Communications

The CTSD website was launched in January 2010; its ethos follows the teachings of our Lord to Love your neighbour as yourself, topped with Philippians 2.3 Think more of each other than you do of yourselves (J B Phillips). Accordingly, the website lists churches in the same font size and style, avoiding emphasising one church over another. Ecumenical events may be highlighted in bold or larger print where part of a listing of individual church events. It lists churches in alphabetical order and their events in chronological order.

Our website reflects what visitors, newcomers, the curious, seekers - the outside world - are looking for when searching, rather than being driven by a desire to 'tell people what we want to tell them'. It follows the example of Jesus asking Bartimæus, “What do you want?” – rather than telling the man in need, for example, “I’m offering healings on the fifth Sunday of the month at 6:30pm in the side chapel.”

Chronology - the Diary pages run chronologically:

Christmas and Easter services, Flower Festival listings on a single page are usually ordered by start time, letting the visitor or reader to find the next available event. Where two congregations are closely linked, their events or services may be placed next to each other.

The month-by-month Diary listings are re-ordered placing future events higher up - with past events further down.

The listings offer a means for churches to organise their events avoiding any clash of date and help ecumenical relations by publicising others’ events – providing a prayer diary or cycle as well as advertising what’s going on in neighbouring congregations.

The whole website is a living archive where each past event becomes part of the history of what God has been up to in these parts.

Where events have not been included on individual church websites, the Diary page may include events past since it illustrates the flavour of the faith to be found in specific congregations. Example: the ‘Search this site’ facility will return a list of dates and churches which have run a seminar on ‘Creation’ or 'Café church', for example.

Requests and demands made on the website over the years have included searches through the archives back to 1954. CTSD has a ready-made and growing archive with easily available and searchable past records.

The website is usually updated on receipt of the email/poster advertising events that build up the life of the church, while also reflecting the five marks of mission of the wider church. Apologies are freely and genuinely offered for delays, errors and omissions, gladly correcting or updating entries and offering heartfelt thanks to those who have generously taken the time to let us know.

The website has been resident on the free Googlesite platform from January 2010. By 2018 the content had used up around 95% of the available memory, due mainly to Googlesite’s [welcome] policy of retaining previous versions of every page (which offers the benefit of establishing what was on the Home page in 2011, for example). Stripping out old images and posters (as 'attached pdf' files) temporarily increases the space available on Google’s servers. Further space is available at cost, although the website has been run as frugally as possible, averaging around £5 pa.

Please contact us for more information or details on Cookies, Privacy or GDPR policies. July 2018