If shopping online looks likely to play a bigger part in your Christmas than singing carols or eating mince pies, the Church of England has a plan to reclaim some of its territory – via your phone.

The C of E has launched a website, A Christmas Near You, with details of more than 34,000 carol services across the country. Perhaps surmising that some possible attendees will not be motivated by faith alone, it includes full details of which services offer refreshments alongside O Come, All Ye Faithful – so that you can quickly find one of the 3,000 offering mulled wine, or 4,500 offering mince pies. And you can tap in your postcode and find a service that suits you – traditional, contemporary, or child-friendly – near your home, add it to your calendar or share it with friends and family.

For people accustomed to using their phones and tablets to find the arrival time of the next bus, order sushi for home delivery, book cinema and theatre tickets and plan their next weekend break, this is not a big deal.



But for the Church of England, it is the latest stage of a digital revolution that it says is connecting it to a wider audience than ever before. In the past four years, the church has devoted significant resources to expanding and improving its websites and presence on social media, taking “steps in a paradigm shift”, according to the Rev Arun Arora, its director of communications.



The Church of England is not alone in recognising the power and reach of digital technology. “Trends in social media and apps are changing religion,” said Heidi Campbell, associate professor of communication at Texas A&M University and the author of Digital Religion. “For faith organisations and communities, lack of digital literacy these days means you don’t exist.”



Pope Francis has attracted more than 10 million followers on Twitter in four years, posting messages in nine languages including Latin and Arabic and, according to a Vatican source, personally approving each tweet before it is launched. The Dalai Lama has 13.1 million followers; Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, clocks in at 98,000.



Last month the Catholic church in Edinburgh and St Andrews announced it was launching a confession finder app allowing users to locate their nearest or soonest Mass. Christians all over the world can follow daily Bible readings and prayers online via services such as Pray as You Go, an app pioneered by the Jesuits 10 years ago.



Muslims have a huge range of apps to choose from, including quotations from the Qur’an, directories of halal restaurants and other businesses, prayer times and Mecca-finding apps.



Jews can watch videos about Judaism on YouTube’s TorahChannel or play games set in biblical times. Buddhists can perhaps achieve mindfulness more easily with the assistance of a wide range of meditation apps, such as Buddhify.

The C of E is targeting Facebook users who are posting about Christmas, pushing links to A Christmas Near You to people who would not naturally search for faith content online.



Partly as a result of this targeted promotional advertising, a video featuring Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the chaplain to the House of Commons Speaker, was viewed more than 130,000 times a week after its launch. The film is one of a series of four celebrating Christmas; the final one, featuring the Gogglebox vicar Kate Bottley, was launched on Monday.



Next year the church will relaunch its website to shift the focus from serving a core audience of clergy and churchgoers to the needs of the wider public, building it around the key life stages of birth, marriage, death, moving house, and young people going to school and leaving home. It plans to partner with Christian coders to set up an “innovations lab” for radical digital change.



According to Arora, the church has moved in the past few years from being fearful of digital communication to embracing it. “We recognised that digital offers the holy grail of unmediated communication with the world, whereas before we were dependent on the traditional media to get our message to the wider world. Everyone else had already figured that, but the church hadn’t seen digital as a priority. Now we can talk to the 97% of the population that aren’t regular churchgoers, as well as the committed 3%.”

Among the lessons the church had learned over the past four years, he said, was that there was much higher engagement with video than text among young people; that social networks were now an established and lasting form of communication; and that the model of communication was changing.



“For centuries, church leaders stood in a pulpit and preached at a congregation. Now it’s about relationship, conversation, dialogue,” said Arora.



In September the C of E appointed Adrian Harris as its head of digital communications to drive its strategy forward. Harris had previously led digital communications teams at Bupa, Tesco and the Conservative party. He said there was “a huge amount of untapped potential”.



Bex Lewis, senior lecturer in digital marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University, said she had “clapped my hands very loudly” at the appointment, but argued that the church was still slow to adapt to and embrace the digital age.



“At the top [of the church] it’s like trying to turn round an oil tanker,” she said, although the C of E’s engagement with Pokémon Go players earlier this year had been encouraging. “But there’s some really interesting stuff happening at the bottom.”



Christian meme sites such as Anglican Memes and Jesus Loves You were popular, Lewis said. “Fun is important. The general perception of religion is that it’s overly judgmental, and we can show that’s not the case.”



The diocese of Lichfield appointed the church’s first online pastor this year, a move that other dioceses were likely to follow, said Lewis.



Other denominations in the UK have also stepped up their digital games. The (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland this month launched an online advent calendar featuring a series of videos covering issues such as refugees and domestic violence. It expects 250,000 viewers by Christmas Day.



Last month the Catholic church in England and Wales updated the medieval manuscript Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying) for the digital age with a website featuring animations and videos for people entering the final stages of life and their families.



In the US, Twitter has appointed a senior executive, Claire Diaz-Ortiz, to bring more religious leaders into its orbit, after discovering that tweets by some Christian evangelicals can outperform those of celebrities such as Lady Gaga. Diaz-Ortiz now travels across the US offering advice, training and analytics to church leaders, according to the New York Times.



At the C of E, after four years of leading its communications team, Arora is returning to frontline ministry in 2017 as the vicar of St Nicholas in Durham, and will be employing his digital expertise on the ground.



“At its best, digital joins up physical and virtual communities. Social can bring people together and carry on the conversation outside the church walls,” he said. “Churches that use digital well and intentionally are churches that grow.”

