Networking makes the church strong.  It’s true within parishes and it’s true of 389 parishes.  They rarely get together so making the most of Caritas 08 was really important.

We wanted people to celebrate their unity by ‘sharing the one bread’ with the bishop.  We sought an outward focus by the pledging of mission action plans from PCCs.

How could individuals be involved in the diocesan celebration we wondered?  This is how the online face2faith diocesan community got thought up.  At Caritas 08 we launched www.face2faith.co.uk as a faith sharing network encouraging church members to share their faith stories.  The site included a good amount of listen again audio resources from Premier Christian Radio involving myself.

Caritas 08 ended with a great ‘church pride’ procession of some 3,500 Anglicans to the Peace Statue, a great witness.  We wanted people to go on witnessing and networking.  At the November 2008 diocesan synod in Hove we launched a new development to www.face2faith.co.uk facilitated by Premier, the face2faith online community.  Chichester Diocese became maybe the first diocese since the apostles to go electronic and online!

Now linked in to Premier Community, which provides national and international news from a Christian perspective, face2faith community started really buzzing over Christmas 2008 when churches distributed promotional post cards to engage Christian enquirers.

At Easter 2009 the home page of www.face2faith.co.uk was simplified.  There are now four buttons on the home page: community (accessing the diocesan online community), sharing (evangelism resources), questions (apologetics resources) and spirituality (spiritual direction, healing resources etc).  The audio tab accesses clips like these: Steve Chalke on inter faith, Abbot Christopher Jamison on sin and Rowan Williams on prayer.

The face2faith online community at http://face2faith.ning.com is currently engaging members of Cursillo, fresh expressions proponents and those troubled by the Darwin anniversary debates, not to mention discussions on New Monasticism and Back to Church Sunday.

Face2faith community remains ecumenical and open to Christians and non-Christians.  As we pass our first milestone we hope church members will commend this website as well as its associated community, to those seeking contact with the church and better understanding of her beliefs who would find attendance currently inappropriate.

A year on Face2faith seeks to be a contemporary response to this biblical invitation:

In your hearts sanctify Christ.  Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence 1 Peter 3:15-16