of three Anglican churches and a Baptist church have now gone a long way towards solving that issue for their congregations.
They have been generating not only services but also offering a host of other supporting activities on line!
Using their networking experiences through the Churches Together in the Worth Valley team, the Haworth and Cross Roads Anglican parishes together with West Lane Baptist Church have combined to deliver a 30-minute pre-recorded joint service of worship through the social media site, Facebook for the last two lock-down months.
Led by Haworth Parish Curate Rev. Anthony Bennett and Baptist Minister Rev. Chris Upton, the regular services soon started to attract a wide and appreciative audience.
They always knew that there was also a spiritual need to be connected to the services for the people within the Christian community who were not connected to the social media platform, but with advice from Haworth-based IT expert John Sargent, services are now being relayed to YouTube from where they embedded on their respective websites as well.
Rev. Upton said: “As time has gone by we became increasingly aware that there are many people in our districts who could not see our service and we wanted to address that issue.
“After our team’s work with John, now anybody who is internet connected in Cross Roads, Haworth and Stanbury, as well as further afield, can tune in to our service.”
Rev. Bennett said: “Our service programmes often have contributions from the Methodist and Catholic churches, along with many members of the community are not affiliated to any church at all. And, so far the service has proved very popular which is why we wanted to extend the offering to a wider audience.”
“Having it embedded on front page of our websites is a major development as our service is now just ‘one click’ away and it extends our offering beyond that of Facebook. The service is now going ‘live’ on all the church websites every Sunday.”
The inter-church group also provides a dial-in version through a local-rate phone number as well, so no computer is required.
At any point you can call 01535 286387 to hear the latest Sunday service. It works as a normal local number, and so will be included in some call packages, or charged at a local rate if not. All being well the service will be updated by 10:30am on the Sunday Morning.
Ends

Notes to editors:

Website details: For Cross Roads Parish Church click on: www.stjamesparish.org.uk. For Haworth Parish and Stanbury Churches click on: www.haworthchurch.co.uk; and for West Lane Baptist Church click on: www.westlanebaptistcentre.org.uk.
For more details of Cross Roads, Haworth and Stanbury Churches please contact: Rev. Peter Mullins: Tel 01535 648464 or e-mail: peter@brontevirtualchurch.com. For West Lane Baptist Church please contact: Rev. Chris Upton Tel: 07976 287117 or e-mail: chris@altruists.com.

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