News

London, September 21, 2008 (SIGNIS): St Stephen’s Walbrook in the City of London, known as the Internet Church for its online ministries and activities, was the scene for the second annual Christian Web and Blog Awards. The Awards are sponsored by the Premier Christian Media group, which has a popular Christian radio station and a very active and interactive website, and the National Christian Trust.

Guests were welcome by Bishop Richard Chartres of London.

Hundreds of entries from all churches were received for the competition. There were ten categories including Best Church site, Best Green site, Best Social Action site, Best Youth site as well as sites for Christian Leadership, Music and News. The entries were narrowed down to four nominees in each category.

Six judges were invited to assess the sites. They represented different Churches. Former president of SIGNIS, Peter Malone, was invited to be one of this year’s judges. There were different criteria for judging each site. All sites had to be creative in their aesthetic presentation. Many were also judged on the quality of their resources as well as indications of collaboration with similar organisations for ministry outreach. Judges were also asked to look at the blog content of many sites to look at the number of comments to gauge their popularity. An interesting feature of the criteria for the sites on Christian Leadership was that they did not draw attention to the webmaster but to the contribution the site made to developing Christian leadership.

Three Catholic websites made it to the final forty nominees. Two of them them won awards. The runner-up in the Youth site was the Catholic diocese of Northhampton. The winner of the best Church website was won by the site for the Conference of the Bishops of England and Wales. James Abbot of the Catholic Christian Network and a member of SIGNIS UK was present with his wife and accepted the award as the current webmaster.

The ceremony was held during a formal dinner in St Stephen’s Church and recorded and photographed for Premier Christian Media outlets.