Holy Trinity Church, Ilkeston: Case Study - 19.01.11

Author of Study: Mr Geoffrey Raby, Churchwarden Holy Trinity Ilkeston

Website Address: www.holytrinityilkeston.org.uk

I think it all started with money. Like most other churches we are always in need of looking at ways in which we can raise funds for the running of the church and to carry out our mission. Our vicar wanted to set up a focus group to look at news ways of raising money and I volunteered to be part of this. It seemed to me that one of the things that we needed to do was to raise the profile of HT in the local community and beyond: in other words to communicate to people that we existed and to let them know what we were about. If we were to go to the community (local people, schools and other institutions and businesses) then there needed to be a means of telling people about us. We needed to be better at communicating and inviting others to share in the life and work of the church.

The church had had a website for some years and at the time it was created no doubt it was up to date and relevant. But it was merely informative and in no way inspirational or designed to further the mission of HT. In the Derby diocese parishes are informally grouped together into Mission and Ministry Areas (MMAs) and we are grouped with St Laurence, Long Eaton, a town about 8 miles away. We are both traditionalist Anglo-Catholic parishes under the Episcopal care of the Bishop of Ebbsfleet. Our old website was constructed as a joint one but with separate sections for each parish.

In the latter half part of 2009 I started to think increasingly about what things we would need to do to bring the church closer to the community, to improve our profile and to increase giving from new sources. I became increasingly convinced that whatever we did, that it would be of enormous benefit to have an updated website.

I started to look at the websites of other churches of all kinds but particularly at other Anglo-Catholic churches. It soon became clear to me that our old website now looked very dated and wasn’t really achieving very much. There were some really good websites out there and I thought that we should have one as well and I started to communicate my vision to others in the church. We are a small urban parish on the periphery of Ilkeston and not the main Anglican Church which is located in the market place in the centre and by its very position will have a better profile. We were a small, elderly congregation in a not very prosperous part of town. What would be the use of a new website? Could this really be a priority in a parish strapped for cash? Parishes like ours can often feel marginalised and lacking in the confidence to project their faith and beliefs – what was the relevance of a website anyway – probably the majority of our regulars didn’t have access to the internet in any case.

At the same time changes in the life of the parish were on the horizon. Our vicar was due to retire in April 2010 and he was not being replaced but rather the vicar at St Laurence Long Eaton would become our Priest in Charge and we would have an associate Priest who would devote 2 days a week to HT.

All of these factors confirmed my view that a new website was going to be important for the parish looking forward over the coming year. My searches on the internet to see what other churches were doing led me to some very good websites which had been developed by Church Website Design Project. I was particularly taken with the websites for All Saints Kings Lynn and the Reepham group of parishes and I thought it would be good if we could aspire to have a site this good ourselves. The question of cost obviously arose and it was interesting to note that Church Website Design Project operated on a ‘not for profit’ basis. It was also clear from their website that a wide variety of churches and other faith groups had used them and there seemed to be a lot of flexibility regarding the nature and complexity of the site that could be developed. And perhaps most importantly CWDP didn’t do anything else but church and faith based websites – in other words they were specialist in their field.

One very important consideration was whether we should do this alone or jointly with St Laurence. I talked about all this with others at the church and we decided that we should invite Daniel Gibbins from Church Website Design Project to visit us so that we had an opportunity to talk more about what they could do for us. This happened in November 2009. Daniel made a very early start from Norfolk to be with us at St Laurence in time for Mass at 10 a.m. one Wednesday morning after which he showed us some of the sites that he had been involved with developing. Daniel then came to Holy Trinity to get a feel for our church before his return journey. It was clear that he had an understanding of and an empathy with the sort of church we were. Everyone was very impressed including Fr Simon the vicar at St Laurence. The talk was of having a high quality joint site with separate sections for each parish and we subsequently obtained a detailed quotation from CWDP. Daniel provided us with a list of all the features that we should be thinking about and helped us to decide what was important for us in each parish and what features to include on the website. We at HT were very keen to proceed but the question of cost arose (as it always does) and the PCCs of both churches were unconvinced of the necessity of spending about £600 each when there were what they saw as more important priorities.

This was also a time of great unease within both parishes with decisions looming about what provision would be made by the church for traditionalist parishes over the measure to introduce women bishops and with the introduction of the Ordinariate. There was a lot of uncertainty about, people were feeling confused and the issue of the website was put on the ‘back burner’ for a while.

By the summer of 2010 it was clear that the PCC at St Laurence did not want to move ahead with a new website in the foreseeable future and we at HT therefore had to decide what to do. In the meantime our vicar had retired and our new Priest in Charge was not due to be inducted until the autumn. Our former website had now become defunct – there were difficulties with access codes etc as the person who had previously dealt with this had moved on and we couldn’t get the information we required, so a new site was really a necessity rather than a luxury even if we had just a very basic one. I was attempting to influence the PCC about the importance of a new site and to get them to agree to something other than a very basic one. I discussed the position with Daniel and he reassured me by saying that he could do a site to the requirements of any reasonable budget and we could get something for around a £150 but it wouldn’t be the sort of site that we had originally envisaged. I also discussed with Daniel the possibility of just setting up a basic site at this time and then building on this in the future. Daniel replied with a very useful analogy - It would be like building a one bedroom apartment with a mansion in the pipeline for the same spot - that was something which could be very clearly understood by someone like me with hardly any technical knowledge about these matters.

It became clear that the PCC as a whole were not prepared to give this the priority which some of us thought it warranted and that a budget of no more than about £150 could be authorised. A number of us still continued to have a vision of something better for the church and we grouped together to underwrite a larger budget. This allowed us to think more creatively about the content and design of the website. All this process took some months and it was early autumn before matters were to progress. We discussed further with Daniel what we needed and discussed this further among ourselves. At the same time we got a definite date for the start of our new ministry team, which would involve the induction of Fr Simon as our Priest in Charge and the licensing of Fr Paul Waters as a part time associate priest and the licensing of Ruth Pechey as Reader.

We saw these events, involving the Bishop of Derby and the Archdeacon, as a good opportunity to give the church some publicity and to improve our profile. We therefore decided that we must aim to get the new website up and running prior to the induction and licensing service.

Ideally Daniel would have liked us to have allowed him the opportunity and time to visit the church and get a feel for what would be best for us; and importantly to obtain some good quality photographs. We didn’t really have anyone who was a good photographer but we managed to put together a few decent shots. Daniel explained to us that he could use non-specific photographs of other churches he had worked with as well as using some general photos of high quality photographs purchased from istockphoto.com - we were happy with this happening.

Daniel did some preliminary work from which we were able to get a sense for the overall tone of the site. At this stage we showed it more widely to clergy and parishioners before proceeding to make sure that it was on the right lines. We received very favourable feedback, and we gave Daniel the go ahead to proceed further. The deadline was perhaps unfairly tight for him but we worked on the content of the site with his guidance and it was completed well in time.

What we have attempted to do with the site is to communicate our existence to the outside world, including importantly the local community. But, because we are one of only a handful of traditionalist Anglo-Catholic parishes in the area, we wanted to make people aware of the kind of worship they would find if they visited us. We wanted to communicate an openness and accessibility. We are located in what could be said to be an awkward position in a not particularly attractive locality and we saw this as an important role of the website.

In the end all turned out well and we ended up with an excellent website in time for the induction and licensing. We were able to give the new site a bit of publicity in the local press alongside a report and photos of the service.

We do not see the new site as an end in itself but as a tool to enable us to reach out and invite others to share in the life and work of the parish. It also provides us with a certain confidence in pursuing our mission and demonstrates a professional approach. We are more than ever convinced that it is an essential part of our work – a means towards our mission to the parish, the local community and the wider world. We are only at the starting gate but without the website it would be a struggle to get over the first fence. As a parish we have much to do and achieve and we know that the website will be a tremendous help along the road ahead.

The ‘fruits of our labours’ are beginning to appear. For the induction service people were able to locate the church because of the Google maps facility on the site: a lady who was visiting the area contacted us because she had seen our website and she wanted to visit the church (she was also very complementary about the website): people were able to see what our programme of services was over the Christmas period. These are just little examples; there will be many more.

We consider that we have an excellent site for the financial outlay. There are many companies which can help develop and manage a website but where we think Church Website Design Project has the edge is in being genuinely experts in their field and having a passion and real interest in helping churches and others communicate the gospel to the world. They know what churches want; they know how we work; they can tell us what we need. Without that kind of support it would have been a much harder job to get the sort of site we wanted. They helped us to develop our vision and focused our minds on what particular facilities we at Holy Trinity would find useful. We are much indebted to them, and particularly to Daniel, for the invaluable help, and indeed encouragement, given throughout the whole process.

Mr Geoffrey Raby – Churchwarden, Holy Trinity Church Ilkeston