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St Philip’s goes global Our first service broadcast live on the Internet was on Sunday 31st August. It was an historic moment when St Philip’s invited the whole world to their morning service. “Go into the world and preach the gospel,” said Jesus – so using the Internet we did! What seemed a impossible dream for our humble community church has finally come true. Over 1,000 hits were made on the web site comparing favourably to a meagre 300 for the Spice Girls live Internet broadcast! |
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Links Internet Carol Service - December 2003 |
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It all began when Alan Bain and Telewest Broadband both realised that they had something in common – they needed publicity! Telewest for their broadband service and Alan for the gospel. So they hit on the idea of broadcasting a Sunday morning service live on the Internet – the first of its kind in the UK. The date was set for 31st August and a week before the church was besieged by the world’s media. “We became news for a fortnight,” said Alan. “I lost my life during those two weeks doing over 40 interviews on radio and TV, and countless press interviews for local, national and international news papers.” Together with the relentless media onslaught the office coped with emails, phone calls and a complete disruption of its activities. News of our service seemed to appear everywhere; on web site search engines, in IT magazines, the BBC, NBC and Sky websites and on the World Service. An email from a friend in Australia read:“I couldn’t believe my ears and nearly fell out of bed when I heard my old mate Alan coming across the miles into Aussie airspace.” The big day dawned and the church was enveloped in hi-tech equipment ready to stream the service live onto the internet. It was an exciting time and Gill Skuse who led the historic service said: “It felt a little unreal to realise that our service was not just reaching those at St Philip’s but others from just about anywhere in the world were taking part. It’s a privilege to have been given this opportunity.” St Philip’s member Hugh Mackay was surprised to come home from hospital to find he could ‘catch’ the service on his computer. “It was wonderful to join in with the church from a distance,” he said. Alan said: “This is an amazing initiative. Not only has it impacted on our own parish in a major way with numerous people stopping me in the street to talk, but it has also reached Europe, Scandinavia, North America and Australia. We’ve heard from a missionary in Taiwan, an atheist in Japan and an English woman in Hong Kong. Some of our viewers were disabled, carers and family members who found it difficult to get to church and appreciated feeling part of St Philip’s.” And the messages are still coming with a major French internet magazine giving St Philip’s the centre spread this month with the title “Pričre de Cliquer. “The church must continue to embrace modern technology to be effective,” said Alan.. |
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