St Pixels, an online church, launched a new church environment and a ground-breaking service towards Easter for BBC Radio 4's Sunday Worship.

Although not yet in full 3D, St Pixels, a project supported by the Methodist Church, now has many features of the final version.

"You enter by selecting how you want your cartoon 'avatar' to look - hairstyle, shape of nose, skin colour and clothes," explains Simon Jenkins, one of the St Pixels development team.

Once inside the church, visitors can talk to each other, enter different rooms, take part in worship or Bible study and listen to a sermon illustrated by pictures.

"So far we've created a very high-quality chatroom," says Jenkins, editor of Christian webzine Ship of Fools. "We can show images and play music, hymns and sound effects. Until now, St Pixels has been meeting on the equivalent of website bulletin boards, so going 'live' in this way is a huge step forward. And there's the 3D church to come, of course."

With more than 1,500 registered users, St Pixels has 600 different people enter the church's website each day. Most members describe themselves as Christian and some are already leaders in traditional churches. For others, St Pixels is the only point of contact with organised religion.

"People join for a variety of reasons," says Mark Howe, one of St Pixels' programmers. "We are accessible for those who cannot leave home due to infirmity or young children. It's also convenient for people whose working life does not fit with local church services - or who live far from a physical church.

"Members take part in discussions, pray for each other and play games - as well as worshipping together. Many travel considerable distances to meet 'in real life'".

"In developing St Pixels our first priority was to resist hackers and trouble-makers," explains Simon Jenkins. "Deliberately, we have not rushed into a fully 3D environment. Instead we have produced our own customised chatroom from scratch which allows for presentations, preaching, music and sound effects - for a worshipping community.

"Without the vision, support and encouragement of the Methodist Church, this new adventure would have been impossible. We're especially pleased that Methodism has caught the vision of creating genuine Christian community on the Net."