During 2020, A Church Near You saw more than 70 million page views on the site, as people explored their local worshipping communities. To support churches with their online activities, new features have been added to the site to make it quick and easy to find and share online services and events.
A Church Near You is the Church of England's church finding website, enabling members of the public find their local worshipping community. Each of the Church's 16,500 churches has a page on the site which can be customised and personalised for their community, allowing every community to have a free church website.
Live-streamed services on the site will feature on this interactive map found on the A Church Near You homepage.
In this Learning Labs blog, produced by the Church of England digital team, churchesare be supported with their online activities, with new features that have been added to the ACNY site to make it quick and easy to find and share online services and events.
How to add online services and events on to A Church Near You
First, log in to AChurchNearYou.com and navigate to your church page by clicking on My churches and benefices in the top right hand menu. If you are not yet an editor of your church's page and would like to become one, follow the guide here.
- Go to Services and events in the left-hand menu of your church's A Church Near You page
- Either click on + to create a new event or the pencil to edit an existing one
- Enter the title and description for your service or event
- Next, click Change Tags
- To tag a live-streamed use Live-streamed service
- Find other relevant tags by typing into the search field such as Family service, Christmas Carols, or simply Christmas
- Click Okay when done.
- Continue to fill in details such as the location, date and time
- Under Optional details insert the link to your live stream, such as the YouTube or Facebook link.
- Use file upload to provide a copy of the order of service or childrens activites
- Click Save or Copy to copy the event to another page in your Benefice.
Learn more about A Church Near You in the Editor Help Centre or by searching our Digital Labs blogs here.
Create a page with embeded live or pre-recorded video
- Once logged into your A Church Near You page, click on Add a page on the left-hand side.
- Complete the form with page title, written content and a header image
- Scroll down to Video URL and paste a URL from either the YouTube or Vimeo video into this box
- Click on Save at the bottom of the form
- When you save the page the video will automatically be embedded into the page
- Share a link to this page in your newsletter or online groups so that your community can watch.
Learn More
- More from the Church of England Digital Team can be found from their section of the Church of England website here.