Friday 15th May 2020

Today we are putting the audio service together and this week there will also be a new communion service.

I know you can do all sorts of things with statistics - but in our curent situation sometimes numbers are all we have to go on.  So it's been interesting seeing the number of people who have tuned into the audio service, the website and the blog over these last few weeks.  Here are some figures - they are taken from the 'platforms' we use - and I suppose they are open to all sorts of interpretations:

WEBSITE measured in number of webpages viewed
April 2020: 91,657 pages viewed  (In June 2019 it was 45,383)
Average daily view in May so far 2,986 per day
So, website viewing has doubled during the Crisis.

BLOG measured in number of views
April 2020: 1,533 (last year the monthly average was around 800 per month)
So, blog viewing also appears to have doubled during the Crisis.

AUDIO SERVICE measured in number of hits on SoundCloud
Averaging 125 per week for the main service and 65 per week for the communion service plus we distribute about a dozen CDs of the service each week to folk without internet
(Before LockDown our average morning congregation numbered 92 - so, could it be argued that actually now more people join us for worship than before?)

For the time being we will continue to put much of our effort as a church into these helpful ways of communicating.

A significant question we'll have to consider in due course is how many of these platforms will we continue to use and develop once things return to more 'in-person church'.  Answers on a postcard....!!!!

May you know God's blessing and joy in all you do today and this weekend.

Ian