24/01/2025
The Church of England’s digital channels aim to support local churches, clergy, lay leaders and volunteers. We also aim to have a strong and growing social media presence, work to transform national websites and use technologies such as voice and apps to help meet people where they are at with their faith. Perhaps you and your church find content from us on:
Social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn.
The national online services scheduled each week on both YouTube and Facebook.
The Church of England website and AChurchNearYou.com which is the Church of England's official church finder tool, also offering free websites for churches and benefices.
Digital Labs, a hub of resources, news, and events to support digital evangelism and digital discipleship in your church.
Daily Prayer app and podcast to help you follow Morning, Evening and Night Prayer, wherever you are, as well as the Time To Pray app and podcast, which presents everything you need for Prayer During the Day and Night Prayer in Contemporary form.
Reflecting on the year that was, here are some monthly highlights of what you engaged with the most across our digital channels and what you found most inspiring.
January
The beginning of 2024 saw the final days of our 2023 Advent and Christmas theme, Follow the Star: Join the Song, with record-breaking results.
Our social media content encouraged more people than ever to find a Christmas service on AChurchNearYou.com. Our adverts led a record number of clicks to 'Share' an event or service or to 'Add to Calendar' – showing intent to attend these services – five times higher than the previous year. In a post-Christmas survey sent out to people who signed up to receive Advent reflections by email, 97 per cent of respondents said they found the campaign helpful in bringing them closer to God. Our Christmas adverts, inviting people to church, were seen 48 million times across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok
Promotion of the Watch and Pray Resources for Lent and Easter began this month with nearly 300 of you registering for the Digital Labs webinar ‘Watch and Pray - Resources for Lent 2024’.
February
In February the Digital Labs team launched a new Facebook group, Digital Labs Connect. This was in response to valuable feedback and frequent requests for a dedicated space to collaborate. Digital Labs Connect is more than just a group, now with more than 300 members, it's a place where voices are heard, knowledge is shared, and the future of digital in faith communities is shaped by you.
The most popular piece of content this month on Instagram was this excerpt from one of our national online services, with 14,274 engagements. And over on TikTok you enjoyed an explainer video by Father Andrew Mumby talking about Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day.
This February there was a 38 per cent increase in page views to AChurchNearYou.com compared to this time last year, showing more services and events being added by editors as well as more people using AChurchNearYou.com to find Lent services in their area.

March
This month we celebrated the fourth anniversary of the National Online Service. There have been 217 online services streamed since March 2020, and we estimate that 13,523,000 minutes of the services have been viewed since their inception. The most viewed national online service this month was on Easter Day, with over 5,000 views, and the Palm Sunday service with Rev Richard Allen received the most engagement on Tik Tok.
Alongside this the Daily Prayer podcast (included in the award-winning Daily Prayer app) launched three years ago this month and has now reached over 2.1 million people, with over 9.5 million episodes downloaded in that time.
This month we also celebrated International Women’s Day, Mothering Sunday and the 30th anniversary of the ordination of women by sharing a series of videos including this post from Rev Christina Rees. Our Celebrating Women content across all channels comprised 62 posts, which were seen almost a million times.
More than 46,000 of you received the Watch and Pray daily reflection emails, from the Lent and Easter campaign. A high average open rate throughout Lent showed that the reflections were compelling and kept people returning to read them every day.
April
At the start of April, our YouTube channel reached more than 30,000 subscribers, allowing us to reach more people than ever with our weekly online services and other video content.
The most popular Digital Labs webinar this month was ‘How to use Canva for your church’ and the most popular Digital Labs blog was Images and copyright: A guide to using images online legally – a source of vital information for anyone who looks after their church’s web presence.
This month we also launched an exciting initiative aimed at children, their parents and guardians from the Cheeky Pandas and The Jesus Storybook Bible. A six-week journey through Bible stories was accompanied by resources, an email series and videos featuring well-known faces telling the stories.

May
The Everyday Faith Portal received an update, giving it have a fresh look and a more streamlined user experience. The portal offers high-quality content designed to help people engage with their faith from Sunday to Saturday.
81 people registered for the Digital Labs webinar, ‘How to use Canva for your church’, to be guided through Canva's essential features, giving them an introduction to the tool and showing them how to create eye-catching content for their church. This regular webinar continues to be a popular introduction to a platform that has revolutionised many churches’ use of social media.
Our Ascension Day posts, commemorating the lifting up of Jesus Christ into heaven after his resurrection, on Facebook and Instagram were the most engaged with this month with a total of 6,270 engagements.
June
This month we shared our summer social media campaign, asking people to take up the #ChurchDoorChallenge and showcase photos of church doors from across the country. This was a great way to share some of the wonderful history and stories behind our church doors, as well as an ideal opportunity to invite people to church and encourage them to find one in their area. Alongside this, the most popular Digital Labs blog was Church Door Challenge: Join in this summer on social media.
There was strong engagement on Instagram and TikTok with our Book of Common Prayer service cutdown, with many comments from people happy to hear the Book of Common Prayer being used in a service. Many churches were inspired by with our post on X encouraging the sharing of Ordination service photos, using #NewRev.

July
The Church of England’s first daily discipleship app launched this month. Everyday Faith is designed to inspire, equip and encourage you in your faith every day of the week, not just on Sundays. The app provides you with carefully curated daily reflections, including selected Bible readings, a simple prayer to prepare you for the day ahead, and thoughts based on that week’s theme. During this month, the new app was already being used by almost 10,000 users from 87 countries.
This month you downloaded the Daily Prayer audio (app and podcast) 10 million times. Since its launch, the Daily Prayer audio has reached a total of 2.4 million people. Listener numbers for the first half of the year continued to grow strongly, with over half a million people listening during January to June 2024, an increase of 20 per cent on 2023 and almost 30 per cent on 2022.

August
The summer social media campaign, #ChurchDoorChallenge, came to an end this month. We saw over 400 wonderful submissions from churches and you can see some highlights presented within this Digital Labs blog.
On Facebook, X and Tik Tok, the most engaged social post this month was a prayer for those receiving their GCSE results.
September
This month we focused on resourcing churches to engage with Generosity Week, with content across the Everyday Faith app, national online service, a Digital Labs blog and across the Church of England’s social media.
Content from our BSL service and International Day of Sign Languages was well received with the Lord’s Prayer in BSL receiving the most views on Instagram this month.
Promotion for the Advent and Christmas theme, Calm and Bright, began with an extremely well-attended webinar with over 600 registrants and a Digital Labs blog sharing the Christmas resources for 2024. It was wonderful to see so many people enthusiastic about sharing the theme with their congregations and communities.
October
This month our YouTube channel surpassed 10 million lifetime views and remains a key way for Christians from around the country and the world to access and engage with our content and national online services.
Content for Black History Month was promoted on social media, sharing about events happening around the country, liturgical resources, and profiles of black clergy. This was strongly engaged with, especially Bishop Rose’s story on LinkedIn.
Many of you were interested in The Christmas Digital Planner, with the webinar and blog being the best attended and most viewed for the month. This popular resource is now a key part of Advent and Christmas, helping you to plan out your content and think strategically about how to reach your community.
November
This collection of nine stories exploring the themes of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany required a second reprint, after a very warm reception, including a very positive review in the Church Times. The stories by Canon Dr Paula Gooder (Canon Chancellor, St Paul’s Cathedral) were accompanied by paintings by The Revd Ally Barrett (Associate Vicar, Great St Mary’s, Cambridge) as well as notes and questions for reflection.
Our most engaged with posts on social media were an explainer for All Saints Day on Facebook and a Remembrance Day post on Instagram.

A collaboration with the Giving team on a Digital Labs webinar about digital giving at Christmas was the most attended this month with plenty of positive feedback.
This month, we also saw the greatest number of new editors register for an account on AChurchNearYou.com with a total of 282 people editing their church pages for the first time.
December
Rev Kate Bottley’s ‘What to wear to church’ reel was the most engaged piece of content this month on Instagram and our most popular TikTok video of 2024. The ‘2024 Wrapped’ post we shared across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn gained a lot of engagement, particularly on LinkedIn.
Daily Prayer audio continued to grow in popularity in this Advent season, with a four per cent increase in downloads this month and eight per cent increase this quarter. The audio (via the Daily Prayer app and podcast) has now reached over 2.8 million individuals since its launch in March 2021.
Page views to AChurchNearYou.com this month were nearly double the monthly average for 2024 and an increase of 14 per cent compared to December 2023, with the busiest day being Christmas Eve, showing more people visiting the site than ever before. 30 per cent of the services and events added to AChurchNearYou.com in 2024 were added this month.
The most viewed national online service for 2024, was ‘A Quiet Christmas Service’ with nearly 40,000 views and over 3,000 hours of watch time. Viewers particularly appreciated the reflective nature of the service.
- Alessi Burnham, Digital Officer