|PIC1|An online worshipping community will officially be launched this week, two years after the world’s first internet 3D church shut down.

This week the official launch of ‘St Pixels’ will take place, with plans for it to go 3D this autumn.

St Pixels will be sponsored by the Methodist Church of Great Britain, and has been created by the UK Christian webzine ‘shipoffools.com’.

The new online church will also be the subject of a Masterclass at this week’s Churches Media Conference at The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanick, taking place from 12-14 June.

A four-month trial of an online church took place in the summer of 2004, resulting in people from all over the world logging in as cartoon characters, meeting up with others in a gothic-styled church.

Speech bubbles were used for the virtual congregants to speak to one another, and hymns were also sung, with sermons given and prayers said.

|TOP|According to the shipoffools.com, the online church generated high levels of traffic during that trial period, achieving an international profile and reputation.

On its busiest day of the trial period 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.

Official figures from the creators also reveal that more than half of the visitors to the church were registered as under 30 years old, with 60 percent being male.

|AD|Simon Jenkins, editor of shipoffools.com, said, “This kind of response begins to dispel the notion that church is only of interest to silver-haired spinsters. Even more significant than generating high visitor numbers, the church created a space on the Internet where people could join others in worship and become involved in a new form of Christian community. The church became a visible sign of the worldwide Body of Christ.”

Jenkins continued, “We are enormously encouraged by support from the Methodist Church for this new adventure. We are looking forward to a creative partnership with them in the years ahead.”

Jonathan Kerry, of the Methodist Church said, “'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.

“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.”